Hunter, future horse girl

So there is nothing wrong with people, especially young girls, that love horses, but I am familiar with making fun of a few young girls in school that LOVED horses. And while I know high school clicks and stereo-types are lame, I still hope that Hunter doesn't fall into that category. :) 

Aunt Julie (Great-Aunt to Hunter, but Julie's so young, she really is just Aunt) recently got a new horse, her name is Emma. We stopped by to see her tonight and of course I had to take a few pictures. The pictures are taken with my iPhone, so not the usual quality that I prefer, but cute nonetheless. 

Hunter was a little scared of her at first, 

But after feeding her some treats and time, they warmed up to each other.

And Emma really warmed up to my phone.

I absolutely love this shot. The look on Hunter's face is so mature and matter-of-fact. She really will be that horse girl. :)

We wandered the rest of the horses at the "Case Stables" and I got this cute shot of Hunter taking her stance while saying Hi to this horse.

But it's not as adorable as the shaking head horse that we couldn't get enough of. 

And she couldn't get enough of us!

Ahhh, horses.

Brandon's Mom

It's with sadness that I post that on Monday, July 9th, 2012, Brandon's Mom, Dawn Illyene Case died at only 50 years old. She was recently diagnosed with breast cancer again after surviving it many years ago but it was a sudden heart attack or blood clot that took her life. 

I've personally only met Dawn about a dozen times in the last five years of her life. I know that she was a wonderful mother the early years of Brandon's life and then after that she had some changes that led to a divorce from Mark, Brandon's Dad. Looking through the photographs that Brandon and Erin have found from her belongings, it was nice to see Dawn in those younger years. She was a mother of two adorable children. She was a big sister to six young men. She was a young wife. She was a beautiful woman that may have made some bad decisions in her life but her life was taken too soon. 


I wish I would have gotten to know her and our kids could of met her. I'm thankful that we have many photographs to remember her by though. Here are just a few...

Dawn and Brandon

Brandon and Erin

Brandon and Dawn

Brandon and Mark

Dawn and Mark

Dawn, her brothers and father. And Brandon and Erin.

Dawn as a young girl

Dawn and her older sister Donagene, who has also passed

Dawn with Hunter at a few months old, the only time they met

Happy 4th of July!

Finally some sun for us Northwesterners!

We had a pretty relaxing day of lounging around and doing household odds and ends. We were outside for most of the afternoon and enjoyed the mild and perfect heat. Fun with the sprinkler and the kiddie pool.

Leo will definitely be a heart breaker!

As well as a crazy daredevil.

I love this next photo. You'd think that they were singing a song together, but in fact they are screaming at one another to get the other off the table. 

I did catch one sweet moment. Well, kinda sweet. 

And Hunter spent some time being my hair stylist while I sat in her tent. She can do my hair and be a chatty cathy any day of the week. :)

Princess camp

Last Halloween when we went trick or treating we got a free class coupon for the local dance academy, Chehalem Valley Dance Academy. Being a non-girly girl that I am, I wasn't thinking we'd actually ever use the coupon. But Hunter seemed to like the idea of dance class and I thought starting young in activities would be great for her, something I don't remember ever having as a child. We ended up signing her up in January and she has gone almost once a week since then. This was a picture of her in January, getting ready for one of her first classes.

 
The dance academy recently offered a summer camp for a week, called Princess Camp. She has been starting to get into princesses a bit more (I blame the little girls at school!) and so we thought she'd really enjoy this camp. And she did! We went and got her a few princess dresses from a local second hand thrift shop. I didn't want to get her a costume princess outfit so we got this one dress that was very classic and sweet. She loved doing her princess swirls with it too.

Here is a little video of the dance her class performed at the end of Princess Camp. Adorable! If only she'd get her fingers out of her mouth. :)

Adorable!

Commence Summer

I really hope Summer is here to stay in Oregon for the next many months. The rain always seems to linger on and on and on at the end of Winter and through most of Spring.

Yesterday I joined the "Grandpa Day" fun and went strawberry picking with Hunter and Mark. Once a week Mark takes Hunter for the day to do pretty much whatever she wants. It's a fine line of her being spoiled rotten and enjoying some amazing time with her amazing Grandpa. :) Aunt Erin joins in the fun most weeks and they go to so many fun places that I wish I could join in on. But today they stayed close to home to let me join them for strawberry picking.

It was a gorgeous day at Koch Family Farm, just a few minutes from our house. We picked over 16 pints of strawberries and a few pints of raspberries. We were only there for an hour too.

Hunter joined in on the picture taking and took some good pictures herself with my camera. I think it's time to get her her own camera, my SLR camera is a bit heavy for her still, but I think she's figuring it all out pretty well.

Note the helicopter above my head that she was trying to get a picture of. I'm taking a picture of her with my iPhone to post on Facebook. :)

Grandpa displaying an amazing looking strawberry for her to capture.

She got a nice tilted shot of the fields. This picture doesn't do the area justice, so many acres of berries. The rows of berries after the strawberries and before the trees are all raspberries. They just opened up that area for picking yesterday, we got first dibs!

I had never picked Raspberries before, it was pretty cool to see their whole inside came out when you picked it.

Here is part our loot at the end of the day.

Freezing the strawberries is a bit time consuming, but it'll be fun to use them in the future for smoothies and such. Hopefully finding time to make a pie or jam today before the fresh ones go bad. If they do, I'll just hop in the car and get some more. :)

Never a dull moment

Today is our four year wedding anniversary. We started dating five years ago and we moved pretty fast into building our own family, but it already seems like we've spent a lifetime together. In a good way. We may have our ups and downs like every young married couple, but I still believe in the bond we formed in the beginning and know it'll see us through whatever comes our way.

I found Brandon's blog post with our official wedding ceremony vows. They are so cheesy, but still get me teary eyed. I call them official wedding vows, because we had different vows a year later at our wedding celebration. Can't seem to locate those though...

I wasn't sure what one is supposed to get their spouse for the four year mark, but Brandon has been having annoying issues with one of his computer monitors (yes, yes, he has multiple) so I went for the geeky anniversary gift, a new monitor!

I get my gift tomorrow. Better late than never!

I'll leave this post with a photo montage of our first five years! Love you Brandon!

(As I looked through my thousands of pictures tonight, it is clear I need more recent family shots of all of us together. Brandon, Hunter and Leo, watch out, I'm getting out the tripod!)