The Mountain Lakes

Fish Lake This last week, and this week too, was over 100 degrees everyday. We decided to take an afternoon and cool of at the mountain lakes. About 30 minutes from our house and 5,000+ feet above sea level are 4 beautiful Lakes. It was a perfect 78 degrees in the mountains! We had a great sandwich picnic. We did try to fish at Howard Prairie Lake, but again unsuccessful.

Lake of the Woods

Hyatt Lake

We hiked a trail where there were amazing views of the lake and a nice seat to rest in!

Matt is posing the "I'm cool" look here!

Harry Potter

Its true, Matt and I along with my sis and her friend went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter.

All three of us girls made sure to fit in with the crowd by drawing harry scars on our foreheads! Matt didn't want to fit in!

We patiently awaited while the theater had a costume contest. Then the movie began. In MOJO's critics corner the movie got a C rating. We felt lost in many parts of the movie and it seemed to lack on the plot. Anna explained that the book filled in the gaps we were confused on. Over all we still had fun!

~4th of July 2009~

The birthday party! This afternoon we visited my cousin's family, who is from out of town, and celebrated her son Aaron's fourth birthday at my Aunt's house. We also had the opportunity to finally meet their son Ryan. We had a nice evening with family!

Happy 4th. This weekend we stayed in Ashland and enjoyed one of the towns largest celebrations of the year. We started the day by watching the town parade. Matt admitted that he believed it was the first parade he has ever been to that he was an observer and not a participant.

Later in the afternoon my family came to visit and we enjoyed a casual walk through the towns festival booths and enjoyed some evening fireworks! It was sweet that our apartment complex put together bbq food, casual music, and activities that happened to be right outside of our front door. Overall it was a quite and peaceful holiday!

Bandon Weekend

Last weekend I took a trip out to Bandon to visit my old roommate Joel and our friend Kevin. Unfortunately Matt had school and work and stayed at home. He is such and hard worker, and I missed him so much that I had to text him constantly (he probably got sick of my texting, but I didn't care). We had a lovely time relaxing on our own private lake, Laurel Lake. With jet skis, catch phrase, and sun I was definitely amused.

We visited a safari petting zoo and I fell in love with the baby lions and leopard! They were only weeks old and still adjusting to walking. It was so cute! But the white Siberian tiger was my favorite! Beautiful animal!

I did take the first book of Twilight with me, and I ended up reading the first two books in two days! I can't believe it, but I love it. I read book four (I couldn't wait to see what happened in the end) and now I am reading book three. I know it was disrespect to the Cullens, but whatever. This is the first time I have ever read a whole book series, I can't believe it.

Weekend with Grandma

This weekend Grandma had me accompany her to Corvallis for a PEO organization convention where my sister presented a speech. Anna was asked to speak because she was a PEO Oregon State scholarship recipient and a recent grad.



The food was amazing with salad, cream stuffed chicken and mashed potatoes, followed by delicious chocolate cake. Anna did a great job on her speech and Grandma and I were proud! Her PEO sponsors from Newport drove all the way to Corvallis for the evening to see her speak and they just love Anna. One of the ladies even calls herself "Anna's fairy godmother." They were so happy to help Anna and see her graduate.



I was excited Grandma booked a room at the Hilton, and the beds were like clouds. They even looked like clouds. I slept like a baby.

Father's Day

This year we were able to spend Father's Day in Grants Pass with my Mom and Will along with my grandma and grandpa! Matt made a great lasagna for dinner and accompanied by bread, salad, and a tasty fruit salad from grandma. After dinner we enjoyed the river next to Grandpa's patio bonfire while filling up on apple pie and ice cream. We had a lovely afternoon.

Lauren and Nate Visit Ashland

Golfing Day! Matt had Tuesday off of school and work, finally a true day off. Lauren and Nate came to visit us in little Ashland and we tried the greens at a Medford Golf course. We decided to do 18 holes with walking the first 9 and carting the second 9.

Now you must understand that our golf skills are not up to par for the season, so we spent half the time trying to figure out where the ball went after our drives. Well after the first walking 9, we were all so exhausted and we had to stop to replenish fluids. We were so happy to have the carts on the second half. By the end I was not even putting, I just picked up my ball and moved on to the next hole.

Unfortunately Lauren became ill on Wednesday and thru the rest of the week. We were supposed to go rafting on Thursday, but she was not pulling it together. Matt and I will have to photo shoot a raft trip later this summer!

So we decided to golf at the Greens in Ashland, a 9 holer, while Lauren manned the cart and tried to keep track of where we hit our balls. This local course was somewhat nicer than the Medford course, and I loved that in general the holes were not nearly as long. We played a much better game in terms of our skill level.

Anna's a Grad!

