Last Days

For our last week end together, we hit some of Vernon's attractions:

Saturday:

Davison Orchards - one of their favourites from when they visited last time. This Saturday just happened to be their opening day with an Apple Blossom Festival. So we got to learn about apple blossoms, taste some apple juice, go on a tour through the orchard in the tractor train and feed grass to the animals.













Then it was out to O'Keefe Ranch where we got to fight over who went on this horse, take the tour of the Mansion (with Norbert's social commentary added in to the usual tour guide fare - very interesting), learn about Victorian life, see the baby lambs and the many kinds of chickens, goats, sheep, geese and turkeys, check out the old school house and the Schubert house and buy 'old fashioned' candy at the post office/general store. Mary loved the animals the most. Here she is feeding hay to a momma sheep with two wee lambs, born only days before.

Saturday ended here:
two little blondies flaked on the couch after all that activity.

And to be honest, this is what my living room looked like by the end off the day and that was after spending the day away from home...

Sunday:
Sunday afternoons were time to spend with Uncle Dean. He and Rhiannon took the older three kids along on one of their favourite warm weather activities - clay play. Vernon is rich in clay spots. Just down the railroad tracks from us is a pool of oozing clay that he and Rhiannon love to go in. The kids just jumped right in. They were very proud of how covered in clay they were.... clean up took hours... and that yellow shirt will never be yellow again... Uncle Dean and Caleb came back early and got Caleb cleaned up so he missed the picture. Auntie and Gabriel went for a walk down the road, instead. It took two baths each to get all that mud truly out of their hair and from behind their ears... They look pretty happy though, don't they?

Gabriel loved my dress up box. Several of these dresses (now too small for Rhiannon) went home with him and Mary.

Yes, that's right. They went home. It is so quiet here right now, it is eerie...