The Weekend

For the weekend of the 4th of July my Sister from another mother came to visit. She is not my blood but a sister none the less. Her mother passed away just a month ago and We really needed to hug one another. So she came, and we talked all night, laughed and cried, and drank wine.

Me on the left, her on the right. 

We got together with my neighbors and had this wonderful bbq outside. It rained but we enjoyed how it cooled the air off. We were under the giant tent anyways so neither us or the food got wet. (much)

There I am way at the end of the table.

We were enjoying the dessert. Some of us had the cake I made and others had strawberry short cake with biscuits (is this a southern thing or do people everywhere except California eat strawberry short cake with biscuits?) My cake was delightful, and healthy, well as healthy as a cake can be!

4th of July Cake

And just to top off the day I will share my recipe with you all.
~Cake~
(I found the recipe in an old betty crocker cook book and modified it)
1 cup sugar

3/4 cup honey

2/3 cup butter

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cup vanilla flax milk

bake in 2 bundt cake pans (one smaller then the other) for 35 minutes at 350*
Mix dry ingredients together in a small bowl. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs together. alternately add dry mix to wet with milk. Do not over mix. Grease and flour bundt cake pans and divide batter into each.

~Frosting~
2 packages low fat cream cheese

1 8oz jar of marshmallow cream

Soften cream cheese and blend until smooth then stir in the marshmallow cream and stir again until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to use. I also will use this to just dip fresh strawberries in. It is sweet and creamy. I got this recipe from my wonderful Mother in law, we used to use it to eat our strawberries with in the summer when I lived down the street, except she used one package of cream cheese to one 8oz jar. I like the extra cream cheese.

Strawberries and Blueberries top off the cake. I sliced my strawberries and added the blueberries at the end. I only added 1 tsp of sugar for the whole bowl because I did not want to much "juice" in the bowel, just enough to coat the berries.

I also made pasta salad, and my husband made Hawaiian Sweet Potato Salad, and we made bbq chicken.

In todays edition we are going to continue our camping trip to the return home. From there our blogs shall take on a more present day adventure with a little pop into the past now and again.

I left off yesterday with our trip into the forest where the Ewoks lived... Can't you just see their cute little faces poking out of this fern ladened forest? While we were here we decided to walk through the forest and down to the river where the little darlings took their socks & shoes off to splash in the edges of the water.

and of course to skip rocks into that peaceful looking water flow.

From here we stopped at a lovely little shop and wanted to go in only to discover they were closed. However we did get to view some wonderful sculptures carved out of redwood.

at camp we enjoyed a simple meal then set about building fairy houses on our last night at camp. We sent children off to gather natural items that were laying about on the ground; rocks, moss, leaves, sticks, pine cones, and anything else they found that they thought would make nice houses. Then we divided up the finds between them

Then we paired the kids up, each little one got a big one and they had to work together to build their fairy houses.

A & C fairy house ... was built right into the base of a tree log that was laying on the ground.

H & D fairy house ...I love that it so well blends into the nature around it that you can hardly tell its a fairy house. :)

M & K fairy house theirs was butted up against a living tree and was so cute with a little fence around the whole thing.

Each house really took on the personalities of each child working on it and we had so much fun watching them from our spots around the fire pit. They each went off into different directions and built out of the way of any human eyes. We had loads of fun pondering which types of fairies would love these homes.

The next morning we packed up camp and headed for home. We stopped in a sleepy little town known as Willits along Highway 101 to have lunch in a lovely park.

subway sandwiches chips and drinks for everyone before we hit the road again!

Then once the kids had played we had ate and drank our fill we got back on the road to travel another several hours home. We decided to make one more pit stop at the Buffalo farm.

Man o Man was that some GOOD Jerky!

why is it that mom is always the last in line for the bathroom? I tossed this one in just so yall would believe I was really there! :) O and those hides behind me are so luxurously soft i wish I had the money to buy one!

We got to see the herd of buffalo outside, they had the yearling's separated from the rest of the herd and up close to the farm. my daughter thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of us looking at the baby buffalo.

We also saw a bunch of bird nests on the side of the building that were pretty cool.

These birds build their nests out of mud and live in colonies together like a very large extended family. They are called mud swallows here. I am not sure what the actual name is.

This concluded our camping adventures for August, we wrapped up our month with a birthday bash for my youngest, D turned 6. I do not know where time went but he sure has been fun to watch grow!

September started off with my oldest getting severely ill and ending up in the ICU for 8 full days. So it has been nice to look back and remember this fond time that really was not so long ago even if it does feel like years ago already!

What Fun We Had! part 2

Yesterday we covered all of July so in todays blog we will cover the wonderful adventures of August.

