Happy Thanksgiving!

We hadn't really given Thanksgiving much thought and all the sudden we were half way through the week so we decided to be the quickest and easiest persons to reenact, the Indians.

The Chief with his "bear claw" n bead necklace giving out war cries.

And his trusty Brave following suite.

Foraging for roots/bulbs in a ... flower pot. I know not the men's work but we were running short on women.

Trying to figure out how these bows are suppose to work.

Chief Broken Feather..

And his rather mischievous looking sidekick...

Brave Three Feathers,

who decided it was time for stories around the campfire..er.. fireplace.

While Chief Broken Feather worked on his war cries and

roasting his catch of the day.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Oregon Territory!!

Week B

Last week was our week devoted to the letter B and I had fun finding things to keep us going. It ended up having a lot to do with baking but we found some stuff to get the wiggles out too.

Our verse for the week was:

But God commendeth HIS love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
Leroy likes to practice along with Phi so they both get in on the fun.
Phi "rode" his Bike. He doesn't actually pedal much yet, but he can steer, so I hook him by rope to the stroller and we go, it makes more room in the stroller for the other two.

And thanks to some ideas from Amma or Gramma Jo we should say, we also wore a Band-Aid sporting the letter B.

Leroy gets in on this too, we'll see how much sticks.

And by the river at Grandpa and Grandma's found a stick that had been chewed on by a Beaver!
When we got back up to the house Gramma Jo read him a story about how Beavers make there dens and such.

Toward the end of the week we made Bread, in the Bread machine. We should do this more often as the process fascinated all of them. Jeffy was mesmerized by the paddle going around to mix the dough.

Phi's favorite part of course was punching it down.

This one was fun for mommy too cause it burned lots of their energy, they Bounced on a Blow-up Bed. We've been saving this bed for some rainy day ever since we got a new one since this one doesn't hold air for more than an hour. I hadn't thought of this before but it was perfect.

Then we added Balls for even more fun!

We also made Bran muffins one morning and,

had Bananas and Blueberries on our puff pancake another morning.

We sang "The B-I-B-L-E" song and picked out the letters he knew. We also took Baths with Bubbles but since that has to happen more than once a year it wasn't quite as much of a novelty.

And when the free adds came on Wednesday we did our cut and paste page and letter recognition and finding pictures of things that start with B.

It must have been sinking in cause by Sunday as we were driving he asked from the back, "Momma, does Bus stop start wis' B?"

We're on to C this week though we still practice all the letter verses together at our morning readings as Leroy's favorite is the A verse "All have sinned...".

Week A

Last week we started learning the alphabet and are hoping to accomplish one letter a week. We did "A" things in honor of our letter. Phi loves to cut with his scissors so we took a grocery add and first found A things.( Leroy helped with the coloring)

"Apples" and "Avocados"

Then since his scissors were still antsy we cut small bits of different colors from the paper and made an "A" shape. Then he took over the glue part and Mommy the scissors and we found as many letter "A"s as we could through out the adds and came up with this page.

He then got to try writing some and did pretty good other than wanting to make them look like H instead of A.

We did an "A" verse to memorize for the week.

And got some library books to find some more pictures with "A" words. One about Animals from Africa and another of Animals in general.

"Armadillo"

"Albatross"

And also took a walk by the airport so we could watch the airplanes. And see some "A" s on signs and such.

We also included "Apple Cranberry Scones" for breakfast one morning and sang "A" songs out of the Let's Sing About Jesus hymn book each morning.
They say learning should be fun so we're trying to keep it that way.

Twas two months before Christmas...

NOT that we're counting down or anything. Dad and Mom's place is surrounded with Christmas tree farms (who knew there was soo much demand) farms with trees grown especially for the Christmas holiday and nothing else. And starting about the first week of November, many of the farms begin harvesting these small trees with a helicopter. So every year growing up there came the sound of what we called the "Christmas tree helicopter", and we would eagerly finish our school work so we could ride our bikes up to find out which farm it was at and watch the process. It could be hit and miss as there are farms all over the area and just a few helicopters. So some times we would have "Christmas tree helicopter" cases in the van. We caught on to the trick of following the helicopter gas truck, if it left a particular field you could follow him to where the helicopter would probably be next. The three little men got this fascinating privilege this week when Amma called to say the sound was there if we hurried we might see it.

And see it we did right up close, in a small field right beside the road.


Coming back for more.

It was close enough Phi decided it was "loudy" his word for too loud.

Dropping a load.

There's the driver, watching the cable to see when the ground man has it connected to the bundle of trees.

And there's the ground man running back as the bundle takes off. The occasional bundle is not tied well and will all fall out of the rope once it leaves the ground. Therefore the ground man moves, not wanting a 50 pound tree on the head.

A bundle enroute.

Almost ready to fall into the heap of cut trees. From there they're wrapped in twine and then sent by truck all over the country and even over seas I guess. It amazes me that they last so long after they're cut.

Our play pen.

One of his last toothless smiles for the next 80 years. His first tooth popped in today with another to follow soon.

And here's a video of the process, sorry about the quality, and the car parts in the way, I couldn't figure out how to stitch it so you get the unedited version.

The 2009 Pear Family Togetherness Vacation :)

This is what it looked like on our side of the mountain, fresh snow, the boys were delighted.

And here's either Mt. Bachelor or Jefferson not sure which but it's on the dry side of things.

