Week 1 - Oregon City, Oregon - January 1 to January 11, 2026

Really - it's hard to switch to a new year.....the first photos are really from the 31st but they "belong_ in 2026.

Wednesday, Dec 31 - New Year's Eve - Steve Smith came over to help me cut up the HUGE maple that fell over in an ice storm that happened ...maybe in 2018.  The tree is so big that I knew I could never do it, but.....Steve with his big saw could!  I asked him months ago if he could help, and on this Wednesday, he said the could come.  LUCKLY...Archer was a willing helper.  The tree is in Far West Sector and it fell to the north...over the property line...and was in a spot impossible to work on.  But, as part of the land development to the north, a Bobcat, with a grinder, was brought in and used to grind up all of the brush to the south and our property line.  With the brush gone, it was my opportunity to cut the blackberries on the ridge and make a roadway down to the wood and thus be able to pull it up.

Steve started cutting and Archer lugged the wood up the slope and made pile for me.

And they made piles of "rounds" down at the bottom of the slope.

Friday - January 2, 2026 - I de-decorated the tree.  It was the nicest one we've had..for years.

In the afternoon, along with Warren and Whitney and Holland and Copeland and Jane, we headed north to Seattle to go the the Quad gymnastics meet with U of Washington, Cal Berkley, UCLA, and Oregon State.  The plan was to drive to Seattle, go to the airplane museum and then to our hotel for the night.

The airplane museum was really interesting.  We got to go inside most of them.

Dinner was at a Costco...whose parking lot was very difficult to navigate.

Saturday - first stop was the big area by the Space Needle....there is a big discovery museum - like OMSI.

Late afternoon we headed to the UofW  Husky stadium for the meet.  Only have one photo of the kids but can't use it because if is HEIC.  And, I took no photos of the meet...after a while, all the photos look the same, and besides, Jade is a coach now not a competitor.

 Sunday -  a great photo of a rainbow.

Sunday night we celebrated Jamie's second birthday.

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A photo of Zelenksy to end the week.