PB went on a vacation with his Grandma without us. The house was a lot more peaceful, but also boring. I enjoyed spending time catching up on some projects, as long as more time with these people:

Mr. C is quite good at helping plunge the applesauce.

Right now I feel like my life is abundant. My prayers are full of gratitude. I have plenty of food in the kitchen, much of which came from my own garden. I am able to be a homemaker and spend the best time of each day with my children, watching and teaching them. I am overcoming some of the weaknesses that have brought me down in the past. I have much to do every day, and most of it is very meaningful. I have an abundance of friends and family that I continue to deepen my relationships with. I an learning about and incorporating new practices into my life that have made it richer, including meditation and permaculture. My body continues to engage in the amazing task of growing new life, and I feel my baby move frequent inside me. My husband has a stable job he likes, and although we are not rich, we have enough means for our needs and most of our wants.

I don’t know how long this time of abundance will last. My family has all worked hard to get to where we are now, and the Lord has blessed us. We’ve also had harder times, and I’m not expecting them to stay away forever. Now, I’m just focusing on becoming the best I can so that whatever does come, I will have a store of spiritual strength.

My four year old can beat me in a race right now. I’m not in very good shape right now, thanks to the wonderful excuse of a baby in my abdomen. Still, I wanted to go on a hike. We ditched the idea of the six mile hike up the mountain, and decided to go to the easily hiked Wind Cave trail. I think it was about my third time hiking this trail. Well, the not-too hard less than four miles round trip was almost too much for me this time around. While I was huffing up the trail, Joe reminded me that I hiked Logan Peak when I was similarly pregnant with PB. I was too ambitious then.

PB generally does better hiking than walking (trying to get that kid to walk anywhere is like walking up the down escalator). It was a bit too long for him though, we had to do a lot of motivating and listening to complaining.. Even Mr. C who had the benefit of riding on Daddy most of the way had a meltdown right before we got to the windcaves. But we did make it. And I realized on the way that I don’t love hiking because it is easy, but because it pushes my body to do more than it normally does. It is better because it is hard.

Our community does a big celebration right after Labor Day named Peach Days. It is right around the time peaches ripen, and it is an easy time to find an abundant amount of peaches for sale. This year we had a peach tree adopted at a church garden, and we had a good harvest of huge peaches. One of my main activities on peach days was canning peaches.

Saturday we went to the parade and wandered around. It was hot, lots of walking and looking at things I didn’t care about. Not my favorite. The kids did have fun, eating huge amounts of candy from the parade, riding carnival rides, and looking at cars at the car show. This was probably the favorite activity:

I had heard of the fairy forest a few years ago. It wasn’t too far from my grandparent’s house up in Kamas valley, so we decided to combine a trip to visit both my grandparents and the forest. The Fairy Forest is located at milepost 17 on the Mirror Lake Highway. 

I didn’t quite know what to expect when we walked up the forest. What we found was a large area that I feel is best described as a community art project. The naturally rocky area has been transformed as people have created little scenes, arranged stones and painted rocks. Many of the scenes were from this year, so I think it is a project that is continually growing. The kids had a lot of fun looking at all the different rocks.

After we circled around the forest, and headed out, little C asked, “Where the rocks?” He was heartbroken to learn that we were leaving and there wouldn’t be any more painted rocks to see. 

For more information and better directions on how to get there, see this post. 

Sometimes I get nervous with how an outing will turn out. Will it actually be fun or boring? Will it involve tears or smiles? When we decided to go to the Fair, I wasn’t sure if it would be that enjoyable. It was the first night the rides were open, and they were only one ticket each, so we decided to get some tickets and let the kids go on a bunch of rides. About 15 minutes into this excurison, after the kids had gone on a ride apiece, a storm blew in. It rained a lot, and they actually closed down the rides.

But I don’t mind rain too much and there was plenty of other things to do. We went and looked at all the animals and other projects. By the time we had done that, the rain had calmed down, and most of the rides re-opened. The kids continued going on rides, and this time there were no lines. We put C on a small roller coaster and he freaked out. I could tell he wanted to get off but he was stuck going on it again and again. He was fine when he got off, but now all roller coasters are, “Scary.”

The evening to the fair turned out to be very enjoyable…it wasn’t what I expected, but a bit better.