This weekend my family all met up in Corvallis to watch Anna graduate from OSU. She has a degree in Political science, a degree in International Studies, and a minor in Spanish. She graduated with honors; such an over achiever; we are all proud. As you can see, she was advertising herself, for hire, at the graduation. She is going to spend the summer living with my mom in southern oregon, and that means closer to me! Now we can job hunt and scrap book together!

Week with the Fam!

Last week our family came to visit and it was great to see everyone! We saw the Shakespeare plays Macbeth and Death of a Kings Horsemen. I really liked Macbeth, but have had to refer to the children's book afterwards to really understand what happened. The other play was kinda weird for me. It wasn't bad, but I didn't love it!

It was fabulous to have our B.B. Regan stay with us too! We took Regan to the dog park, and he was a shy puppy. I don't think he could handle all the doggy exercise and doggie friends. One dog stole Regan's toy and teased the other dogs with it and Regan didn't even care.

We had a lovely picnic at Lithia Park one afternoon. The weather was warm and sunny! Matt baked a great Strawberry Pie to celebrate his Mom's b-day, but of course I forgot a knife and serving utensil, so we made due with plastic silverware. The result was yummy mushy pie topped with hand whipped cream! It tasted delicious!

The Bridges enjoying the afternoon

Darlene is showing off the yummy ice cream we had for dessert!

To end the week, after our family left, we did see Love's Labor Lost at the university. It was a funny witty play and I really enjoyed it! We love the experience of the theater and can't wait to see more!

Our garden is growing!!!

We have a little growing garden!!!! Our tomatoes have a few small fruits on them! Finally. We almost killed the plants by planting too early. We assumed since it had been warm weather in March, and the stores were already selling tomato plants that it was fine to start the garden. A few weeks after we potted the plants, the spring freeze started, and all of our plants looked dead. We just left the dead plants in the pots, mainly because we had given up on doing anymore gardening until after Mother's Day. The beginning of May all the plants started to flourish!!!! Now we have added to the garden. We have Cilantro, Parsley, Basil, and 4 types of Peppers! I can't wait to eat them all! Not bad for a potted garden!

All American Holiday!

Girl Scout Troops parade lineup

(Me inside the float)

This morning I woke up early to join my mom's girl scout troops in the Boatnik Parade. Needless to say it was a crazy morning. I sat in the float, that I attempted to help my mom glue and tape together, and lifted the Jacky-in-the-box up and down for a half hour. Thank goodness the Parade route was short since it felt like a million degrees in the float! The girl scouts all had fun. I did get a few great All American Pics!


I spent the afternoon walking the farmers market with my Mom and Will. I eventually wandered over to the river and found myself on a crowded bridge squeezing between a sweet old couple so i could get a glimpse of the boats racing on the river. I have never seen the town so full of people!

Good Student!

Thursday Matt and I attended the SOU School of Business award ceremony where he recieved an award for being on the Dean's list for good grades! It is soooo cheezy I love it!

SUNDAY FUNDAY!

Sunday was our relaxing fun day. We traveled about thirty min. up the road to Howard Prairie Lake. It was picturesque. They have a huge dock with fishing and boats for rent. We will definitely be back, especially since it was 93 here and 78 at the lake.

We spent part of the afternoon cruising the town by foot. We saw our local friendly deer family feasting on trees, enjoyed the towns sidewalk sale, and ventured through some of Lithia Park. It was a lovely lazy afternoon! After Memorial day it will be a busy and fun summer for us, so a final relaxing weekend was great!

OSF Open House 09

This morning we woke up to the constant pounding rain on our window. We were so surprised. A rare occurrence for Ashland. Luckily it blew over about eleven, and just in time for our day to start. Today we went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Open house.

We started with a tour of the costume department. To our surprise, it is a huge deal to get the initial design of the costumes until they hit the floor for rehearsal. Most plays have about 10 people per play working on up to 60 elaborate costumes. Every detail from the jewelery and shoes to the elaborate beaded work and accurate costume representation for the period is taken in to consideration. All of the costumes are available for other production houses and individuals to rent at the end of the season.

Next we went to the stage and prop design department a down the street from the theater. All of the stages and props are custom designed each season. All the stage sets are donated to local schools or throw away at the end of the season (since each play, even if it is done by OSF again, has a different director and designer with a different idea of how the play should look). Although the props are all put online at the end of the season to be rented by people all over the world.

We we able to chat with one of the prop designers for Don Quixote. He showed us some of the props for the play and explained that most of these particular props were all made from everyday items, including tires to make a vulture and garden gloves to create the owl.

We never did get anyone to tell us an est. cost for a play, but it would not be cheap. These plays are labors of love for one persons vision of the play. There was one backstage tour for the new theater, but we missed it. We decided we will take the full backstage tour another day.