More Visitors!

4-21

My parents flew in April 15 and back home again on the 20th. Meanwhile, Matt's parents left on the 19th and drove down to see us for a weekend! Though Mark and Jean left on the 19th, they actually arrived at our house on Friday the 21st just as I was picking up Charlie from school. They stayed until the morning of the 24th. It was so great to show Mark and Jean our house! Now they can picture what we're talking about as we share stories. I love that!

Friday afternoon and evening was spent visiting, playing, and touring the house. We spent Saturday around the house, too doing more of the same - playing games, playing dolls, Grandpa watched the Wild game, Matt/Jean/I went to Elm Street Nursery and picked out some flowers for around the house, etc. Just a low-key quality time kind of day. 

 Grandma and Molly had a little coffee party...

... followed by a puzzle

 Alanna and Hattie were having a blast with this little doll stroller (that Hattie is maxing out) even though it's for pretend babies, not actual 1-year-old babies.

 While Jean, Matt, and I were at Elm St Nursery, I also bought 27 strawberry plants for a little strawberry project I had in mind. One of the best places to pick strawberries in Roseburg is at this place called The Berry Patch where they have elevated strawberry plants in PVC pipe. It's super, super easy to walk up and down the rows and pick berries that are literally 3 1/2 feet off the ground - no stooping! I wanted to recreate this idea hoping that eventually we will have enough berries to harvest and make jam and freeze for smoothies. Matt helped me bring the idea to fruition. We picked up three 9 1/2 foot pieces of 6'' PVC pipe at Ace and had the Ace guy cut them in half. We bought caps for all of the ends to hold the soil in. Matt cut out rectangular sections in all 6 pieces and then drilled drain holes in the bottom of each piece. We put a layer of rocks down, filled it with potting soil, and then planted 2-3 strawberry plants in each rectangular section. A few days later, Matt quickly whipped together four stands to hold the PVC sections and they are currently sitting on the deck. The other two sections are sitting on L brackets that were attached to the deck railing. When we're gone, we can simply move the PVC pipes into the yard and the strawberries will be watered by the sprinkler system. It all makes sense in my head! I plan to pick off all flowers and shoots this year hoping that the roots will become established and that next year we can start to get some berries. I'm hopeful!

 Jean is always willing to help with a project!!

 On Sunday, we decided to take a little trip over to Salida. It's a cute town with a fun area down by the river and plenty of cute shops to check out. We played at the park for a while before heading down to the river. I didn't realize that there was a bunch of really fabulous new playground equipment down by the river! I guess it was installed last fall. It is SO NEAT!

 Grandpa is pushing Molly, and Grandma and Charlie are swinging next to her. Alanna was swinging as well, and eventually Hattie joined in the fun, too.

 Some pretty nice Rustand boys!

 Hattie and Alanna were playing in this little raft thing. It tips and moves around like you're riding the rapids, though it's not on a spring or anything like that.

 Alanna on the new, huge equipment!

 This was climbing up to the tree house area. There was also a fun toddler and adult swing where the adult can sit and swing facing the toddler. Both the kiddo and the adult stay in motion by the adult pumping their legs. It was rad! Molly and I tried it out, and Matt tried it with Hattie later on. So neat!

 There are some nicely developed sections of the river, but rocks are hard to come by so there wasn't a lot of things to throw into the water. We played for a bit before heading out for lunch. After lunch, we came back downtown and walked through a few shops. It was a really beautiful day outside! It gets quite a bit colder in Salida and you can see that the trees hadn't started budding out yet.

We had pizza when we got back to Canon and spent some time outside before getting the kids to bed. Matt and I tried soooooo hard to get Mark and Jean to stay a while longer, but then ended up leaving on Monday morning as planned. It was an extremely fast visit! We had visits from both sets of grandparents in a span of 10 days and they didn't overlap - whoa! We're looking forward to seeing everyone again at the end of May when we go to Minnesota. Thanks for coming out to visit, family!