Pizzuti's Vineyard B&B

Charlene, Ansel, and Tony - Canby, Oregon

When we took the kids back to Salem last weekend we went on up to Canby and spent the night with long time Marshall friends Charlene and Tony. Charlene knew Terry (ansel's son) from college days, and had remained very close to Martina all these years. She and Tony usually travel over to Bend for the various Marshall Ann. and B-day celebrations.

Tony has his own little vineyard and vegetable garden behind their house and makes his own blend of wine from the grapes each fall. He says that is his therapy to go out and weed the garden and tend to his grapes. ( combined with being an avid Oregon Duck fan )

The weather was so nice the night we were there that we spent the evening on their patio visiting and sampling Tony's homemade wine.
Visiting with grandson Brendon, (or is it Brandon? sorry) son Mark, and daughter-in-law Mia while Tony cleans the pool.


Grampa Tony plays Ku Fu Panda

Here I am scolding the self timer on my camera ;o) Guess the camera got the last laugh!

Oh and did I mention the veggies and tomatoes they grow in their garden... and that leads to the canning and to the incredible Italian dishes that Charlene always fixes when we are there. Tony is the real deal as far as being an Italian. He, his brother and Mother were born and raised there, and immigrated to the United States when Tony was 9 years old. The boys didn't know anybody, didn't have any friends, didn't know a word of English and were thrown into the Portland, Oregon school system cold turkey with no one to help them learn the language or translate their Italian. The boys went to different schools so they didn't even have each other to hang out with or talk to. And guess what - - he learned English and survived, graduated high school, graduated from Oregon, passed the bar and is an Attorney at Law. <<< I'm smiling as I say... >>> Don't get him started on the subject of all the special treatment and bilingual programs we do for Hispanics. ;o)

Taylor learns to swim

It was important to me that Taylor who is 6 years old, get a jump start learning to swim. So while she was here last summer we went for a couple of private lessons at High Desert Oasis east of Bend. Kristie Lemon and her husband have a unique and beautiful swim and fitness spa nestled in the junipers and sage brush east of Bend. So for me, part of the reason for keeping the grand kids for a whole week this time was so that Taylor would have the opportunity to go for swim lessons 5 days in a row, so that each lesson could build on the next. In the top picture she is demonstrating that she has mastered floating, Below is a video, click the play button (arrow) to see it.

Congratulations Taylor ! You are AWESOME !!! Good Job !!!

Taylor and Kristie

Taylor and Tage in front of the wishing pool bridge. Tage, (pronounced Tay- ge, like sage with a T) turned 2 on June 14.

If you are in the Bend area, I highly recommend Kristie if you know anyone of any age who needs lessons or to take water aeobics. She is a terrific encourager, as well as instructor and has a magic way with kids and using fun to accomplish the swimming maneuvers. They also do personal fitness training and have a beautiful spacious room full of weight training equipment. Let's see, seems to me there is also a juice bar, massage room and sauna ;0)

Check out their website: http://www.bendfitandswim.com/index.htm

Sunday School traffic jam

Tage's first sunday school experience. He wasn't sure at first, but after he got the hang of it, he didn't want to leave when it was time to go.

Grampy Ansel with Pastor Ken of Westside Church as he introduces Taylor and Tage.

Happy Fathers Day Grampy Ansel with Taylor and Tage at Westside Church.

Fun with Grand Kids

Tage's favorite resting spot... on the "Mercedes Wheelbarrow", he's always ready to go... "Come on Mimi... isn't there something we need to use the cart for??? (note the parking block behind the rear tire :o)

Taylor helped Ansel feed the horses every morning.

Tage doesn't think much of Mimi's dinners. So much for the "you sit here until you eat this" method ;o) Click on the video below:

Helping Mimi plant petunias, and watering them too...

Sisters Rodeo - Slack

Sisters Rodeo was last week...

It's a great rodeo, but most often sold out, very hot and packed with people... It occured to me that they probably would be having slack on Thursday or Friday during the day and thought that might be a good thing to take the grand kids to and I knew Ansel would enjoy it. Going to watch slack would give the kids a dose of rodeo exposure without being tied to a cramped hot bleacher seat with who knows sitting beside us from start to finish... (meaning that seat mates might not appreciate a potentially wiggly, whiny, poopy two year old) so we drove up there, and sure enough, slack was going and seating for slack was free. Slack- ? my best explanation is that there are many more entries into a rodeo contest than you see at the paid performance. Rodeo planners have figured it out over the years that, you can have X-number of entries in X-number of classes that folks will enjoy sitting and watching for so long. So the runover entries do their runs during "slack" which preceeds the paid performance and then their scores and times are part of the overall rodeo. Tage and Ansel riveted to the bull dogging

Tage who turns two years old Friday June 20, was totally facinated with every event and every entry... his attention never wandered, he never stopped watching, and he wasn't ready to leave when I was. I think the format, of having the seats to ourselves and not dealing with the masses of people was really condusive to his having such a good time.
Taylor cheers and moans for the barrel racers. She figured out real fast which riders had the good times, and that when the barrel got knocked over it wasn't a good thing and she cheered accordingly.

We didn't really have the whole place to ourselves... there were lots of folks watching, they just happened to be sitting to our right, and across the arena. We got to see Joe Beaver (an 8 time World Champion) have a great Calf Roping run during the slack. He ended up 3rd.

next stop, Marion Forks Fish Hatchery

Marion Forks Fish Hatchery

We usually stop at the hatchery if the weather is half decent to let the little legs get stretched, and put some blood back in the buttocks. Truthfully, I don't think they make child safety seats very comfortable. Think about the little bit of material that covers hard plastic... I probably couldn't drive very far if I had to sit on that either. I think Ansel enjoyed the stop too. It was another first for him.

The Hatchery worker offered us a bucket of fish food to feed the bigger ones in the front pond. Taylor always enjoys that. This was the first time that Tage sort of knew what he was looking at.

Back in Oregon

Almost Home: After our storybook trip to see Big Brown and the Belmont Stakes Race, followed by a few relaxing days on Cape Cod, Wednesday June 11th we flew from Providence, RI. into PDX and drove to Salem to spend the night at Eric and Tiffiny's (my youngest son). Thursday morning we brought the grand kids, Taylor and Tage back to Bend. Well it was a leisurely drive with lots of stops along the way. We started out with breakfast at where else ???? Mcky D's... (Mimi strategically chose one that she knew didn't have a Play Area so we didn't have to say "no") Smiling for the self timer on Mimi's camera sitting on the next table

As we were driving up Highway 22, coming up towards Detroit Lake, we could see a lot of water being released from the Big Cliff Dam and Taylor wanted to see the water coming out of the dam... so since we had plenty of time and I went ahead and drove down there to get a good look at it.

Big Cliff Dam below Detroit Lake

Then as we got to the main Dam, Taylor said let's go look at this one too Mimi... so we pulled down there... to see what we could see ;-)

For those of you who have ever wondered what it looks like from the bottom of Detroit Dam. Here's the picture I got before we got shooed out of the very restricted area that we weren't allowed to be in. (but the gate was open, and there was no one there to stop us :-) Detroit Dam on the North Santiam River

My picture doesn't due the height and size of this 463' structure justice. I found the one below on the internet.