Oregon City, Oregon - Week 17 - April 22- April 28, 2019

Remember last week's description of what the kids play after school?

Here is Abby in her Pioneer costume.  It was a difficult game for Abby and Clara to play because there was some confusion as to what pioneer girls should wear when they are traveling with the wagon trains.  Jessica and Bev need to find their Pioneer Day costumes and help out their girls.



Jude loves to play landscape worker



Ruby prefers to play Aquanaut



I like "throw the wood into the basement" using the new concrete walkways"



The exciting event for the week was that Evan's mission call had come.  He got his email on Tuesday, sometime during the day, and revealed the destination at a festive gathering that evening at 8:30













Yep - there it is - Buenos Aires, Argentina.  He reports to the MTC in Mexico City on August 20th.  The two years of high school Spanish will now prove their worth.  We are all excited for him!



On Friday four of us headed to Smith Rock State Park - Jenn, Jessica, Bev, and me.  The purpose was to scout out the trail that the Laurels, on their High Adventure, will take.  Also to look at the KOA Park where they will spend two nights, and the boating facility where they will board their party boats for their day of water frivolity.

The trail was four miles long.  The first two miles were simple "up and down" along the river.  Then we came to Misery Ridge which was one mile UP and one mile DOWN - the trail has a fitting name.









We dared Bev to climb the tree.







Here is Monkey Face - a well named point of interest.  When we came up behind it, later on on the hike, we could see two people sitting in the monkey's mouth.



Now the misery began



Bev was not on the monkey's head






Lots of little tiny caves where the wind and rain had done their magic.  Just like people in Bulgaria wrote names of loved ones and stuck the strips of paper into the niches of the walls of monasteries, hikers had balanced small stones in the tiny caves.





At the top and then down and back to the car.







We ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Madras - we were famished.  I only had one leg cramp on the way home.....pretty good.

In Webelos Scouts we have been working on map reading and orienteering skills with our scouts.  Saturday was the culmination of three previous activities we had had.  It was the Columbia River Orienteering Club Scout-O at McIver Park.

Along with Ethan Hamblin and Dalen Hair

Oregon City Oregon, Week 16 - April 15- April 21, 2019

When the grandchildren come over after school for snacks and stuff, they usually end up playing their own made up game.  Sometimes it's "Mermaids", "Unicorns", "Pioneers", "Survivor".  This week Clara and Abigail played "Exercise Moms".







Tuesday was Dad's birthday, and we went to breakfast at the Redland Cafe where we got really yummy corned beef hash.



Then in the evening he received his gift of the 'perfect' tool set from his children.  He swears he will never loan a tool again or will always put all his tools back after using (On a side note...a socket was found in the washing machine and quietly put back into the tool box)





Preparatory to driving to Idaho I spent an entire day cleaning the truck.  It had carried way too much sand, gravel, and bark chips, not to mention people wearing muddy boots.  But afterwards, it looks pretty good.





Gretchen had invited us to a 'grand event' at Gafney Lane Elem School.  She was so excited...we were too.  There were three 'stations'.  The book fair - yes we got her a book with 3-D pictures of cats, a visit to the classroom where we all filled out questionnaires asking our favorite things, and the playground.







I started to clean out another area on the west property line behind the canopy.   What a mess.  Corrugated sheet metal, buried and half rotten fiberglass sheeting.  Wait until I finish the area!!





Friday morning we left for Oakley, Idaho.  Sister Haley Critchfield, one of the young missionaries we got to know really well while we were in Astana, had returned home and was going to be speaking in Sacrament meeting.  We went to join her and also hoped that other young missionaries from Kaz would be there too.

We departed for Oakley on Friday and had an uneventful trip except for an incident at dusk somewhere in Eastern Oregon,  It was raining, and people kept flashing their lights as they passed us.  Dad finally had the presence of mind to think that there may be something wrong with the truck and pulled over into a flat area in the parking lot of a closed motel.  And yes, something was the matter.  In our jostling the camper to get the camper properly fitted in the bed of the truck, we inadvertently unplugged the lights which connect the tail lights to the back of the camper..  Dang!  There was only one solution which was to completely remove the camper, find the plug, and determine the problem.  The plug was not just removed from the plug in, but the wires on both ends of the plug had been detached.  I was so proud of dad....with his Swiss army knife, a mini flashlight, and the training he got in the army, he calmly reattached the wires, and we were on our way again.



We arrived in Oakley Saturday afternoon and were welcomed by this sign which incidentally is across the street from Haley Critchfield's grandmother's house where we parked the truck for the duration of our stay.



And there is a geocache tucked into the base of the sign.



Oakley is an old Mormon pioneer city with an interesting history.  Here is a blurb from Wikipedia

The city was named for William Oakley, the proprietor of a 19th-century stagecoach station located at a spring currently located about 2 miles west of the present town-site known as Oakley Meadows. David B. Haight, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was born in Oakley. The small hamlet has served as home to a surprising number of famous Americans. The former governors of Utah and Massachusetts can trace their stock to Oakley. Jon Huntsman of Utah is the grandson of David B. Haight, above, and Mitt Romney, of Massachusetts is the son of another famous Oakley-ite, George Romney. Yet another Oakley Romney, Marion G. Romney, was a Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


Oakley has become recognized worldwide for its Middle Mountain quarries of Rocky Mountain quartzite building stone known as Oakley Stone. Quarry operators ship out thousands of tons a month to locations around the globe.

Today Oakley is often visited for its annual Pioneer Days celebrations,^[8] as well as its historic Victorian homes.^[9]

David Critchfield drove us all around the town and out into the country.  He waved at everyone, and when I asked if he knew everyone, he said, "Yeah, I know everyone, I've lived here my entire life".  David's family used to own 5000 acres of farm land, but it was divided up by three brothers and so now he takes care of 1500 acres.  

Here are potatoes being planted

Really neat old buildings in 'downtown.

This was a ZCMI store

and this was the first bank

This is the grade school which David attended.  It had been remodeled into a very large residence.

Beautiful old buildings

This is David B. Haight's childhood home....by the way, we are cousins with a common grandfather from the 1600's.  And...Mitt Romney and I are cousins with a common grandfather from the 1600's.

Saturday evening we ate dinner with the Critchfields and a bunch of their relatives who had come for the weekend.  We were invited to go to their son's Senior Prom with them....what?? They told us that for the Senior Prom, all of the families also go and visit and dance, etc.  So, I asked if it's like a Community Prom....yes.  We didn't go - Dad didn't want to dance..ha

Sunday morning we went to the church just down the road about a half mile.  There are three wards in Oakley (population is about 800)

It wasn't too reverent in the chapel with all of guests and relatives.  Here are the five missionaries from Astana

me, Dad, Colton Bullock, Maren Symmons, and Hannah Cantrell

After Sacrament, there was a traffic jam in the halls, and we never made it to the next meeting.  So we went back the the house and just talked with each other to catch up on the latest.  Sister Kendra Berry has joined us by now.,

Here we are with the Critchfield family.  David is about 6'7"

After the yummy Easter dinner pot luck, we loaded up and headed home.  We stopped in Twin Falls to visit Kendra Berry and her family.  And we stopped at Shoshone Falls which was spectacular!  All these years of going back and forth on I-84, we'd never seen the falls.

Our souvenir from the trip was for Warren.  Seventeen cartons of Diet Doctor Pepper Ten

Next week, Evan will find out where he has been called for his mission.