Life at a "Swell's" pace

Transit of Venus

Back on June 5th we decided to "attempt" to view the Transit of Venus. We were pleasantly surprised at how amazing it was and how we were able to actually focus in on it and see it pretty clear. I tried to capture it through my camera to no avail and I was afraid I would fry my lens, so we tried the mirror approach instead and it was a success!

The cloud cover here in the Willamette Valley made it a bit difficult at first.

Then it cleared off and we were able to start looking.

We set a white sheet up on the backside of our garage and positioned a mirror so that we could focus on what we needed to see without burning our retinas out. ha!

Looking through the homemade pin-hole binoculars we made.

After tilting and moving the mirror around we finally spotted a little dot in the upper right-hand corner.

Do you see it?

(The small white dots around the edge on either side of the mirror were just designs on the mirror itself. )

It finally showed up, after an hour and a half of looking, and we were thrilled that we could show this to Skylar. It won't come again under 2117, so this was a great thing for all three of us to see.

Later that night the moon looked like a big wheel of cheese.

Lebanon, Oregon's 103rd Strawberry Festival

The Jr. Strawberry Parade. Lebanon, Oregon is the strawberry capitol of Oregon, so we have an annual parade and celebration to honor that.

Little strawberry shortcake bakers.

The theme was 'Strawberries Around the World' and I think this moma-to-be nailed it perfectly for the Jr. Parade.

Then came the Grand Parade the following day.

The World's Largest Strawberry Shortcake. They serve this cake to the general public inside the entrance to the Strawberry Festival. It's served with local strawberries on top.

The Strawberrians of the festival. This town goes all out in the name of strawberries.

Chester and Cheryl riding in the parade in their 164 Dodge Polara. They stopped just long enough to pick up Skylar and let him finish the parade with them. See Skylar in the back? :)

Now onto the festival....

We met up with Jeff's sister, Jaime when we got there and Skylar and her little man, Henry rode rides together. They have a great time!

Down the giant slide!

Rides, rides and more rides.

We had a pretty good time this year at the Strawberry Festival. We enjoyed watching Skylar climb in, ride on and jump over a lot of the rides and fun activities for kids. I can't believe this is our 8th year here in Oregon and going to this festival. Time flies!

See more photos of this fun day HERE!

Fun in the Sun

When we took our trip down to Arkansas for my brother's wedding we booked our rooms at the Howard Johnson Hotel. And the pool was so fun! We stayed in it most of our trip and Skylar had a blast going down their rock slide. Here are a few pictures of our fun in the sun by the pool!