Birch Bay June, 2008

A few years ago Teri and I purchased a time share through Club Regina and have had opportunity to use it in Los Cabos, Jackson Hole, and Birch Bay. The locations owned are in wonderful places and we hope to travel to many more. We love that some of the locations are very close to home with the closest being Birch Bay, Washington next door to Canada. This past June we wanted to go visit Don, Lara and family in Abbitsford B.C. so we decided to go to the Sand Castle Inn in Birch Bay. That location offers a quick hop across the boarder to visit with our family and the inn itself is wonderful and very comfortable.

While there we visited the Peace Arch on the boarder of Washington and British Columbia, something I had done in my youth but had never done with Teri.

Don and Lara came down to stay a couple of days with us at the Inn where we had fun barbecuing and playing on the beach.

One odd thing about the Sand Castle Inn is that some of the bedrooms do not have curtains. These picture shows the extent taken to block out the light in Don and Lara's room.

Sophie

No words required.

Two family reunions

Family Reunion:

In August, Donny was flying home from Azerbaijan where he is serving in the Peace Corps for a couple of years. It is such a momentous occasion for him to be coming home for three weeks that Teri arranged a family reunion for her kids and families. On the most part that reunion turned out to be fantastic. Richie drove in from Idaho with his family, Traci and family flew in from Utah, Christy and her family flew in from Michigan and of course Donny from Azerbaijan and the Oregon families drove in and Bob Woodward, Teri’s step dad came up in his motor home. It was the longest and most pleasant visit from Bob we have ever had. Don, Teri’s kid’s dad was also there with his wife Kit. One highlight of the reunion was a trip up to the Great Wolf Lodge in Washington State. We stayed two days and one night at the lodge with water play for the day of check in and check out. What a great place for a family event. Another major part of the event was family portrait time. Teri hired a photographer to come do a formal group portrait of all of us and of each family group. Sadly Marty, Christy’s husband had to fly back to Michigan unexpectedly so was not in the pictures.

All went very smoothly during the reunion and Teri did not try to do everything or prepare two or three meals per day for the whole thing and happily they all pitched in to do their parts making it better for all. I had built a play structure in the yard for our grand kids that kept them occupied for much of the time. Then of course we have our large downstairs set up as a grandkid paradise.

Father's Day Family Reunion

This has been a year for family reunions. The first, bringing all my six kids together, was a total surprise perpetrated by Teri. What a surprise it was and so absolutely fantastic. I had no idea that anything was in the works although if I were a more suspicious person I would have seen some clues that might have alerted me to something in the offing.

Teonei was going to stay with us for a couple of days on either side of going to a home school conference in Seattle. Kandle decided she would go to a day of the two day conference with Teonei so she came to our home to stay the night as well. I had no idea that anything else was planned. Teonei then told me that Rajesh, her husband was going to come for the weekend so we went to the ariport to pick him and his boys up. I was excited to see them and have them stay with us. We got the airport and drove into the arriving passenger pick-up area when Teonei said she saw them. I didn't but pulled over to the curb. I got out of the truck and looked over the crowd of people for Rajesh. Teonei said she saw them but I still couldn't. I saw but did not pay attention to a man with a hat on walking toward me with a huge smile on his face. I kept looking past him for Rajesh and then noticed that the woman with the hatted mad was none other than Sarah, Ryan's wife. Instantly I realized that if that is Sarah, the guy she is with must be Ryan. What a surprise. We greeted and he told me that Teri had flown him out to be with me for Father's Day. That was such a surprise and if nothing else happened I would have been thrilled but that wasn't the end of it.

We arrived home to find Don and Laura hiding in the laundry room. Another surprise and now even more happy. How could it get any better. Well it did because Teri had arranged to have Jason come with his daughter Zoe and his girl friend and her two sons. He brought Sebastian and Chris, Kandle's husband came with their two girls. It was so great to have all of them there but sad that Rajesh and sons did not get to come. I hope to have them all back with no one missing in a year or two.


It was a fantastic reunion with cousins running around and brothers and sisters getting caught up. It was truly the best father's day I have ever had.

