June 24 - Mother Daughter Outing

Had so much fun at the mother/daughter outing. I love that we have a gorgeous place to go. It was really fun to see some of our friends from La Grande too!

Louie has been giving us these gummy grins and are seriously the cutest thing. She cracks us up!

Love this family of mine!

I came home and peeked in on Hendo. Seriously he is so cute.

Introducing Elkhorn Embroidery

Dylan and I bought an embroidery, screen printing, and heat transfer vinyl business here in Baker City. We weren't looking to purchase a business, but Carly made us aware of the opportunity. At first I thought "oh, that's cool" but didn't give it more thought. The next day I couldn't stop thinking about it. We decided to at least put out some feelers. Immediately we fell in love with the business and the owners, and we felt really good about everything. We met with Economic Development and secured a loan through the Morrow Corporation. It wasn't long before it was ours! The previous owners are staying on for 4-6 weeks to train us, and after that one will stay on part time for a while. (We just finished week 3!) We are totally swamped and are loving every minute. We are already working at capacity and things just keep coming in. We are moving to main street in a couple weeks, to a bigger location, which will help. We are also saving up for more machines! It is so much fun, and I feel like we are pretty good at it. Dylan works 9-5 and pretty much runs everything. I work part days while Glenda and Carly help out with the kids. We are still figuring things out but we are finding our flow. We feel so extremely blessed and are loving this business! Here are a few pictures from my first day at the shop (spoiler: the current shop is tiny! This is pretty much all of it :) if you want more updates, you can follow us on instagram, facebook, and our website elkhornembroidery.com. Dylan has posted some pretty cool videos!

Celebretory Lunch!

June 8- Family Fun Day

We've been extremely busy and running around like crazy and needed a day to just be a family. The morning started out with baths for the kids. Bath time is really fun, and the kids are so cute in the tub together. We realized after we got dressed that Hendrix was dressed like Phineas (from Phineas and Ferb) and kept asking us "Where's Pewrrry" and it's pretty much the cutest thing ever.

I made olive loaf from a recipe from Carly. Not bad for my first attempt!

We went out to lunch at Big Chief's, one of our favorite restaurants in town. They smoke their own meat daily and have really great lunch specials. We played photo booth while waiting for our food!

We headed to the Oregon Trail Interpretive center next! I've lived here for 5 years and never been. It was really fun! Hendrix loved all the animals. There is an activity room that has lots of things for the kids to do. There was a square on the floor with the east coast and another one with Oregon and a line in between. You are supposed to count your steps from one to the other, then do some math to determine how many steps you would have taken on the Oregon Trail. Hendrix just ran back and forth, forever. He didn't even care about the other activities at all, he just wanted to run on that line. Since then we've use painters tape a couple different times on the floor of our house, drawing boxes with lines between, and Hendrix says "read, set, GO!" and runs around.

The center is up on a hill and has a great view of the valley.

"Mom. Mom. Mom. It go MOOOOOO!!!!"

Memorial Weekend - part 2

We headed up to the mountains after my sibs hit the road. It was a beautiful day and we were excited to spend it in the great outdoors with more family!

Hendrix LOVES wearing blankets on his head. He was getting sleepy in the car ride up and tucked himself in....

Helping sister

 Hendrix actually made contact with the ball a few times! He takes after his dad, thank goodness!

Love my little family!!

We hiked up a really steep ridge. Stella and Olive did a great job keeping up with us!
When them came over the ridge they were holding hands :)

Dylan would walk under branches and Hendrix was laughing so hard. He loved it!

We found a bunch of turkey feathers then found some empty shells!

Found a TON of coral mushrooms! We brought a bag to put the mushrooms in, but Dylan had used it to collect pitch....so my long sleeves got sacrificed to be a carrier. Very delicious!!

We drove out a different way then we drove in and surrounding area was being logged.
Made for a bumpy ride, but was pretty cool to see the tall piles of trees!

We spied a Momma Bear! She ran towards us then scurried up this tree, just 15 feet from our car. She was just checking us out, hanging out. We the spied a little cub a few trees back, waaaay up. We watched his cute little buns scurry down those trees and meet up with his mom. They started to saunter off when a second little bear scurried down a neighboring tree and ran to catch up. They just took their time wandering around and looking at us then climbed up a hill. I love bears and I've always wanted to see one in the wild (Dylan ALWAYS teases me...."oh look, a bear!" and even though he is joking EVERY time I always look, because I'm not willing to miss the opportunity...) It was such a neat experience especially to be so close to them!

Our cousins found a bucket load of morel mushrooms!

Memorial Weekend - part 1

Keith & Courtney, William, and his girl friend Kaley came over for the long weekend! It wasn't long enough, but it was so fun to have them here. We went hiking up around Anthony Lakes, played tons of games, and made strawberry freezer jam! I love my family!

Keith, Courtney, William, Kaley
Keith wanted to carry Hendrix, but Hendo wasn't too keen on staying in the pack.
He wanted to explore too! So Keith just carried an empty pack most the time.....

 My happy family! It was so sunny, and both kids didn't mind wearing their sunglasses! Lou looked super cute as Totoro (thanks Ash!)

There were still some ice caves that were sort of together.....Keith and Will decided to see if their combined strength & weight could cave one in.....it did.

Keith caught this fish in a stream with his BEAR HANDS!!

Will found this homemade doll that had the story of Gunnar (a viking) laminated and attached to it (spoiler alert: Gunnar died because he was mean to his wife so she wouldn't give him some hair to make a bow string to fight off his enemies after his bow string broke. Moral of the story, be nice to your wives!). He also found a fiberglass rod and some thin rope, so he tied everything together. Atticus thought it was a toy just for him and these two boys ran around playing together for so long. It was pretty adorable.

Our dog is so handsome.

Wearing different generations of our Dad's work hats!

William decided to leave Gunnar behind for another lucky soul.

We wanted to have a big turkey dinner so we made turkey 3 ways: Stuffed breast over a bed of leaks, schnitzel, and we put the thighs and some wild coral mushrooms in the pressure cooker. I honestly cannot tell you which was my favorite. They were all so incredible. I can't wait for another turkey!! Kaley's birthday was on Tuesday so we celebrated while they were here. She requested brownies, so I made "Dylan Brownies" and we destroyed the pan. That's quite the feat considering how incredibly rich and chocolatey these are!!

Keith and Eloise hanging out!

Everyone wanted to try shooting Dylan's bow. None of the girls could draw it. Keith had some luck (also his arms are so incredibly long that it looked silly, the draw wasn't long enough!) and William was the only one that could consistently draw the bow. We had fun!

I went to pick up the strawberries to make jam and hit a dog on the way :( the dog just ran away, he seemed fine! But I still felt so terrible. I really hope he is okay! My car didn't have any permanent damage, but......that needed fixed.

Strawberry freezer jam! We made 25 pints.

The kids (I know they aren't kids) wanted crepes before they left but they were on a tight time schedule and we weren't sure we would be able to make it work! We got up a little early on Monday though and were able to whip up some to fill bellies before they left :)