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!