Are You Listening, Haley?

New Year's Message for Haley (Mom really loves you, really, she does!).

And here's your message from Dad (he loves you too!).

Haley in Concert!

Here are Mom and Dad, Haley and Annie at "The Grotto", a Catholic Holy Site in Portland, Oregon. Haley was a choir member for a 45 minute performance in the sanctuary. The choir and musicians traveled in one bus while us parents, family, and onlookers traveled in another bus. The theme during Christmas is "Festival of Lights" and they did not disappoint!

Me, too. I want to be in the picture!

Official Christmas Picture Posted.

Okay, THE official Christmas picture. Merry Christmas, everyone, and best wishes for a healthy and prosperous New Year!

Hot Christmas Models!

Once a year, Annie and Haley go to Annie's friend's house to do their "Christmas Modeling". Annie says this might be Haley's last year, seems she is getting so pretty she is making the other ladies think their own pictures aren't so good...

We Visit the New Quiznos in Forest Grove

So we received this $2.00 off coupon in the mail from Quiznos and decided as a family we'd check it out. After church we headed over and Annie snapped a picture. It was our first time trying the sandwiches. Haley and I split a honey mustard chicken and bacon sandwich. Annie enjoyed a bowl of broccoli cheese soup. I'd give it a two thumbs up! It is rare to get a nationally recognized franchise business all the way over here in Forest Grove. But with Pacific University only one block over I'll bet it is a good business decision. We'll be back!

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The Christmas Tree is Ready...

Haley and Annie spent the week getting the Christmas tree ready. We have one big container of saved ornaments and I think it is those saved memories from each year that become part of our new Christmas experience.

And this is Haley one year ago!

Haley on Grandma's Birthday...

Haley on Grandma's birthday!


And using lumapix fotofusion we have a nice photo card to put in with Christmas cards!

Tribute to Kharen

What better way to begin December and the Christmas season than a tribute to a loving and sweet niece in the Philippines! I met Kharen in 1999 when Annie, Haley and I went to the Philippines to celebrate Annie's littlest sister, Whilma's, wedding. In these photos you can see Kharen as a bridesmaid and a few assorted pictures over the years. The most recent pictures are from August of this summer when everyone was helping Lola Pitts (top right) enjoy her birthday.

And why a tribute to Kharen? Well, today I received my very first text message from the Philippines and it was from Kharen. Apparently text messaging is a big thing over there and she has recently been texting wife Annie's cell phone. I know little of texting (or cell phones!) but Annie showed me a website that would let me text using our computer (www.chikka.com) so I gave it a shot and this morning I had a text message from dear niece Kharen!

So "thank you, thank you, thank you", Kharen. You are still a true sweetheart! And since this is on the internet, available for all the world to see, please let me know if there are any eligible bachelors interested in meeting Kharen. Word has it she is still available and looking for love! At age 24 the clock is beginning to tick very loudly! LOL

Bless you, Kharen.

Water Gives Life

This morning as I walked out the door on the way to take Haley to school I looked down and saw the most wonderful collection of dew on the plants. If you click the picture and look to the top left area you can see a small light show. God delights us with His creations!

The Basketball Season Begins!

Just back from her first game of the season. Haley was a joy to watch and has been working hard to learn all she can about being a good team player. We went to the Gilkey International school (folks were speaking french there). The team lost but, wow, a lot of potential for improvement! Great job, Haley!

A Peaceful Thankgiving Weekend

After a fairly formal Thursday's Thanksgiving meal at the parent's place,
This little table layout is just perfect for Annie, Haley and I. Some Turkey,
Dressing, Cranberry Sauce, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy and Beans.
Perfect!

A Blanket for Whilma...

Annie recently spoke with her mom in the Philippines and she asked if Annie could keep an eye out for a nice blanket for Annie's youngest sister, Whilma. As you can see, Annie found a beautiful blanket! Sometime after Christmas Annie hopes to have this blanket in a box of goodies to be sent to the Philippines. So about February it should arrive and be much used and appreciated!

Fuchias Into The House

Freezing weather finally predicted. Time to give the more delicate flowers a place to stay! Tomorrow the fuchias will be taken to the garage and will hopefully weather the coming winter with little harm.

A Birthday Trip to the BEACH!

Although a bit cool and breezy, it was still a wonderful day to walk along the beach!