Thank you Teri

Global Warming

Do I think there is a warming trend of the earth? Most certainly. Any of you who are about my age probably remember being taught in school about the cyclical nature of the earth's climate. We were taught that the earth had once been tropical and extremely hot followed by a period of extreme cold with glaciers far into the south. We were taught that the glaciers were receding and that the polar ice caps were melting due to the earths trend toward the next tropical era. So what is new? We where taught this back in the 1950's. It was taught to us as an unavoidable fact of nature that would repeat itself through many millennia. No one thought to blame it on any act of man because it was understood that it is in fact happening and had been since the last ice age.

Now though, there is a human trend to blame we humans for the natural phenomenon. There of course are those who accept this idea completely without any question and those who don't believe that anything man can do can harm our environment. I certainly do appreciate all that has been accomplished in improving our water and air quality after many years with pollutants being unceremoniously dumped. I give credit for much of the more responsible attitude toward our environment to the extreme tree huggers who have created a balance between the apposing extremes perpetrated by unrestrained industry with thought primarily on the bottom line. I am grateful to both extremes with the balance of an industrial nation and clean environment for which we will benefit greatly.

I suspect that it is human nature to want to find a human cause for global warming rather than to just accept it as an inevitable act of nature. To simply accept it would mean that we are in a sense accepting defeat. We know we can't fight nature so it is much easier to convince ourselves that this problem is man made, therefore allowing us to believe that we have the power fix it. If we convince ourselves that it is caused by man we can at least go to sleep at night knowing that we are doing all we can. It is not human nature to just give up and accept defeat so psychologically we must lay blame so we can feel good, knowing we are doing all we can to maintain the earth as we want it to be, not perhaps as nature dictates.

I do believe that on relatively small scale we do have the power to harm nature. Our impact on the health of our waterways and atmosphere are excellent examples of how we can most certainly disrupt nature. It is amazing how we continue, despite our knowledge of what we are doing, to pollute our rivers at levels that do affect wildlife. Even the safety salmon that we value commercially isn't enough incentive to use even more wisdom.

I do feel that the belief that global warming is caused by man could be, as indicated above, our inability to admit that our earth, as we have come to know it over a very short period of its existence, is simply trudging along on its natural phase between ice and tropical ages.

I have also considered that it was a great ploy to get people in mass to be interested in cleaning up our earth. Environmentalists have had a hard time getting the masses to join them in a serious thrust to be environmentally conscious. What could possibly be more effective than to convince people that the earth is heating up, the coastal areas will be flooded and we will be living in a climate too hot to sustain our preferred style of life. Convince people that we humans caused it and that we can fix it. It doesn't need to matter if it is happening anyway and that we didn't cause it and that we can't do a thing to stop it. Pretty brilliant actually if this was really a plan to make people more environmentally conscious. It doesn't change the fact that global warming is real but it has had the desired result of more attention being paid to environmental concerns.

I don't have any doubt that there is a global warming. Did we humans cause it? I doubt it even though we probably have minute and temporary impact. I applaud continued efforts at responsible management of our resources allowing us and generations to follow enjoy a clean healthy environment with a strong forward thinking industry even as the earth relentlessly marches toward the next tropical age.

Can you belive this was April?

This is a shot of our home on the morning of April 19. Over the past ten or fifteen years it has been unusual to get snow for more than two or three days per winter and that, usually in January. This year we had several times of three or four inches of snow and then in April we have had three or four days as shown in the picture above. This has definitely been a colder winter and spring than usual.

Busy busy busy and our dogs

Life has not been boring of late.  That's for sure. The last two posts on this blog have been sadly neglected with my not having posted most of the pictures of Mum with comments and the post about the Cheethirala visit not getting any pictures.  I hope to get back to those soon.  We have had our challenges in our business and are coming out smelling like a rose rather than like doggy poopoo as Emmie might say.  

Teri has been taking knitting lessons to learn how to knit socks.  I find it absolutely fascinating and don't even begin to understand how it is done.  The crochet blankets she makes are always getting better and more complicated and she loves to give them away to others, spreading the love she puts in them with every knit or pearl.  (I think those might be the right words.) 

I have been invited and accepted into the TVartists, (Tualitin Valley) association and am now displaying my art in the downtown Hillsboro Gallery.  That's kind of fun. I am currently looking into using a printer who will do the printing for me.  They will then do the multiple prints I need for sale without my taking all the time to print them on my own machine.  Besides my Epson Pro 4800 is currently on the fritz.  I have a guy looking at it who will let me know if it will cost an arm and a leg or just an arm to fix.  

