We went to the Bend Fourth of July Pet Parade, which was a “anyone can enter” parade so there wasn’t much distinction between the parade entrants (dressed in red, white and blue, riding bikes and walking dogs) and the parade attendees (pretty much the same group). We watched for about 20 minutes, but when Clare started having more fun playing with hats then we moved onto the festivities at the nearby park. We spent the afternoon of the Fourth driving back home and right now Clare is sleeping through fireworks. I think Fourth of July will be a bigger deal in future years. Now it’s just a chance for the family to have a long weekend together, which is nice too.

My parents gave Clare this super cute little toddler-sized Adirondack chair and Ladybug table. She LOVED it and did a lot of “swan watching” from the patio.

Speaking of the swans, Clare LOVES them too. She doesn’t especially like it when they honk (she tells them “no beep!”) but she loves to look for them and talk about them. She told me that the swans “have glasses.” It took me a while to figure out what she was talking about the black marks over their beaks – she thought they were sunglasses.

We spend lots of time climbing on rocks in Bend. It’s Clare’s favorite activity when we’re there, so it means that we spend a lot of time “spotting” her. There is a great playground on the river that has rocks set up for children to climb. The downside is that it’s set up for a little bit bigger kids, and once Little Miss saw the big kids climbing on the largest rocks then she had to follow. On the picture above you can see that J and Grandpa are actually 3 feet off the ground, so that gives you an idea that Clare climbed up about 9 feet more or less on her own (with some serious “spotting”).

Grandma and Grandpa bought Clare a inflatable pool, which she was thrilled by and played in for about two straight hours. At one point she was scooping water from one cup to another for several minutes and my mom asked her what she was doing. She said she was “picking up dog poop.” O-kay then…

Lastly – this is why we don’t have many family portraits. Trying to get 3 of us to look at the camera at the same time poses challenges. Still, this picture makes me giggle…