It was a foggy day last Saturday when we went to Sheridan, a small town about 45 minutes south of us, for a visit to Bret and Serena, our landlords, who had invited us for lunch.
They moved there about a year ago from the house that Doug and Brenda are now renting, although they kept their business in Newberg, at the property we're parked at right now.
Sheridan is a very small, rural town and they live on the outskirts, at the top of a 34 acres (!) piece of land sloping down in front of them, which gives them a beautiful view of rolling pastures and woodlands and even a distant view of the mountains!



We had a great time visiting, got a tour of their beautiful house (very reminiscent of our house in Skyforest, but a lot larger), had a great lunch (pull-apart pork with a layered salad and peach pie for desert!) and talked for a long time about everything and anything.

This is the view towards the house (it's only just visible there, a little right from the middle) from one of the ponds, about halfway down the slope

Afterwards Bret took us for  a tour of their beautiful property in their quad. There are several ponds, barns and large meadows, one of which they planted with Christmas trees last spring. It's something Bret wants to continue to 'do' when he retires from his roofing business.
Unfortunately, because of the drought they lost almost all of them! They'll try again this year, although getting seedlings is a little bit of a problem due to the recent forest fires ...

OK, what else .. oh, right, there was this .. James' Birthday!

Look at that handsome old fart!

We went for happy hour to the Golden Valley Brewery and Restaurant in McMinnville, which is advertized as a 'sprawling brewpub with its own garden & cattle ranch, serving housemade beers & upscale pub grub'.

                                    

Unbeknownst to us some of their appetizers are half prize between 3 and 6pm, which of-course we happily took advantage of!



In addition to Thai Chicken Skewers with peanut sauce (saté!) and a Mediterranean salad with hummus, we had a 10 sample flight of their beers, more than enough for several birthday toasts!

Due to all the rain of these last couple of weeks, we'd seen the tires of the truck(s) sinking in the mud a bit, but James, always the (overly) optimistic one, thought we were fine and 'probably' would be able to take them out.
Well, when he needed them last week (since I was out with the car) it turned out that .. guess what .. they both were stuck!

  
Fortunately though, Bret had stored a little tractor in the barn next to us so James rolled it out and happily went to play in the mud for a little ..

That green truck by the way isn't ours but Doug's. He wants to sell it and had no room to park it at his house, so it's been sitting here for a while ..



Both trucks came out very easy but they left some deep tracks as you can see. Oh well ...
For now they're parked on either side of the barn on the gravel driveway, but James is going to put down some boards this weekend, so they can move back to the previous spot again where they are a little less in the way.

To pretty up the muddy garden a little bit I got these little pots with daffodil and crocus bulbs at the grocery store. A little early but they're hardy and with a little sun on them they look so pretty. They make me happy every time I see them!

OK, this post is a little short this week because I'm using James' laptop to put it together, which doesn't have my pictures on it. My own laptop is in the shop to be repaired since all of a sudden, while sitting on my desk (opened) but without even touching it, my screen fell out and cracked a corner!
Fortunately we'd bought an extra 3 years warranty, which we almost never do, so after some e-mailing back and forth they agreed to replace the screen, we sent it in, and hopefully I'll have it back somewhere next week.

(Yeah, I'm keeping my fingers crossed too!)