Blessed, honored pioneers

Kira and Adam have been reading the wonderful books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Kira is BIG TIME into pioneers. She's going to be Laura for Halloween, and this last week we went to the fabric store and picked out the pattern, fabric for a dress and pinafore, all the notions, and even a small slate. She'd like it made like NOW. She's so funny.

On Friday Kira and I went to The End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Oregon City. It was pretty neat. I enjoyed reading all the panels they had with little stories and such, and we both appreciated that they had some hands-on stuff for kids. Kira got to dress up like a pioneer girl, load a wagon for the trek west (never mind that we're already here!), grind wheat into flour, and play with handmade wooden toys and games that pioneer children would have had. We had a picnic lunch and watched a movie. It was a very educational afternoon!

Yesterday we got to spend some time with our estranged husband/father. Adam has been working like CRAZY trying to catch up at work. His workload right now is out of control. Honestly, he is such a hard worker--I don't know how he does it, but that's a blog entry in and of itself. Anyway, I'd read about Sarah's visit to Philip Foster Farm in Eagle Creek with her kids, and we ventured out there yesterday. It was a bit of a drive, but definitely worth it. We practically had the place to ourselves. After a picnic lunch we bought at New Season's (during which we enjoyed listening to a trio of ladies playing fiddles & other stringed instruments), we explored the general store, the original barn and farm house, black smith shop, and orchards and vegetable garden. They had several covered wagons, buggies and even a hand cart. One notable thing about this place, I saw very few signs (if any?) that said, "Don't Touch"so... we touched stuff! There weren't really many volunteer pioneer folks around to tell us what not to do, but for the most part we played it safe and didn't sit on any of the antique furniture or anything. All in all, this farm was a wonderful place full of history and lots of hands-on stuff for kids (and their kid-at-heart grown-ups). We bought some dried corn cobs in the general store and ground them into cornmeal in the barn, drilled holes with a hand drill, did some wash and hung it on the line, and even built a log cabin out of giant Lincoln Logs! (I think that may have been our favorite part.) We bought some horehound and sarsaparilla candy sticks that we haven't even tried yet. I had blast taking pictures with "the big camera", and just uploaded 208--a lot of them from the last two days! Yikes! Sarah--if your reading--thanks so much for sharing about this amazing place!

As my sister-in-lawAnnie posted on her blog, July 24 is a special date in LDS Church history marking the date when the first settlers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. My family didn't come to the west until the 20th century--most around 1920. (My mom's parents came to Oregon from Wisconsin & Montana, and my dad's came from California & Oklahoma.) To put things in perspective, it's been just 202 years since Lewis and Clark arrived here, 164 years since the first pioneers who used the Oregon Trail arrived.Oregon is so young--just 148 years-it seems strange sometimes, especially after having traveled through Europe where everything is so old. Although I'm not a direct descendant of any pioneers who traveled west by covered wagon, I still have great respect for the sacrifices that those brave men, women and children made to come here. In remembering them, I also have a lot of respect for the native people of this region who suffered, died, and lost their home because of westward emigration. Sometimes I wonder what this area was really like before it was settled. I'm glad for these historical sites that allow me and my family a little peek into the past.

Next on our Oregon history agenda, the Oregon History Museum downtown and the Bush House Museum, Deepwood Estate (where my mom & step dad were married), and definitely Mission Mill Museum in Salem (I think we might even take the train down!) Summer's going by way too fast....