Westmoreland Asays

We adopted a pet turtle, Shelly, last spring . She's lived in a large, plastic tub in the corner of Aaron's room ever since. The children take her outside for short stints (if she's lucky), but mostly she eats, breathes, and sleeps in the tub. I have long felt sorry that Shelly has to live in such an unnatural setting, and I finally got around to doing something for her that I thought she would enjoy. I spent a bit of time studying where an outdoor pen would be best situated; unfortunately, the best places--those with early or nearly all-day sunshine--would not work on our property. We have a small garden area in the back, next to the garage, that houses three rose bushes--one of which I've been eager to get rid of--and which receives a decent amount of sun in the afternoon and isn't so public facing to the many animals that wander in front of our house during the day. I had a fair amount of leftover cedar planks from earlier projects, so I needed one long board a...

Last year for Independence Day we camped at Lost Creek and hiked nearly to Ramona Falls (which Meg recently lamented not making to the falls and wants to return--hooray!). I liked that a lot, but this year Meg reserved a yurt for us at Nehalem Bay after the holiday. On Independence Day we took a family hike through Westmoreland and Sellwood, stopping at wild places like gluten-free bakeries for a treat (although I've yet to meet a gluten-free baked good that I really liked) and the Boys and Girls Club for the younger ones to play on the playground (we left Aaron at home, as he was still sleeping). That afternoon we went as a family to one of Aaron's friend's house for food and badminton. And we concluded the evening watching fireworks from the Sellwood bluff. We left early Sunday morning to drive to the coast so we could spend most of the day at the beach before checking in to our Yurt at the campground. I took the boys to Nehalem Bay last year , which proved to be f...