In august we had a visitor, My cousin came and stayed for several weeks and joined us on our camping adventures. I love camping! It is the best place to discover life in its simplistic form. It is easy to imagine what life was like out in the west when people came out with very little and had to make things work. It also lends itself to scientific discoveries very nicely.

So in the beginning of August we went to a little camp sight off of highway 101 in the north part of the state. We camped at a state park called Standish-Hickey. This land is beautiful. near the giant redwoods of California as well as near several wonderful natural attractions.

Here is our tent after we got to camp and set it up!

This tent is a giant 3 room tent and slept 8 people very comfortably! we could have fit 2 more easily. We had a boys room and a girls room and then us moms shared a room. My cousin had his own little tent, which he would probably die of mortification if I showed you the only shot I have of that one. :)

On our first evening there we walked around the camp site after we set up camp to get our bearings and enjoy the nature around us. We found lots of poison oak growing so stuck strictly to the trails. We did spot wild berries growing but they were not ripe yet. we had fun taking snap shots posing in the trees as well as of the trees.

Snap shot of the trees at dusk

When we were preparing to go camping we sat and discussed exactly what meals we wanted while we were there. It was a great idea as we were able to prep most of our food in advance and then just have it packed according to days in the ice chests and tupper container. On the first morning we had from scratch blueberry pancakes over the open fire, made on my cast iron griddle. Everyone swore they were the best pancakes they ever ate!

There just seems to be something so wonderful about fresh pancakes hot off a griddle that can make your mouth water! Later that day we went and discovered the drive through tree It is called the Chandelier tree because the top of it has many full size trees all growing off the one stump.

looking from the ground up very top of the chandelier tree

We took pictures standing inside the drive through tree.

Then we adventured into the gift shop to see what interesting discoveries we could find there. I saw this "logging truck" toy and thought it was cute.

We headed back to camp where we spotted interesting tree growth like this

as well as some beautiful shots like this

We headed back to camp had lunch and then decided for an afternoon hike. where we learned that the law of gravity is completely true. If you go down you have to go back up! We were completely deceived by this sign : .3 miles should not be far, however what the sign does not tell us is that nearly the whole trail is down a steep hill that we had to hike down, with 6 children! This picture is taken as we are coming back up the hill shortly after going down it. we also discovered what several insects while on our adventure hike into the woods, as well as markings left by the bugs. this wood has trails left by termites. And this is a dragon fly that matches the wood so well its almost hard to see him sitting there. Nature at its very best!

The next day of our camping adventure took us to discover a strange spot where gravity seems to be defied.

The kids are at the base of the totem pole that is carved out of one tree.

We spent several hours exploring the confusing area, as well as the beautiful tribute to 9/11

Once we left Confusion Hill we headed back towards camp with a quick lay over in the woods where they filmed part of Star Wars, home of the Ewoks.

and we discovered just how small on this planet we really are.

What Fun We Had!

In store for todays blog is a peak back over our summer. Starting in July and working straight through till August.

July started with a bang! My Brother in law and niece came for a visit for the first time in 8 years from Nebraska. Together we caravaned up the state to Eureka Ca to visit my husbands parents and have a family reunion. The first time my husbands siblings have all been home all at the same time in nearly 20 years!

The drive is always beautiful as we wined our way through the mountains going to the coast. Along the way we discovered bigfoot! He resides in a little town on Highway 299 in Northern California. He is very friendly as you can see.

Once we arrived in Eureka the gathering commenced. We took family portraits at a professional studio where lord help that lady there was 13 of us, 3 of which were grown men who behaved as if they were 3! We watched the fireworks from the front yard and promptly returned inside for hot cocoa with whipped cream on top.

We went and discovered the Loleta Cheese Factory where you can watch them making the cheese right there in the shop, as well as taste all the delicious fresh cheeses.

We wandered out into the garden at the cheese factory where we enjoyed the beautiful landscaping

I just loved these bottles nestled in between the plants

The gardens were such a delight, my beautiful daughter had to stop and smell the flowers.

The garden was filled with beautiful bright flowers.

We also explored the Gem & Mineral shop where the kids got grab bags of beautiful stones, and we enjoyed the museum.

These are stones made to look like food.

The vase is carved out of solid stone!

Beautiful gems inside the stone.

My youngsters looking over all the solid rocks that might contain their own gems.

We spent more time with family and then traveled home again, concluding our July trips. More adventures awaited us in August where we had a birthday to celebrate and a nature trip of grand proportions to enjoy. I will blog about those adventures tomorrow. For today I hope you enjoyed going back in time with me to relive the adventures of July.