New Pictures.

I just wanted to share a new picture we took today.

A Long Over-Due Update!

You’d never know it from our blog, but I honestly do enjoy writing each update – I just never find the time. We’ve had a very busy start to the new school year. With Jeff playing football and Mette playing volleyball, we have an athletic event 3 if not 4 nights a week. The other nights are filled with church and homework. Today is a Saturday and I came in early to work, but I found that my mind was wondering and I having to do the same tasks over and over again because I just don’t have the attention span today. So I gave up and decided to read back through the older posts on everyone’s blogs. It has been a fun morning. I feel re-energized and committed to keep mine updated better.

The two pictures here were taken just outside the front door to my office. You can begin to understand why my mind has wandered so much today; It is incredibly gorgeous outside right now. I feel like I should be spending my time outside, probably taking pictures, instead of sitting inside on one of the last nice Saturdays of the year. Snow is just around the corner, as it is below freezing now in the mornings when Julie and I leave for work.

Jeff's Football:

Jeff's team this year is better than the team last year and he has had a very good season so far. He has played four games so far and he has a total of 511 yards rushing and four TD's. With five games left, he could easily gain over 1,000 yards this season. The really exciting thing is next year. The team only looses 3 seniors, but has a lot of freshman that are coming along and will fill in nicely. We are looking forward to next season with baited breath.

Mette's Volleyball:

Mette arrived here having never played volleyball. The school got a new coach with a long history of winning behind him. The Camas County voleyball team only won 2 matches last year. They have had a very winning season and are improving significantly each week. The very first match this season was against Carey, which the girls lost in 3 straight sets. Last Tuesday the Camas County girls blew Carey off the court, wining 3 of four with scores of 21-25, 25-14, 25-12, 25-15. It was exciting and fun. They have worked hard and Mette is becoming more and more comfortable with the team and the game with each passing day.

My Baby - 27 years.

Here is a picture of my baby. Can you believe this is the mother of four and the grandmother of three? Sorry to get all sappy and drippy on you all, but i think she is more beautiful today than the day I married her 27 years ago. As far as I can tell, she only has one flaw - her cats, but I even tolerate the cats and their annoying habits just so I can live with her and spend time with her. This past year has been incredible; we see each other litterally all day long as we commute to work together, work in the same office together, and then commute back home together. In my personal prayers, I thank God daily for her.

The beauty of Oregon.

I moved to Oregon when I was 15 and have traveled around and through the state many, many times however, I am still awe struck by the diversity and beauty of the state every time I travel in it. Below are just a small sampling of what I love in Oregon. (We took a trip in late July and early August of this past summer.)

The rough and tumble Oregon Coast on a calm, beautiful day. It is even more beautiful on a nasty, stormy day.

The lush green folliage is always filled with abundant life - here is a dragon fly.

Multnomah Falls. The double falls are spectacular.

The Columbia River Gorge looking at Crown Point and on eastward to Beacon Rock.

The Columbia River Gorge is easily one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Below and West of the South Falls at Silver Creek Falls State Park.

Same Falls, closer view.

Here is the South Falls, which you can walk down to and completely under. I'm sure you can see why it is one of my favorite places in Oregon.

Kohen, Jeff and I standing in front of the North Falls at Silver Creek Falls State Park. Mette, Jeff, Kohen and I got to spend the day together walking around the park and looking at the various water falls.

Little City of Rocks - Outside Gooding, Idaho.

When I was younger, many, many pounds lighter, and significantly more stupid than I am today, my oldest brother, Mark and I used to rock climb. I can distinctly remember the day that I decided I was done climbing. Julie and I had moved to southern Califonia and I had met up with a man about my same age in our church that had always wanted to learn to rock climb. We worked for a complete spring and summer gradually climbing harder and harder routes on taller and taller rocks and mountains. Our goal was to climb to the top of Tahquitz, a granite and quartzite moutainous outcropping in the San Jacinto Mountains of Southern California. Finally, we felt we were ready. We chose a fairly simple, yet exposed route up the 900' - 1,000' rock face; studied guide books and pictures and made the trip in the late fall, early winter of 1988.