We took a snack break for Jeffy along the Descutes River in Warm Springs.

We made it to the resort early evening after a stop in Bend at Costco to pick up some supplies, and were joined for dinner by Kate and Family. These two little cousins are almost the same size inspite of a 3 month age gap.
Jeffy's got that little foot cocked and ready for somethin'?! "Come a little closer with that camera Momma and I'll give it the boot!"

Leroy telling Mr. Elliott "Boo"

Bumpa, Amma, and Aunt Tete arrived a bit after dinner and that was every one who could come this year.
Phi snitched Bumpa's hat that's been around since U. Dave was Phi's size. He loves hats.

Miss Kate helping her Mommy prep for their breakfast.

We tried out the High Desert Museum that first day and it was pretty interesting. As a bonus it was not too crowded since we were mid week. It even had some toddler friendly exhibits.

Leroy being a turtle.

A skunk and an otter climbing rocks together. There was a slide at the top of the rocks that started in a eagles nest. It kept them busy for a few minutes anyway.

Some kind of toad, the place was sort of like a zoo with many live and some stuffed animals all natives to the high desert side of OR.

Don't be alarmed this was the stuffed side of the zoo.

Elliott leading the way.

Indoors was a neat interactive time line that you walked through starting with explorers and trappers and ending with a settlement town. Outdoors was a replica settlers claim with all the amenities, i.e. root celler, corral, barn , gardens , and livestock.

Leroy having a chat with the hens.

For some reason this held great fascination to these three...probably largely because the seat was nailed down and it lacked the typical odor. Not sure what they're thinking here?! :) I think the door was closed and we just reopened it.

That was the way they wanted it "close da door", their own private little fort!

There was also an old fashioned saw mill run by steam (I think it was) and a bit of old logging equip.

Trying to help out the logging tractor.

Mr. Ellieo all cozy.

It was far past nap time by this point and who knew what these two would think of next.

There were a lot of bronze statues through out the museum.

This mare and foal were cleverly made from barbed wire and were realistic enough from a distance to scare Phi.

There was also a birds of prey house with a few different raptors.

Golden Eagle

Bald Eagle

and tons of these little guys running around collecting bits of this and that.

And then there was this manly display out front.... oh yeah and the elk were cool too. :)

One of the upsides to vacationing with Bumpa and Amma, we actual spend some kidless time together.

And one of the little wild things himself.

The grandkids harassing Bumpa back at the resort.

Friday AM we all took a hike along the Descutes River which runs by down in the canyon below the resort. We are very glad for double strollers and trails wide enough to use them on!

The diverse scenery is so amazing.

The lovely Aunt Tete whom we can't do with out!

Love the mix of colors!

Phi and Bumpa exploring.

More uniqueness.

Amma and Bumpa

The last leaf has almost fallen.

Rather random, we came around a bend to find these to swans feeding in the water.

And what looks to be a Painted Lady butterfly.

That evening we got to visit U. Jon and A. Ruth who live in town. I missed getting any good pix of the evening but this pretty much sums up Phi's favorite part anyway. Aside from all the exciting new and different toys they had A. Ruth had *SUCKERS* the absolute best kind of sugar in his mind.

The resort had a very cool gym that all us "kids" tried out while Bumpa and Amma watched the real kids.
Saturday morning some friendly resident deer came over to see what we had to offer for a snack. As you'll see if you watch the video at the end the kids and Bumpa had a blast feeding them.
The deer looks a bit skeptical about all this noise.

Elliott snuggling with Jeffy.

Jeffy being touchy. Poor Ellieo

Looks like he survived and with the way he's growing will be holding his own quite well.

We stopped to see the Cove Palisades Park on the way home. It was very different as you were driving through flat farm fields and all the sudden the road dropped down and next thing you knew you appear to have driven out on one of the hills at the top of the Columbia Gorge. Very interesting place.

So ended another fun vacation.

Deer, Deer.

Enjoying the sunshine

It was a beautiful afternoon that followed a rainy morning so we grabbed the opportunity to enjoy the crisp fall weather that was left before winter rains set in for a while.

This path winds along the dike between the river and the International Airport. The perfect spot for Mom to get exercise and the small men entertainment.

Straight across the river was a train track, among the houses. What a quiet setting for a neighborhood of high end homes. :P

And on the river were boats... strange...

and beautiful ones.


And geese

Phi after giving up on the idea of pedaling.

Broughton Beach is right in front of were we parked so after our walk we got to play in the sand for a bit.

And Leroy found plenty of small rocks to throw.

Sandy hands.

It was so fun we went back with Daddy the next afternoon. Here's Leroy obeying marching orders to clean the sand off his shoes.

Autumn Crafts

With all those beautiful leaves falling outside we decided to collect a few and have some fun with them.

Drying them off


First we tried the idea of putting a leaf between two pieces of white paper and coloring over it to see it's unique shape appear under the crayon. That worked great but only mommy could color hard enough to get the leaf to show through.

Cut out and ready for the window.

The two little men were just having fun taring paper and Phi loves projects that involve glue so , we scribbled all over a piece of paper, tore it into bits, and then proceeded to glue each bit onto a leaf pattern traced on another paper.

Gluing...

gluing ...

gluing and...


Ta da.

Didn't come out half bad for an almost 3 year old.

This ones mommy's.

We had fun anyway!!