The boys wanted to go fishing so they spent the morning digging worms and we went to the dredge pond this evening. They didn’t catch anything but Karen has promised to take Chris in the morning, when they might be biting. We could see the trout swimming around but they weren’t hungry. Even the Osprey wasn’t having any luck. But we enjoyed watching him scanning the pond from on high. Karen took this shot of me encouraging Chris in his endeavors. We roasted hotdogs over the BBQ grill tonight and they are “camping” on the lawn.

In spite of the snow melting into the lake on the north bank Stephanie say it wasn’t “that cold”! she spent quite a bit of time swimming and managed to stand on this log and even, after pitching off backward once, to dive off properly. Elevation here is probably about 5000′. A pretty lake that has been made handicap accessible. That means paved paths and a nice cement “dock”. There were 30-40 people there but I saw none that seemed handicapped. The dogs did okay, Jack being better behaved than Cori. Well, since he slept most of the time it would be hard to beat him! lol

Don’t ask me how it got it’s name! But it’s a popular place. The boys found lost tackle and rigged up fishing poles in order to feed the minnows. Stephanie was warming up by napping with Jack on the warm cement. Karen and I dandled our feet in the water and watched.

We’re all pitching in to get the looms ready for Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene this month. We are not going to be able to go, but Carolina Homespun will have our looms there. Chris is putting nails into his own loom. Grumpa helped him build this one himself. We have a big stack of 14″ square looms to sand and oil today! 😀

We loaded up in the pickup and went for a picnic up to Mountain Meadow today. This is the Salmon River. Randy and Cori (the small dog) are on the rock, Chris is hunting skipping rocks in the background and that’s Jack (big dog) in front. The rest of us were tagging along playing in the snow melted icy water or hunting pretty rocks! lol We spend most of the afternoon sporting in the river. They found some snow to play in and had a dandy snowball fight. Grumpa, who can throw the furtherest, won, of course! 😛
It was a fun day but we’re all pretty tired. We had dinner and most of us are ready for bed. Those of us over 10 years old, anyway! :laugh:

Here is Chris, testing the waters. Instead of cartoons they went to help Grumpa fix the dam that feeds the flume, part of the the creek that run though the yard. After they got through playing in that one, they came back to build a dam in Treasure Creek. Hope they don’t flood the yard! lol

People are talking to me so I got the pictures up in the wrong order 😎 but here is the family (minus Stephanie who was visiting at the school) on our ride up to Boulder Lakes Trailhead. That’s Billy’s Peak in the background. We live at the foot of it. There were loads of flowers blooming and the further up we went the further back into spring we went. The dogwood is still flowering about 4500′ and there was snow higher up. It was lovely. I need to get out there in the middle of it more often.

Graduation at Coffee Creek School. There were two 8th graders. Carlie and Duke, in the blue dress and blue shirt. The school had 11 kids this year. The girl in the white top is my grandaughter, a “guest” singer in the program. This is the school I retired from after 17 years, so “grew up” with a lot of these kids.

We drove up to the trail head of Boulder Lakes yesterday. Here they are at the foot of an “old growth” (over-ripe, nearly rotten) fir. It was a nice ride, some snow near the top but the road is open. We saw a grouse hen and her new chicks, and lots of chipmunks, of course.

Daughter Karen wanted to try her hand at the big tri. She went though my stash of acrylic and picked colors and is making good progress. Chris was envious so got my 12″ tri and is weaving small tri’s to put together into a shawl of his own. He plans to weave 9 tris into a shawl. He did his first one in just 2 hours and has a good start on the second. He wanted to know if he could put those “hanging strings” on his, too, so I assured him that he could have a fringe on his shawl, too! 😀 We haven’t gotten to the dying yet. I’d rather do that outside and it’s been cold and showery this week so far.