Desert Oasis

For the past while Blogger doesn't let me re-arrange photos on my posts very easily so this is a random and out of order photo journal of our mini-holiday to Oroville!

My grandparents are work horses. They don't sit still often! We didn't get to visit with them much as they were canning peaches, making grape juice, harvesting the tomatoes for juice, gardening, baking, watering, and anything else that needed doing. I think that they don't know how NOT to work.
Liam will love tubing in a few years. I think he's a bit of a thrill seeker.

Something about the Oroville air makes our kids sleep really well there. No complaints from me!

Nathan and Uncle Andrew took a speedy ride as you can see from their hair dos!

Chad preferred to go slow...very slow. He's terribly nervous around water. Although not at the pool....strange.

Here is a scene of us doing nothing. We did nothing often. I read my two books I brought rather quickly and then just sat around and did....NOTHING!

Nate was happy to go to the garden to pick peppers for our lunch.

The garden is my grandparents pride and joy. Besides peppers there are tomatoes, beans, potatoes, garlic, cantalopue, watermelon, grapes and fruit trees.

Nate loved helping with the grapes. He's got a green thumb.

My cousins were staying down the beach at their other grandparents place with their twins. It was nice to visit a few times!

There is a good bartering system between the neighbours. We found out they were getting rid of these kitchen chairs and we hated the chairs that were in the basement suite. So we went to fetch them and took the nasty old chairs up to the highway. Anything you don't want anymore you put on the edge of the highway and the Mexicans usually come and get it very quickly. They were gone in a few hours.

The trail between the neighbors. Yes, they are almost ALL Mennos. A big group of friends/family bought up much of the property in this area in the late 1970's because it was a very good deal. And as you know many Mennos marry within a close circle so two of my cousins have their other grandparents who have places in the same vicinity as us. So all the neighbors are good friends or extended family of some sort. It makes for a nice little community.

Liam liked it here.....he was pretty easy to manage. Next year will be even better as he won't be crawling on the dirty ground anymore.

Chad told me he likes to spy on people. I'll have to watch out for this kid!

The first dip for these toes in Osoyoos Lake!

Snoozing.....just what a holiday is for.

On our last day the smoke from some fires near Penticton started filtering down the valley.

No TV, no Playstation, no Lego. Chad resorts to Dominoes!

Andrew's friend came up with his Seadoo (I want one!) and was so nice about taking us all for rides and towing us with the tube.

I hadn't had this much fun in ages. Plenty of screaming and laughing involved!

Cool.

Nate spent most of the days on the windsurfing board. He loved to paddle himself out onto the lake and practice standing on it or scaring away birds. I tried to take Chad out for a little ride down the shore but he was terrified and we had to turn back. Last year he was fine with it....weird.

Chad's idea of a good time was jumping off the dock. Into very shallow water!

Some of these are my brother's pictures....his camera is about a million times better than mine.

Just plain cute is what he is!

He certainly enjoyed watching the ski boats whiz by.

We don't take our piece of paradise for granted. We know how fortunate we are to have this place to come to every year!

Next year I'm booking a week. Four days just wasn't quite enough!