Big Update - Sorry it is so late.

We’ve been terrible at updating lately. I blame it on Julie – she’s not sitting here to defend herself, so I’ll just blame her. I now know how to edit the blog - so it is really Doug's fault because he would never show me how to write on the Blog - so there! We’ve had an eventful couple of weeks since our last update. We had the State Meet; we had family come here to Idaho, and then we traveled to Oregon to clean out our stuff from the Mount Angel house and to bless Jaxon.

State Meet:

Jeff came into the State Meet seeded #1. He struggled with his form all through warm-ups and never seemed to settle into a good rhythm throughout the competition. He released the discus very, very high and just couldn’t adjust it downward. Jeff has never had difficulty in competitions his whole life. We have seen him literally dozens of times pull it together and win on his last throw. He just couldn’t do that this time. He ended up placing third. Jeff was very, very disappointed. I honestly think that he had more pressure on himself than he had ever felt before. He had a huge cheering section. Jason, Lahia, Jaxon, Jer, Stefani, Kohen, Vivian, Mark, Danna, Angie, MJ, Emmy, Julie, myself, and numerous people from Camas. In all there were close to 20 people. If we are to be honest with ourselves, he is a sophomore; he will be back two more times. He should be proud to go to State and proud that he was the only sophomore, amongst all seniors on the stand. We are all proud of him!

Family here in Idaho:

We have always felt that Mark, Danna, and their kids are simply an extension of our family. We were glad they traveled all that way to see Jeff throw and to follow us home and spend some time with us. It was great – we love them all. It was great that Julie’s mother, Vivian came. The day she got ready to come, Matt got sick. She didn’t want to miss Jeff’s competition, so she left him home and drove the entire way by herself. There’s a reason our kids have always spoken so lovingly about her. She shows her love at every turn.

We had Jaxon and Kohen come as well – oh yea, they brought their parents with them. I can’t even begin to explain how fun it is being a grandparent. Both Julie and I love those two little boys immensely.


Back to Oregon:

Jeff traveled home with the kids and has been there ever since. Julie and I drove home with Vivian last Thursday night and got home at about 3:00am Friday morning. We went to the house and began pulling our stuff out of the house. We all expressed how much we loved the house and we all hated to see it go. We talked about re-building another one, but not for Julie and I – there is just too much house there for us now, but if we built one here for one of the kids, that would be great.

Julie and I are home now – Jeff is still in Oregon and will be, spending time with both Kohen and Jaxon (and their parents too, I guess.) We miss him every day and we miss the rest of the family as well. By the way, Mette is going to be here in exactly 50 days.