Over this past year or so we have had the receptionist at my office watch our cute little dog Kiwi while we travel.  She had truly bonded with both Angie and her husband who began to ask when they could have Kiwi come back to visit.  They loved to take her hiking to the top of Multnomah Falls and other places.  Kiwi would come back dirty but very happy.  I had been taking Kiwi to work with me two or three days per week making it a very familiar second home for her with Angie as her favorite Auntie.  Kiwi though remained very afraid of all the other people there of which there are many.  So as things progressed it became apparent that Kiwi had bonded with Angie very well. At work if Angie and I were walking down the hall Kiwi would be with us and as I went one way and Angie the other, guess which one of us she would follow.  Broke my heart.  We let Angie take Kiwi home for longer stints until it became clear that is where Kiwi preferred to be so we transferred ownership of Kiwi to her new Mommie.  Kiwi comes back to visit and we get pictures in emails of her.  

Now on to our new puppy Sophia.  She is truly the dog Teri has been longing for over the past fifteen years of our marriage.  The only itty-bitty thing Teri would prefer would be if Sophie could be a miniature but I think she is a perfect size.  Baring any crazy things such as her deciding that the carpet is the the best place to poop or that all the wires in the house are chew toys she looks like a good long term companion.  She did chew through one computer power cord but only the once as a little puppy. House training was the easiest I have ever experienced. At this point she is the easiest dog we have ever had to train and we haven't even really tried to train.  She just learns by wanting to know what we want, doing all she can to please us.  

There are those who feel that our going through four or five dogs in fifteen years is irresponsible. Oh well.  To each their own way of feeling.  Just to give my personal feelings, wrong or right. (Can't be wrong or right though cause they are feelings.) Our first dog Misty was a great little dog and had a great personality with whom it was so much fun to go boating.  I really would have preferred that we had kept her even though I think Schnauzers are one the strangest looking breeds going.  There are certainly worse.  Wiener dogs are near the bottom of the totem pole.  (My opinion. If you love those little long, short legged cigars with beady eyes I am happy for you.) Then there is the bull dog!  Good thing there is somebody to love all God's little strange critters.  Back to Misty.  She was truly a great little dog but we had our Great Dane disaster. A great idea that turned out bad all the way around.  I loved Sequoia and still miss her but she was the ruination of Misty and our cat of that time.  I still feel guilty about that since it was me who so much wanted a Great Dane, having had one in my younger adult years. That dog, Tasha, was the best I had ever had. We made what turned out to be the worst possible choice in that we gave Misty and the cat away in the attempt to keep the Dane.  That simply did not work out so we found a new home for Sequoia that turned into another sad story.  So we were without a dog and I believed I really was done.  Finally we found little Kiwi who we really enjoyed despite all her weirdness.  The very best thing about Kiwi was how she was with little kids.  Our grandkids loved to push, pull, jump on and just plain rough-house with her. The strangest thing about her is that she was afraid of just about everything else including a cardboard box.  If I ever wanted to keep Kiwi out of a certain part of the house I only had to put a cardboard box or the vacuum cleaner in the doorway and she would not venture past. Then we visited our friends Allen and Char in Calgary who have the best little dogs, a pair of Caviler King Charles Spaniels.   Teri fell in love with them and began a quest to learn more about them.  As she learned more she knew this was probably the dog for her.  She found  a reputable breeder not far from our home, went to visit them and chose a beautiful little dog, Sophia who we call Sophie.  We hoped that Kiwi would get along with her and in time we thought it would work out fine.  At fist Kiwi acted like we had brought the bubonic plague into our home.  Gradually Kiwi warmed up to Sophie even allowing her to cuddle up and sleep with her from time to time.  However it never developed into a friendship with Kiwi just being tolerant of the little pest.  When the opportunity to allow Kiwi to live with Angie came up we had many long and hard thoughts, considerations, and misgivings about the situation.  As it turned out our choice was the best of all scenarios with Kiwi where she is the happiest and Teri having a dog that is truly her match.  There are some that would have me feel guilty about letting Kiwi go but all I can say is I believe we did the right thing and I have no misgivings about it.