This was yesterday. Mom, Dad, Annie, Haley and Lori all joined me in celebrating my 52nd birthday by going to Lincoln City. Our first stop? The Buffet at the Chinook Winds Casino! Yumm. They always have the best salmon. It was an excellent lunch.

Next, while everyone else did their gambling thing (Annie came home a winner!), Haley and I traipsed over to the Arcade and dropped some quarters on the games. Haley took me on in air hockey and it ended up a tie. She "rode" a motorcycle and spent a good amount of time at the pinball machines. (used to be machines were a quarter a game, now fifty-cents and up! Yikes).

After that, we went down onto the beach and walked a while. We saw some fishermen (isn't it weird, fishermen seem to be happy in any kind of weather!) and sat for a bit on some rocks. We got this picture and then moved to the folk's van where we waited for everyone else.

All in all, a very nice day to celebrate a birthday and to have some fun!

Time for Walnuts!

Dad says walnuts need to be dried for 12-17 hours in the fruit dryer. Luckily, there is still enough good weather left here in Oregon right now to get those walnuts gathered up!

Let's Party! Filipino Style!

Filipino parties are always so much fun! Wife Annie made new friends with Perlie, another filipina, and we got invited to their house warming party. No pictures of Haley because she spent last night and today at friend, Holly's house...

The Generosity of Apple Trees (and parents!)

Wowie! Mom and Dad have an extra food dryer (imagine, this dryer is made out of an old dishwashing machine!) and several highly productive apple trees. The tree-fall apples alone filled two big boxes and would go to waste so we volunteered to put the diswasher to the test.... Gotta say, so far they look delicioso!!! Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Testing BlogJet

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It's a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com/

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -- Pablo Picasso

A Personal Message from "The Keeper of the Blog"

The Hardest Working Man I Have Ever Known!

(click to enlarge) A typical fall day for Dad...

The Beautiful "Weed"...Oxallis!

A company called Lumapix makes an oustanding collage maker that can be used in many, many different ways. This collage took less than ten minutes! I saw a picture I wanted and thought of using some other flowers for the background and then put the text on. Done! Love it!

Hey! Some More Wedding Pictures!

(emailed to me by Mom this morning. Thanks, Mom!). Here you can see Annie, Haley, Mom and Dad, and Louise, the mother of the bride! These pictures were taken with a Sony and, man oh man, that camera is good for getting nice pictures!

A wedding in a little white church...

A very, very beautiful wedding today. Cherish, my cousin Jerry and Louise's daughter, got married in a little white church in Helvetia, Oregon. Annie and I rode with Mom and Dad. My sister Lori came to the wedding too (in fact Haley rode to the wedding with her). There was a reception afterwards in Aloha. I was impressed with how simple the couple kept their wedding but it still had a lot of class. Good luck to you both, Cherish and Bradley!

Haley! Shame on you!!

Okay, just for the record, Haley is posing for this picture. No good habits were harmed in the making of this entry.

Sneaking a picture of Dad

Genetically alike, Dad enjoys having his picture taken almost as much as I do (not!). Here he is as we load up a beautiful bedroom set. Mom says they have used the same bedroom furniture since 1952, so I guess it is about time they got updated!

I helped Dad load this up from an estate sale in Forest Grove on Wilamina and while there we saw an old outdoor clothes hanger. It had a broken pipe and was set aside as though to be thrown away. The folks at the sale let me have it for free and Dad helped me fix the pipe when we got home (you can see it in the back of the pick up, folded up on the right side). Annie has given me permission to put this dryer up this next spring. Standby for pictures.

In case you don't have a recent photo of me...

Final picking of the folks' ancient prune tree. It's estimated this great tree is older than I am... 50+ years of faithful prune service. (see two pictures down for a picture of one of the twenty bowls of prunes from this tree) Sadly, Dad is planning on taking this tree out. The little tree you see to the left in the picture is a prune tree and Dad says when it begins producing the old tree will have to go.

Thanks, Haley for getting this photogenic shot!

Remember 6th Grade Projects??

Volcanoes, Glaciers, Deserts! Haley had a great time making this project. She got her grandpa to cut a board and her dad to help make dough (yummy smelling apple koolaid for the green dough!) and then put together this geography project using a sketch she had made. Good job, Haley!

Three Cheers for Canon! The Camera is Back!

Prunes, Prunes, the fruit that gives you tunes!

