Next we headed over to Brownsville--near Grass Valley--to visit Stephen's uncle and his girlfriend. Blair and Roseann live way up in the hills with only the deer and bears as neighbors. Roseann and Stephen have been talking vegetables, fruit, and flowers for several years, so of course the first order of business had to be a tour of the garden, orchard, and yard. Fantastic. They grow, jar, pickle, jam, dry, dehydrate and cook with all sorts of produce and herbs. Lucky us, we got to try some of that yumminess.
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| Gardeners unite! |
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| The boys sad to leave the tree swing and Bugs the cat |
After Brownsville we headed over to Redding. Uncle Bill lives around the corner from Stephen's grandma's house, so we had a chance to visit with him. We also got to see Stephen's cousin and her family. The kids love swimming in their pool with Jack and Ava, and we love chatting and catching up with Katie and Josh.
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| Benito and Billy Idol with Jack |
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| Millie in girl heaven, a.k.a. Ava's room |
After our fun Northern California walk-about, we drove on to our first official stop: Portland with my little sis and her adorable family. Normally, we pit stop at their house for a night and then move on to Seattle. This year we had the luxury of staying longer and spending some quality time with some of our favorite people in the world! We loved it too much, I'm afraid, because it made me wish we lived closer to each other more than ever.
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| Frequent sight: Honeycomb scarf-down |
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| Cosmic Lanes at the bowling alley? Yes, please!! Mills and E busting a move to the dance songs |
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| Waiting my turn with Benito |
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| This girl loved using the dinosaur slide for her bowling ball |
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| Jenae and I (or awesome bowler and terrible bowler:) |
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| Cascade, aka biggest you've ever seen, raspberries we picked together |
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| This little girl is a natural. |
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| Berries in the northwest. What could be better? |
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| Sunday afternoon seemed a good time to introduce our kiddos to one of our favorite temples |
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| Flowers = fun |
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| Cousins at the reflection pond |
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| Clouds, glorious clouds |
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| Two years to go |
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| One thing definitely does look like the other... |
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| My eyes are closed, her mouth is open. Sisters! |
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| Stephen was super impressed that Burgerville gave out seeds with their kid meals |
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| Beat the heat at a water park |
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| Benito and E having fun filling buckets |
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| The boys scheming and/or retaliating |
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| Stephen catching some shade with Chase and the twinners |
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| Quality time with a cutie |
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| Reading books is the best |
