Oregon City Oregon - Week 8 - February 18 - February 24, 2018

It rained so much this week - BUT we did finish pruning the fruit trees.  We had to keep going inside and waiting for the rain to stop, then we'd go back outside.  The next big day will be March first which is the beginning of Burn Season.

It also snowed twice this eek - just enough to cover the ground and be beautiful, and then the snow melted.

I load the suckers in the little trailer and then dump them carefully adjacent to the burn pile.  Eventually Dad will take the tractor and push these piles into the big burning pile.



The big pear tree





We even cut off a big limb from one of the pecan trees; the branch had been interfering with the maple trees.  Actually, Warren cut off the limb for us - he said he felt a bit of vertigo when the wind blew.

In addition to helping us, Warren put in a drain alongside his fence - pretty much all by himself.  Then he planted raspberries and blackberries in raised beds which he built himself.  He is such a farmer boy!



After school one afternoon, Jude proudly wore and displayed his art work.  He is President and has Valentine Day glasses!



Saturday night Jessica put on a nice formal dinner for her Mia Maid class.  It was for them to "eat out" with each other right before the Mormon Prom.  She called us and asked if we could take Logan and Abby because they were being rambunctious.  Perfect excuse to go to Rigobertos for dinner!









Then we bought ice cream and went home and listened to a story while slurping up the dessert.



Wed're tired of the rain and going to skip town next week.  We're gong to Disneyland.  And and Travis and three kids; Bev and Paul and four kids, Jessica and four kids; Dad and I!  Should be another great adventure.

Oregon City, Oregon - week 7 - February 11- February 17, 2019

It rained pretty much all week..it was awful. I felt like when we were in Kazakhstan when I would pace from room to room and look out the windows to see if it was still snowing....and it was.

Someone - and we don't know who - left some cold cereal on our porch.  Lucky us!!! or lucky grandchildren.







Valentine's Day was on Thursday.  I made small fudge heats and delivered them to all children grandchildren and the sisters in the ward to whom I minister.



And then, for Valentine's Day dinner we went to Tony's Fish Market...hoping we would love the fish and chips.  We went with Val and Lori Glenn, and Warren came too.  The fish was 'okay'.  We need to keep looking.



Then Adrian Beech called us.  He and Jami went on their missions to Ireland, and they love fish and chips too and have searched and searched for authentic F&C here in Oregon.  And they found the place!!  It is Maher's Restaurant in Lake Oswego.

It is haddock!!!!!!  So incredibly good!  We will go back!





Occasionally the rain did stop, and when it did, we were outsider pruning fruit trees.  Next week we hope to finish the trimming.  This is the red pluot - it is Dad's favorite.

Oregon City Oregon - Week 6 - February 4 - February 10

Snow twice this week!  The first snow was on Monday which the kids love because there is no school.  Jessica miraculously had purchased two big sleds, and the kids used them extensively.

Our hay field in the snow.



Jessica's house in the distance.  It was about 9 AM as we walked over to Bev's and Jessica's



The Manor from the mailbox



Here Jude and Abby have opted just to slide on their bums.....of course, the sleds were not at the Manor.



On Saturday there was more snowfall.

Clara and Abby  came over, decked out in snow pants and parks, and snow boots.  They crafted two beautiful small snow men and the wet clothing was proof that they had worked hard at snow moving and sculpting.  At the end of the day they said it had been a perfect day.  Abby she hoped it would snow on Monday because schools might close and they could go in the hot tub, watch a movie, and have hot chocolate.  I said, "wait a minute....you do that everyday anyway!"





One benefit of the snow and below freezing temperatures is that we defrosted our two freezers.  All the food got put into packing boxed and placed on a pallet, under a tarp,  outside the basement door.  The freezers were left open to drip dry.





Friday we went to Jenny Nilson's to help her with her Family History.  She prepared deep fried cauliflower with a "Korean" sauce.  Very tasty and, I was neglectful, and took no photos.

Friday night Jessica and Bev threw a shower for Kelsey Yates who recently had a baby boy, Tad Dee Yates.







Saturday Shelby had another swim meet which was at the OC pool.  This was just a "fun meet" within the OC club.  It was kinda nice because there wasn't a terrible crowd and there was actually a place to comfortably sit.  She swam in three races - back stroke, freestyle, and butterfly (for the first) time.







There was also "regular" time here after school.







Saturday night was Game Night.  I never really liked Game Night when we had it in Astana - it always seemed poorly planned and attended and kinda lame.  When we returned to OC we found that the new ward was having a Game Night.  We went---it was kinda poorly planned and attended and kinda lame.  And a quarter of the year later, it was Game Night again.  And we went in an attempt to b supportive and, well....supportive.  Doesn't help that Dad does not play games. period.
I had found in my cleaning and sorting in the basement, a cardboard box full of memorabilia.  Inside the box was my authentic, antique, original game of Clue - it even smelled like it had been in a box in a basement for more than 40 years.  Oh, how I loved that game.  During one summer and maybe two summers when I was in junior high school, we with my friends played Clue every aftrrnoon in a darkened bedroom.   We too this sacred game to Game Night and taught Warren how to playu...but he never actually did because Sister Terres and Dan Bean wanted to join in the walk down memory lane.  It was fun, but I had totally forgotten my process of figuring out who had committed the murder.