So it's not a very oooo-la-la picture. It *is* the first picture since we got the camera back yesterday afternoon. And the picture is fine. We finally got back the same camera we sent in for repair in August. Now we can kick up our photo ops a notch!

PS The prunes are delicious. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

The Mt. Angel Octoberfest...

The expressway to completing all required volunteer hours?... Mt. Angel Octoberfest! (and a lot of fun too!) Thursday, September 16th through Sunday, September 19th.

Thursday- 8:00 am to 6:30 pm (10.5 hours) p/u coffee pot from Dana @ school, work.
Friday- 8:00 am to 7:00 pm (11.0 hours) p/u corn, deliver and work.
Saturday- 8:00 am to 6:30 pm (10.5 hours) p/u corn, deliver and work.
Sunday- 8:30 am to 6:30 pm (10.0 hours) work.

These 42 hours in addition to hours already served this month (Applesauce making and Parent's Club meeting) put Annie and I over the 50 hours required per year. From here on out volunteer hours will actually be "volunteered". Thanks to Mom and Dad for helping watch Haley. Much appreciated!!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

This is your day, Dad! Happy 74th Birthday! The weather is holding up so I hope you can enjoy the day as you planned... flying RC planes with your buddies and then a nice lunch!

Another Bisquick Event by Haley...

Haley is once again proving what a good cook she is! Today we got apple cinnamon muffins. And today is the first day Haley was in Verboort's choir. The children sing beautifully!

A note on the muffins: need more apples! Can hardly taste them! Still, they did turn out good. Thanks, Haley!

What is "Brain Gym"? I kind of found out!

Curiouser and curiouser... "Brain Gym" presentation from 6:30 - 8:30 pm at the Harris Center was most interesting. A sweet lady named Georgia has a private practice and also teaches classes on "Brain Gym" at Portland State University. Way too much information to try to share here but basically she teaches that there are physiological counterpoints to stimulating and improving brain function. I was skeptical but by the end I can see possibilities and am thankful I attended. Not heavily attended, a smattering of teachers and parents. Everyone was nice and I hope to hear that "Brain Gym" gets some use in the classes!

"I wanted to hear your HEART!"

Couldn't help myself. Mother just sent some cartoons about the health care here in the US and this one really makes me laugh. Enjoy!

Anyone for Zucchini?

Zuccini Pie Day! Yay!!! Haley likes cooking and today she made zucchini pie using bisquick. The giant zucchini came from the folk's beautiful garden. (The only bump in the road was grating that onion!) Haley did super! The pie came out of the oven a golden brown, so beautiful we decided to not cut it until Annie had a chance to see how well Haley did!...She loved it! It turned out so good and those zucchinis are just so BIG we made another one to take to Mom and Dad's.



PS. While hunting for recipes I found a real afficionado of zucchini:

THE BEST ZUCCHINI RECIPE EVER!
1 bushel zucchini
1 raincoat
1 pair of sunglasses
A moderately fast car

DIRECTIONS:
-Go to a busy parking lot. Drive around until you find an unlocked
car.
-Put the zucchini in the back seat and drive away FAST before you
are discovered!

Back to School Means, "Back to Meetings!"

First Meeting of the School year! 7pm - 8:40pm(GOOD NEWS: Parent Club Meeting attendance counts toward volunteer hours!). Lotsa nice people, many different projects for the year. Very upbeat. Haley likes the school and it looks like the administration is good to work with too.
Haley came along and helped in the next room watching kids of parents in the meeting. She enjoyed spending time with her new classmates.

First Day of Sept., First Day of School, First Day of Volunteer Work!

It's the first day of September and I feel since it is Haley's first day of school (6th grade, 11 yrs. old) it should have some notice given.

This is also the first day of volunteer work given at Verboort. The very popular Verboort Sausage Dinner is held the first Saturday in November. There are several volunteer opportunities and with 50 hours to log, well, I may be seeing quite a few aspects of this dinner.

Today was applesauce making day. I logged 7 hours. My mother, bless her, was there and I got to see some folks I haven't seen for a long time. At the end I think they said they had 67 five-gallon buckets of applesauce. Oh, how I wish I could have taken some pictures!

The next "event" is sauerkraut making. I'm told the younger folks come to it as it is held on a Saturday.