At about 200' from the base of the rock, a huge granite flake peeled off the mountain with me on it. I pushed myself away from the falling rock peice, which was about the size of a small automobile, so that it wouldn't land on me and I dropped about 35', bouncing off a rock and pine needle covered ledge and slid over the edge to a 100' plus drop. Somehow I had the enough of my senses about me to grab into a deep crack in the rock wall and pulled myself up and onto the ledge i had just bounced off. I watched, horror struck, as the huge boulder that I was on top of only moments learlier continued on down the hill landing with litterally an earth shattering thud and then a crack as it split in two peices about 100' below where I was. When the adrenaline flowing through my body finally subsided, I felt a sting and a pain shoot from my right hip all the way up my spine and into my head. My ears were ringing (and would continue to do so for nearly a week,) and I couldn't lift my head. I laid there for what felt like forever assessing my body and trying to move various body parts until gradually I could move all of my body and I knew I hadn't damaged myself too badly. Laying there, I thought, I have a wife and a family to take care of. I couldn't do that crippled, paralyzed, or even worse, dead. That was when I quite climbing for good.

Anyway, I told you that long story so I could tell you about a place called Little City of Rocks between Gooding, Idaho and Fairfield, Idaho. Mette and I drove there and wandered through the rocks. The entire time I was walking around I kept thinking to myself, "I wish I had know about this when I was a climber." It was spectacularly beautiful. The pictures I have included do not do it justice. You really can't tell the size and sheer exposure of these rocks. When we were climbing actively, Mark and I discovered a incredible and very remote site to climb years ago, called the Menagerie outside of Sweethome, Oregon. It was a series of lava tubes that time and water eventually erroded the earth from away from to expose a handfull of incredibly beautiful climbable rock pillars. At the time, we thought it was the coolest place we had ever seen. The Little City of Rocks is the exact same geologic formation, only ten times larger with litterally a thousand or more possible climbing routes, rocks, and locations. If we had lived and grown up here, I probably would still be rock climbing.

Abandoned Idaho Update.

I haven't included any Abandoned Idaho pictures in quite a while. Here is one new one and one of my favorites. The first is an outhouse all by itself sitting out in a grazing meadow on the highway between Fairfield and Gooding. The second is an abandoned minning shack (which I have included in our blog before, I just like it,) which sits on the back side of Dallar Hide Mountain off of what is barely a passable road almost 15 miles south west of Ketchum.

Finally, Mette Arrived.

Back in late December of last year the school contacted us and asked us if we would be willing to host an exchange student for the last semester of lthe year. Julie and I have talked about hosting an exchange student for several years, especially a Swedish exchange student so I could re-learn Swedish, but we always thought we would wait until all of the kids were out of the housebefore we did it. For some reason, the idea of doing it now instead just caught our attention and we thought that we would look further into it.

The student they were looking to place was an 18 year old boy from Bogota, Columbia. The more we read his profile the more we knew that he just would not be a good fit here in Fairfield nor a good fit in with us. He liked living in big city and all the activities that big cities offered. He liked going to discos and clubs, and he liked going to cultural events and places. He talked about having servants at home and liking to occasionally help the cooks in his house with meal preparation. We thought he was going to be absolutely miserable in our little house and especially disappointed in our little town. We passed on him, but asked if they had anyone from Sweden, and especially an athlete from Sweden.

They showed us three possible students; one boy from southern Sweden, a soccer player who was going to be a senior, a track girl also from southern Sweden, also going to be a senior, and a junior girl from northern Sweden who had participated in track before. Julie and I instantly settled on the senior girl from southern Sweden; Mette Ericsson. It was like she jumped off the page at us and we knew she was going to be a great fit with us. However, we were still worried about how disappointed she would be in our little town.

We first contacted Mette and her family in January of this year. We exchanged emails and pictures almost weekly for seven months before she arrived. We felt like we already knew her and her family well by the time she finally arrived in late July and she just slipped in and became a part of us. She has been here for a month and half now and we feel like she has always been a part of our family. She has definitely stolen all of our hearts and we are glad she is here. She is playing on the Camas County High School volleyball team right now. She plans to play basketball and run track. It’s going to be a fun year, although very busy making it to all her games and matches as well as Jeff’s.

Jeff's Birthday and Welcome Mette Party!

Two days after Mette arrived was Jeff’s 17th birthday. We invited almost all of the kids in the Junior and Senior classes from school to come celebrate and to meet Mette. I didn’t count but we had most of the kids from the school and quite a few of the parents and friends. In all it was a very fun day. The kids played silly kids games on the lawn until after dark. It was a lot of fun. We cleaned up from the party, packed our bags, jumped int eh car and drove to Oregon to see our kids and grandkids. We arrived Sunday morning just in time to see our third grandson, Jonas for a brief second before he was packed up and taken up to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland. We cover more on that in the part on our trip to Oregon.