It was a pot luck dinner too, and Camille enjoyed whatever she was eating.





Next month we are going to take our lap tops Game Night and the display two signs that say, "Learn how to play the Game of Indexing" and the second will be "Learn how play Find Your Ancestors"

In the evenings - at 7:15 - Dad has started to go to Bev's house and read Harry Potter to Clara.  I don't know who likes it more - Clara?  or Dad?









Paul likes it too.

Oregon City, Oregon - Week 5 - January 28 - February 3, 2019

Our friends, the Ables, who are still in Almaty/Bishkek sent us a photo from their apartment showing the winter in Central Asia.  With all that snow, we're glad we aren't still there.



Our Traeger Wood Pellet Grill has died - it experienced a slow death by rust.  The fire box was rusted and the business end - the part that held the wood pellets and slowly delivered them to the fire box, had totally rusted to nothingness - - honestly, I think there was some domestic abuse involved....caregivers not providing proper care after the party.  But all is not lost. Costco had a warehouse special with lots of new stoves of various styles ready for adoption.  After a successful search, Ray brought home the "SILVERTON".  It is magnificent and will be a wonderful guest at our outdoor festivities where meat is smoked and grilled.





A great side effect of the new Traeger is the box!!!  Believe it or not, there are three children inside this box waiting to burst out and scare us.  One day Logan got 'stuck' inside, with the box in an upright position, and he and we had a hard time separating the top from the bottom.







We did a bit of geocaching and tried a puzzle cache; we were successful.



After a good deal of thinking, reading the hints, description, and previous logs, we figured it had to be a public place in a residential area.  I figured it was a park, and one log said "This was a cute place, There should be a sign". I figured it was a park and started working with google.  There was a list of Oregon City parks, and when I looked I didn't see anything that looked promising.  Then I clicked on the site for Waterboard Park.  The park was outlined in yellow, and when I enlarged the map, there was a little quadrangle at the bottom of the map, also outlined in yellow.  I enlarged it more and saw that the name was Dement Park.  The description of the cache had a lot of words with 'ed.  And so, when you add that to Dement Park, you get Demented Park, which fits right in with the description of a place that makes you insane.  Off we went and we arrived at this little park which is off of Linn avenue.  First thing we saw was a little bench underneath a roof.  We thought it was in that because the description said the cache was on a man made structure.  But it wasn't.  The only other man made structure was a guard rail - a GRC - which is a common and boring place to hide a cache.  And it was there, just as we hoped.



You can see the magnetic key case just to the right of the bolts and nuts.



We spent the whole week trimming the three fruit trees by the garden; we finished them!  Now we have about seven more to do in the area by the barn.







Abby and Clara helped us pile up the branches.



Warren and Whitney's new sidewalks, patio, retaining wall, and graded back yard are finished.  They are so excited!  It really looks nice.







On Friday we had a Family History meeting with Jenny and Larry Nilson.  Jenny is entering all of the information she has into the FamilySearch program.   I helped Larry tidy up some of his data and showed hi how to figure out which cards he's printed.  We were getting ready to go when Jessica called and asked if I wanted to go out to lunch....duh...  I asked Jenny if she wanted to go too, and her answer was an immediate "yes".  We ended up at Cheesecake Factory where she'd never been before.  It was so fun to see her enjoying the menu and then the food.  She loves cooking food!



I got the Chinese Chicken Salad



Friday night was the family birthday for Holland.  It was very festive!  And...all of Holland's cousins liked playing with her new toys.













Saturday we went to the gymnastic meet in Corvallis against UCLA who is the reigning national champion.  We especially wanted to see Katelyn Ohashi who has an amazing floor routine where she jumps in the air and does the splits in the air and then comes down onto the mat in the split position and then bounces back up to end her routine with a flourish.  Apparently MANY other people wanted to see her (and UCLA) too; the crowd was huge!!

Here she is.  Unfortunately she did not do her floor routine and only performed on the beam.  Oregon State lost, but not by much.  It is possible that UCLA had their less accomplished athletes compete since they were pretty assured they would win.



Holland was an accomplished athlete too.



Her event was popcorn consumption.







On the way home we stopped in Hubbard for dinner.  Surprisingly, this little cafe looks like it could be in Kaz.  The food was really good. I got a pork burrito that was served with gravy.



Well.....this picture looks like the entrance to a little cafe in Astana.



Sunday night there was an added service at Jessica's - Abby's Beauty Salon -   it was "open"



My new hair style is a unicorn pony tail.  Abby did say that my hair was way too short and crunchy.