We are now at my folks’ place – we’ll spend the 4th of July week here enjoying the HOT Oregon weather.

Grandma got sucked in to a marathon game of Monopoly.

Driveway hill races.

A walk in the woods.

Yesterday we took the kids to the Osborne Aquatic Center in Corvallis.

Josie at the beach in Newport – it was warm and sunny enough, but far too windy to be enjoyable.  We didn’t stay too long there, being chased back into our car to avoid the gales.

Dad setting up flags in Philomath for the 4th of July.

The kids on their DS’s in a blur of activity.

4th of July family dinner.

Isabella and I spent our morning yesterday at the urgent care clinic – she had injured her hand the previous evening riding around on one of the hand-powered scooters.
It still hurt bad enough the following day that we thought it best to take her in and have her X-rayed. As it turns out, she has fractured her Scaphoid bone (in the wrist). Her left hand/arm is now wrapped up in a temporary cast to allow time to heal. That has put an end to her archery (and scooter) playing this summer.
She had previously scraped up her thigh and several locations on her arm from previous scooter crashes, so that is probably a good thing. Unfortunately, she’s also caught the illness that from which I am just now recovering. She’s not hit as bad and is recovering much more rapidly… but it’s been a tough 3-4 days for Isabella.

Meanwhile, the fun continues on July 5 …

Heidi, Jason & boys all returned to my folks for the afternoon/evening.  We all went down to the local creek to catch crawdads and play in the water.

Brenda caught a snake and began giving lessons to the more squeamish.

Holden and Torin going off into the woods to answer the call of nature.

The hunt for crawdads begins.  You can see Isabella’s cast in the distance.. she had to try and catch one-handed.

Heidi guarding the holding tank.

Grandma supervising.

Each string has a hunk of raw chicken on the end. You drop the chicken into the water and wait – the crawdads downstream all smell the meat and head upstream quickly to grab on and start eating.
Once they are distracted, a quick swipe of the net lands them.

One of the targets.

Happy boys returning to home base with their catch.

Right after Jason let his days’ catch go – we didn’t take them home to cook and eat them. Nobody wanted to be saddled with all of the work and mess.
I would guess that, between us all, we caught about 100 crawdads.

July 6:  We start the day off with some trout fishing in a pond just down the road. My folks’ neighbor, Mr. Decker, kindly gave us access to his property to wander in the woods and fulfill one of our summer promises to Holden.

Brenda showing off the one 12″ trout we took home. We actually planned to do nothing but catch-and-release, but I caught one fish who swallowed the hook down so deep we couldn’t get it out without killing the fish.
Brenda killed him, gutted him, cleaned him at home, cooked up and eventually ate him.

Later in the day, Dad and I went to a car show in town. This is a 1927 La Salle, my favorite at the show.

Although they did have one souped up 1954 Chevy 210 – does this give you any ideas, Jim?

Back on the property for some more Gatorin’.

Finally, the 5 of us ended up back at the creek for more Crawdad hunting. The kids couldn’t get enough of yesterday’s fun.