And just like that...June is gone.  Wow.  What can I do to slow things down?

The yard is amazing as always this time of year.  So many flowers!  For some reason, it seems like there is way less time working in the yard.  I guess I have the water in place still from last summer and the plants are doing great where they are, no need to move anything.  I go out about once a week and find a weed or two, do some pruning and sit back and enjoy my iced latte while I look at it all.

The mountain as always...gorgeous.

Rainbows

I love it when after the kids have left and I find a picture left on the easel.  Arianna did this one of her and me.  I love it that she even made us holding hands.

We took the kids on the 1 mile hike down to the river from our place.  Of course Josiah took his fishing pole.  We had a little picnic lunch and walked back.  It is a little steep coming out, but not as bad as the girls made it look as they collapsed on the living room floor once we got home.

Giant bubbles are always a hit.

One day, we delivered something into Jessi's place.  Josiah managed to sneak into the truck and came home with us for the afternoon.  Grandpa introduced him to wings and jojos from the corner market.  They were a hit!  I always love having the kids here, but it is special once in a while to just spend time with them one on one.  

Josiah felt bad about Bazzel dying.  He is worried about too many mice since Bazzel is not here to catch them.  he drew me a diagram on how we should set up a trap.

 Another afternoon, we took them to the park by the high school.  Once again, Josiah had his fishing pole.  This time he shocked us all by catching a HUGE bass!  Grandpa taught the girls how to make lizard catchers from grass.

They all had to take a turn riding their bikes down the huge hill by the park.

 And just when I stop missing my cat...I find one more item of his that makes me miss him all over again.  It is so unexpected and random that these little reminders jump out at me.

Since Bazzel is not here anymore, the little critters have been showing up.  So many little chipmunks now.  There is even a little bunny in the front yard.

 There is a hummingbird around that I have not noticed in the past years.  This guy has a totally red head that looks like he is wearing a hood.  His body is so dark it looks black. When he sits in the sunlight, I can see he is actually dark green.  From what I can figure out, it is a Anna's Hummingbird, just a little differently marked form the normal ones.

I have a feeder in a new place this year since we rebuilt the deck and moved the feeders to a new spot to keep the feed from ruining the new deck.  This little guy has decided to use my weather stick as a perch to guard the feeder.  The weather stick is a pretty cool thing.  My friend Irene had one and it was pretty fascinating.  In sunny weather it points upwards and in rainy weather it is down.  Just overcast, it is straight out.

There have been some strange clouds out in the canyon.  The photo on the left sure made me think of a funnel cloud. And that rainbow with the bolt cloud above it was pretty cool too.

The road crew left behind a pretty cool surprise after they raised the overpass on Hwy 26.

 Beautiful pink wildflowers!  I had to take my camera and get some photos one evening.

For our 45 anniversary, John and I went to Eastern Oregon and hiked into a few waterfalls that I have been wanting to shoot.  We had our anniversary dinner at the Pine Tavern in Bend.  The names on the rock were not put there by us, but I took the photo for the kids, they thought it was pretty funny.

The water on our hike by Sisters was so amazingly blue! 

Bear grass, also known as Indian Basket Grass

The first day, we hiked into Tamolitch Falls.  It is also known as Blue Pool  I can not believe that we had not gone here before.  It is a flat easy 2 mile hike into it.  I could not believe that there were not a zillion people there!  So gorgeous.  It is one of those times when I feel like I should take some of the color out so that people don't think I added color to it.  A woman there told us that the water coming over the falls is not normal, it has been extra rainy and it is the first time in 4 years that the water has flowed oved the falls.  The other water comes from underground springs and that is normal.

From there we drove to Sahalie Falls.  It didn't require a hike, you just get out of your vehicle and it is right there.  But we hiked on to Koosah Falls.

This is Koosah Falls.

The next day we went on to Tumalo Falls near Bend.

Once you get to the top of the falls, you can continue on up and there are a bunch more falls as you hike along.  It was beautiful.  We finally turned around because of all the mosquitos.  I had read about them online, but thought it was just somebody being wimpy and complaining. But we found out there were so many that it was annoying to even stop and take a photo, let alone have our lunch.  Next time, I will pay attention to the advice online and use some repellant. 

I always like it when they use natural things around to make bridges and keep things simple.

I arrived home to 45 red roses and one pink for the next year.  John started regretting that he had begun that on our first anniversary.  They were really getting expensive, and then Jessi told him about Costco roses.  Now for only 36 dollars he even got 2 extra!  And I don't mind at all arranging them in a vase.

We found this wind spinner in Sisters.  Just the thing we needed for the back yard.

and on to July!