Sister Visit

I was so blessed to be able to have my twin sister, Stacie, from afirefighterswife.blogspot.com, visit me along with my nieces and nephews last weekend. We always have a great time together. Hailey and Lily are the best of friends. They both love to play "mother" games. Lily was in this oh so cute outfit and we had to take a few shots as she was playing with her baby. This stroller has gotten a lot of use!

On Friday we went to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker City. It is free to homeschoolers, so we thought we would get one last trip in before we moved even further away from it. Unfortunately the speaker system wasn't working correctly, but if you leaned in, you could hear the "Wailing Woman". My sister has a hysterical story about the "Wailing Woman" on her blog. Click here for that one.

We walked around some of the trails and found a sluice box for mining gold. Only found some pyrite and fake gold, but it was fun for the kids to look  for treasure.

Also found an old mine. Love this pic of my kids with my niece, Lily. She and Hailey are just the best of friends. They are so cute together. 

We found a stage which was fun for our little princesses to perform a dancing number for our entertainment. What a gorgeous view of the Elkhorn Mountains in the background.

Hiking along the Oregon Trail. It always gives me goosebumps to think about all the people who traveled over that trail to a new life. The heartache and pain, yet hope they must have felt as they trudged through in the dust and sagebrush to a better life. 

My sister helping Lily who liked to walk over the sagebrush, not around it. 

We did a little geocaching at the Chinese cemetery. Didn't find the cache, but found where the cache had been. That was pretty much our story with all the caches we found that weekend. Kind of frustrating to tell the truth. They kids aren't into it because we've only actually found a cache once! Either they've been taken or we couldn't even find the location. I'm hoping we can get better at this! 

The kids were so tired that night. I snapped a quick pic of Hailey as I found her. Apparently my sister and I must have been too loud at bedtime because she got into the closet and found Michael's ear protection for shooting. She was sound asleep with these on when we went to bed that night. Too cute! Hey, whatever works, LOL. 

On Saturday, my sister and I were able to go to a wonderful ladies tea put on by a local church. The food was delicious and the testimonies even better. I even got to wear one of my vintage hats!

After church on Sunday, the weather was beautiful. The kids played outside while Stacie and I brought the Scrabble game out on the deck. We must have played 8 or 9 games that day. It was a Scrabble marathon!

I was so glad nobody came to look at the house while my sister was in town. It is super hard to keep the house clean with that many people and suitcases and bedding tucked into every corner. We had a realtor walk-through today, so we hoping we get some bites on the house this weekend. Thank you for all your prayers regarding God's timing!

Blessings, 

Jackie