Oscar’s Musings

Happy Birthday to Everyone!  Yahoo!  I tell ya, it is birthday season! 

As I said in my last post, we celebrated mommy's birthday in Montana around a campfire, but then we got to celebrate it again at grandma Deane's house with uncle Ryan and auntie Emily because it was auntie Em's birthday too!  Grandma made us a huge and delicious pot of seafood and corn and potatoes.  My favorite part was the king crab legs!  YUM.  I just kept saying "more crab!"  Grandma thought I turned out to be rather expensive toddler!  I also tried my first clams, and though you can't really see it in this picture, I really had the hang of just sucking them out of the shells.  What a fun meal.

Then of course it was my birthday!!!  Finally!  I'm 3!  And as luck would have it, I got to celebrate three times.  First I had a birthday party with my family.  Lots of cousins came and uncle Tom, grandma Deane, grandma Valorie, and grandpa Bob.  Even great grandpa Ted!  And it was his actual birthday that day!  Anyway, we had lots of fun eating the fancy crocodile cupcakes mommy made and opening all my presents!  Hurray!  I do love presents.  I got some great new toys and books, and even the Black Stallion movie from grandpa Steve in Arizona.  Oh and stomp rockets from mommy and daddy.  Those were a real hit!  Avonleah especially loved them.  We had a ball.

Then came my actual birthday.  Mommy and I went to the zoo and I got to get a hot dog!

Last Saturday was my frog party with my friends.  We had so much fun!  Silas, Drew, Finn, Atticus, Clara, and Zoe came with their families.  It was a super-hot day so we splashed and played with water balloons in the pool and ate lots of watermelon.  I got MORE presents including some great puzzles and games and playdoh.  And mommy made frog cupcakes!  As usual, I had to cover my ears during the birthday song, but I seem to be easing up on that.  Check these out!  Blue poison dart frogs are my favorite so I chose a blue one.

Silas' birthday is this Saturday so the parties just keep coming.  Fun fun fun

What a great vacation we had!  I've learned that I really love camping.  And I really hate hand dryers in public bathrooms.  And I can spot every railroad crossing sign and gate from the back seat of the car going 70 miles an hour.  And it is wonderful to come home after 10 days away and just play by myself with my toys.

We started our trip in Sun Lakes, where it was 100 degrees every day.  We had a great time splashing in the lake with our friends Kathy, Nick, Noah, and Kale, and grandma Deane.  But napping in a tent when it is that hot was really hard.  I managed, and then got to have s'mores!  YUM.

Then we hoped back in the car and headed east to Glacier Montana.  What an adventure!  We spent the first night in motel so we could have a bath and do some laundry.  I had a ball playing in the room.  My favorite game was picking up the phone and saying, "Hi this is Oscar.  I am going to see the mountain goats.  Bye."  I also really liked getting to sleep in my very own big bed!  What an adventure.

In Glacier we camped with a bunch of mommy's friends from when she was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Solomon Islands.  There were lots of kids to play with; I particularly like Eliot   We did some hiking in snow and finally saw the mountains goats I had been so excited about, as well as big horn sheep and bear!  I was particularly fond of the ground squirrels, and Princess the dog.  We did another hike with our friends that took us to a beautiful lake.  Eliot and I couldn't resist.  We just had to jump right in!  You'll have to look at my photo gallery to get the full sense of the trip; it is just too much to write here.  The scenery was SO beautiful.  We had a really great time. 

On the way home we camped in Idaho at Round Lake.  Again I just had to swim   All in all it was a great trip.  I hope we get to camp again soon.

Check out this catch on our windshield!  They grow big bugs in Idaho   This was a grasshopper; one of many who bonked our car on the drive.

Oh and I almost forgot!  It was mommy's birthday while we were in Glacier.  I got her a headlamp flashlight (and then wanted to have it all to myself ).  Daddy made a fruit crisp over the campfire with local huckleberries and peaches.  That daddy.  What a good cook!  It was delicious and a very special birthday cake!

Oh friends.  I just might turn into a cucumber.  Seriously.  For me, summer is the time for fruits and vegetables and I just can't stop eating them!  The best part is that our garden is finally producing lots of food too and that is my absolute favorite way to eat… right from the yard!

Our purple broccoli has been producing for many weeks now but none of it has managed to make into a cooking pot.  I eat it right off the plant!

Our first cucumber was finally ready last week and I ate it right up before it could enter the house.  For some reason I don't see any others growing yet.  Maybe they are afraid of me

We had 18 peaches on our peach tree this year.  Mommy said it was a record!  And they were actually really peach-sized this year instead of apricot-sized.  Mommy saw a lady stealing some off the tree, but she said it was hard to blame her.  They were just so beautiful!  And delicious too!  For a dwarf tree it really has been giving us a lot of food.

I think my favorite thing to pick in the garden is raspberries, as I've mentioned before.  Thankfully we have some that have fruits all summer so it should be about time for more soon.  If only I was a bit taller I could reach more and more of them!

And finally our garlic is ready!  I have been talking about it for weeks.  Mommy and I pulled it out before our trip so it could dry while we were gone.  Now it is hanging in our kitchen.  I kept telling mommy that it was spicy when it was raw but we would cook it to make it sweet.  She cooked me up some in the oven the other day so I could taste it but I changed my mind.  I think I'll taste it next time

Our peppers and tomatoes are finally starting to really grow and ripen.  So far I'm the only one who has eaten any of our tomatoes, but maybe I'll share some soon.  We have pears growing too.  Just like I tell mommy, they will be ready in the fall time, when it is time to go back to school.  I might be a farmer when I grow up

Happy eating!