The Desert in the Clouds

So I had to do it.   This one is just so gosh darn cute.  I can never get a good picture off all the girls at once, so of course I had to post it on facebook, what can I say.

This picture was taken in Sunriver (aka Bend, Or).  My parents have a house there so we go fairly often.  I don't know what it is, maybe the smell of the ponderosa pine trees or the sound of the wind when it blows, but I love Central Oregon.  If it was me, I would move there in a heart beat.  I think Andy has grown to like it as well even though he is a big city boy from Lima, Peru. 

The winters bring the best powdery snow and the summers bring dry warmth.  The only thing holding us back of course is work.  No job, No Bend. Oh well, maybe when we retire.  A lot of my childhood memories are in Bend, well La Pine, Oregon which is just south of Bend.  My grandparents had a house there.  Not just any house, one my dad, grandpa and great-grandpa built. We would spend most of our summers in that little house, rising early to get a good spot on the lake to fish.  If we were headed south for a trip, we would always stop in La Pine for an overnighter.  But when my grandparents divorced, a lot changed.  We didn't go to the little house anymore.  I missed it.  I think my dad did too because a few years later, he bought his own place a few miles up the road.  Every once in awhile my girls and I will drive by the little house and I tell them all the things my brother and I used to do there.  It is getting old now even more so because know one lives there and with both of my grandparents gone now, no one takes care of it. 

We are building new memories now in my parents house with mine and my brothers kids.  They all love to fish, papa takes them all the time in hopes of catching the "big one".  We always go in the winter to catch some fresh powder (although there wasn't any this time).  I look forward going to Bend with my family.  Real memories are being made.  I just hope my grand kids will come to appreciate the Desert in the Clouds as much as I have.