PS Haley loves her new school. She has two teachers, Mr. Marc and Miss Gathright. There are 8 girls and 3 boys, a big change from St. Francis. This is the first time in Seven years we didn't have an opening day photograph. I hope the altar serving picture from Sunday will suffice.

We Say Goodbye to St. Francis Church...

Today was Haley's last day of altar serving at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Roy. The folks were kind enough to let us borrow their camera and I am tinkering with a program from Lumapix called Photo Fusion. It is pretty neat. (Gotta go! This camera has to be returned!!)

Sunday, a day for friends...

Okay, it's Sunday. A day for family, friends, relaxation. Here is Annie with two of her friends (Brenda, left, and Dina, in the middle). This was taken on a Sunday during our mini-vacation to Crater Lake. (We were enjoying lunch at a picnic table on the shaded side of the concession building. By the way, the pizza-by-the-slice was delicious and only $1.50! Great bargain!)

Tonight, Annie, Haley and I get to finally see, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"! Since we are always on a budget we particularly like going to the Forest Theatre. For $20 we can get a punch card of twenty admissions. Most evenings it's a double feature so by waiting a few weeks after release we can find some nice movies to go to for $.50 each! The folks over there even let all Pacific University students in for free! I sure hope they sell lotsa hot dogs and such to keep going. We love that place!!

A Day at Barview, Oregon

Well, this was two weeks ago during our camera blackout period and Haley's Grandma sent us this little composite of some pictures so I want to share it. The folks, Annie, Haley and I went to Barview, just North of Garibaldi. I had camped there as a child but my only memories are of a rocky jetty that protects boats coming and going into the bay there and some scrub brush. I didn't realize just how nice the campground and beach is there. Now we hope to return there soon to do a little camping!

From Bar-B-Q 2 Pizza Party 2 SleepOver!

Big Day (and night) for Haley! She got invited to a sleepover with two of her new classmates. Before that she'll be going to a pizza party for the Jr. Lifeguards of Forest Grove. (This is Haley's second summer of being a Jr. Lifeguard. This is the first year that she has been an instructor's aid at the pool.)

Yesterday Haley hung out with some of her new classmates at the "back to school bar-b-que" and is thrilled to be making friends so quickly. Her mom and dad (Annie and I) also went to the bbq and busied themselves meeting other parents and signing up for the 50+ hours of required volunteer service. I took care of a big chunk of that by signing up for every day of the four day Mt. Angel "Octoberfest" (Sept. 16 - 19). It'll be a blast! (watch for pictures!)



Above you can see the map of "A", where we live, to "B", where Haley is going to be spending the night. According to Yahoo, Haley will be 4.5 miles away, 8 minutes driving time.

(Follow-up: Haley had a great time at the sleep-over. Two new friends, Robin and Emily. They slept outside in a tent, had smorz, etc. Nice!)

Back to school already?!

Today, Haley gets acquainted with a new school. (Visitation School is in a tiny Dutch parish that is about three minutes from our home). Haley enters the 6th grade and has already made some friends there. Next Wednesday the school year officially begins!

Saga of a little camera...

Well, off goes the Canon A70 camera again. Will we get rid of the dreaded "Pink"?

Monday, August 23rd

: Fedex didn't show up with the mailing label for returning the camera. Another day of shooting lost...

• Tuesday, August 24th: Fedex delivers shipping label at 2:20pm, I get to a Forest Grove shipping shop at 3:00pm and am told the Fedex shipped at 2:00pm and besides, he would charge me $2.00 as a handling fee. Right! I return home disgruntled and call the toll free fedex number and schedule a pickup for tomorrow.

Wednesday, August 25th: 9:30am Fedex picks up the camera.

Wednesday, September 1st: One week gone. Heard nothing.

Wednesday, September 8th: Two weeks. Got a letter yesterday from Canon stating the camera had been received and that at first glance they would fix it at their cost. Said to allow 10 business days from letter's date for receipt of camera. Should receive the camera before September 16th.

Wednesday, September 15th: Three weeks. Start checking after tomorrow.

Friday, September 17th: Check on the camera and find it was put into FedEx yesterday. It is due Monday, September 20th.

Monday, September 20th: Camera arrives and is now working perfectly. No charge by Canon. End of Saga.

Boy! What a disappointment! We sent our little Canon A70 camera in to get the replay switch to work correctly, which it was. But, now all the pictures are wonkers!! Canon says they will try again. Stay posted!
More Canon Test Pictures