Ashland!!!

Well, Ashland is as wonderful as it ever was. I had a SUPER relaxing weekend with my aunts and cousins and took full advantage of the fact that I had NO responsibilities! We stayed at the Siskiyou House, which is an old and gorgeous brick home that the owners have decorated perfectly and filled with all kinds of comfy chairs, extra fluffy white towels, and huge white feather beds. It was so cozy and perfect. We did all the things I love to do - work on our sewing projects together, sing old songs, play board games, walk around the park, tell funny stories... it was very therapeutic and I feel totally refreshed.I definitely recommend renting this house if you are in the market for a vacation home in southern Oregon. This is the third house we've rented in Ashland and it was by far the best. The owners were SO nice and even encouraged us to use the fresh basil from their garden!
The house was located within walking distance of all the downtown shops as well as the park, so I'm hoping that I did enough physical activity to walk off all the fudge I kept eating (yeah right!). I did a lot of shopping and found a wonderful little fabric store, where I bought myself a big project... more on that later.

I did miss my boys, though, and it is very nice to be back. Moses seems so much taller since I left and I was only gone for 4 days!

Back from So-Cal

Our trip down south (and, might I mention, our first real trip anywhere in the last 3 years) was a huge success. Traveling with a toddler who has an early bedtime made us rethink our usual stay-in-a-junky-hotel-because-we'll-only-be-there-to-sleep strategy, so we shelled out a bit more cash to stay in nicer two-room suites. And MAN, was it worth it! We lead a pretty humble existence up here on the farm - we only have one bedroom (yes, the 2 year old shares a room with us), don't have cable, and do what needs to be done to fit three people's schedules into one bathroom. So imagine our collective joy when we entered our first hotel room in Santa Barbara: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, large kitchen, and a flat screen TV with CABLE!!! Holy cow - if the beach hadn't been 100 feet away I think we may have just locked ourselves in there for a week.
The great thing about Santa Barbara is that you can pretty much walk anywhere you need to go. We walked to the beach and Moses got to fulfill his long-time dream of "putting his tummy in the sand," then walked up the road to dinner. It was great. 
The whole point of our trip, however, was not to stay in luxurious hotels, but to attend my brother Daniel's graduation from San Diego State University. So we continued on to San Diego and managed to fit in a trip to the zoo (in the rain, incidentally, but it was still fun) before the ceremony. Daniel hadn't told us this, but he was graduating not only with honors, but as the "most outstanding student" in the philosophy department, so instead of sitting amidst the sea of other graduates, he was up on stage with the faculty. That was really cool and we're totally proud of him. And, except for screaming out "PENIS" in the middle of the ceremony (he was explaining what would eventually happen to the crackers he was eating - you can figure it out), Moses did really well through the entire thing. The whole trip was a success and a much-needed break from daily life. It's nice to be back - lots of laundry and cleaning up to be done, no more Discovery channel, and back to sharing the room with a toddler, but it's still home. :)