Spring Break

Well, summer has been in full swing for about three weeks now and I'm trying to get caught up on life, that seemed to stop while I was teaching. That means that I've been attempting to clean my house, organize the mounds of papers I had left at the end of the school year, take some classes to help me be a better teacher next year, finish photo albums and catch up on blog posts.

I've actually debated whether to just bag blogging altogether since it seems as though I have no time for it any more and I seriously doubt anyone reads them. But I really do like the help blogs give me for journaling and having a starting point for photo albums. So I'm still attempting to blog for the time being.

To catch way up, here is our trip to Utah over spring break. Since this was Preston's last spring break for a couple of years, I asked him what he wanted to do and there was little hesitation - snowboarding!

He and I drove up to Utah and skied/boarded one day at The Canyons, where I'd never been before. The snow was typical spring skiing snow, but not too bad yet.

Here we are on the gondola to the mountain.
Here's Preston anxiously waiting for him mother to take the picture, so we can get on the slopes. I thought the snow park was the most fun part of The Canyons and I made Preston go down it time and time again. I did go off some fairly high jumps (at least for me) and did do a couple of rails. Preston was braver that I and tried some really big jumps and did great. But we did see some amazing jumps that people did on the huge jumps and were in awe. That will never be me - too old!

Here we are at The Canyons.

Raquel and Millie flew in that night and we all crashed my mom's house for the week. My mom is the BEST hostess and had a wonderful dinner prepared for us each night we were there.

The next day we headed to Snowbird, can you tell the difference? Look at the size of the mountains. The Canyons is more on high hills, whereas, Snowbird is on MOUNTAINS.

It had snowed over night so there was a couple of inches of new snow on top of ice - typical spring skiing conditions. It was super windy and when we would get to the top, the fresh snow would sting our faces like sand in a dust storm. Preston loved Snowbird and got much better at black diamond runs and moguls - another thing I'm too old for.

The following day Raquel went with Preston snowboarding and my mom and I got to babysit. Raquel gave us very explicit instructions as to what we were to do to take care of Millie, but we didn't do a very good job of following them. Millie survived though and we had a wonderful time with her!

She sat in her bumbo chair and watched us cook and grade papers all day. I think she loved it! We also had to have a photo shoot of four generations of girls. I didn't get any pictures on my camera and the ones on Raquel's didn't turn out too well. But this one of Millie did!

Thanks mom for letting us all camp at your house for a week and providing all the wonderful food you did! Your the best!

A Call to Down Under

From the time we Preston was born into our family, almost 19 years ago, Garth and I have been dreaming of the day he would get a call to be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That dream came true last Friday night when we had family and friends gather as Preston opened his call. Unfortunately, Preston has a mom that totally forgot to have everyone there guess where he would be going. Then just as he opened the envelop, I realized that we hadn't guessed and wanted him to stop so we could - a little too late. You can see it all on the video at the end of the blog. We were all surprised when he was called to the Brisbane, Australia Mission. Not one I had even thought about.

Preston's Sunday school teacher was there and he claimed he knew were Preston would be going because he had an Australian flag in his pocket that he gave to Preston. And here is Preston with all the girls who came to watch him.

We has heard from a lot of people that who have been to Brisbane and they say it is beautiful place and that the people are wonderful. We are all excited for him, but now he has to play the waiting game because he doesn't leave until August 24 - 5 months away!

We are so proud of him and the amazing young man he is. We know he will work hard and be a great missionary.

Look who growing up

Yes, I know it has been months and months since I've created a new blog, and I've toyed with the idea of just giving up on blogging. But I do like the written record it creates, so I'm going to try to get back into it a bit. Teaching full time had definitely cut into the time I used to have.

A couple of weeks ago we had a little spend the night with 3 month old Millie. And guess who got to give her a bath the next morning.

She is such a happy little thing and loves to be in the water.

Isn't she a cutie!! What a fun way to spend President's Day.

Look who made her debut

When I woke up last Thursday morning, I had a bunch of things planned for Veteran's Day, none of which sadly had to do with veterans. But all my plans quickly went out the window as Garth told me that Dave had called and said that he and Raquel were at the hospital having the baby!

At 8:04 little Millie Kate made her debut weighing 6 pounds 8 ounces and was 19 inches long. Unfortunately my camera wasn't working either of the days that Raquel was in the hospital, so there pictures were taken shortly after they got home.

Don't you love those fat little cheeks and all the dark hair? She is taking after her mom in those areas, although Raquel had even more hair on top that stuck straight up.
She has already won a spot in Garth's heart.

Millie had lost 7 ounces by the time she came home yesterday and you can tell here just how tiny she is. She is pretty strong though and does pretty well at holding up her head.

Look at that little angel.

Preston held her like she was made of glass. He's not too comfortable with newborns yet.

We are SO glad that we have this new addition to our family and that both mommy and baby are healthy.

the Oregon Trail

WARNING: Lots of scenery photos ahead.



This year for our anniversary, Garth and I headed to Portland, Oregon. We decided to go there, one, because it was the only western state we hadn't been to. Two, we had heard that it was beautiful and three, it was the only place we could still use our free airplane tickets by the time we decided to go over October Break.



We picked up our rental car and headed up the Columbia River Gorge and decided as we looked for some place to eat that we wouldn't eat at any chain restaurants on our trip. So we choose Tippy Canoe because one, it looked interesting and two, it was the only place we could find once we got out of Portland and three, we were starving.

We chose well. Not only was the food and service great but it was all decked out for Halloween. The waitress told us that we should come back at Christmas if we really wanted to see it decorated.

I had emailed Janice, an old Texan friend, who had grown up in Oregon and she had given me great suggestions for our trip. Our next stop was at Vista House where we were blown to death. Both Garth and I were raised in pretty windy places but I had never experienced anything like this place. I couldn't even stand still to take a picture. It did have beautiful views of the gorge. though.

We headed up the river gorge and stopped at all the waterfalls along the way. Most had short hikes to the base or top of the falls. Of course I wanted to go and see every vantage point but the day was getting late and we still had so much to see that I had to make choices - darn.

This is Bridal Veil Falls.

And this is Multnomah Falls, one of the tallest waterfalls in the US. It was the most developed and had the most people as well. There was a story that in 1995 a bridal party was standing on the bridge you can see in the background and a rock the size of a bus fell off the side of the cliff. It sent a 70 foot wall of water out of the pool and over the bridge drenching the whole bridal party. I'm sure that made their wedding memorable and it gave me a good laugh.

More pictures of Multnomah Falls.

We finally made it to the town of Hood River where we would spend the night and decided to take a drive around the fruit loop as they call it. We headed towards Mt. Hood (the large snow covered mountain in the background) and drove through apple orchards. It was beautiful and reminded us of Amish country in Ohio last year.

Here is a picture of our hotel, The Columbia Gorge Hotel, which is almost 100 years old. It had beautiful gardens that we wandered around in and even had its own waterfall.

This is a picture of the Columbia River from our hotel as the sun was setting.

The next morning we headed back down the river gorge with a small stop at Beacon's Rock. It is the 3rd tallest monolith in the world at 848 feet high. It was just about a mile to the top but one of the steepest miles I've ever done - straight switch backs. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so no aerial views from the top. Once again the wind was blowing like crazy and we were glad that most of the trail was on the lee side of the rock.

One last photo of the river.

We headed to the Oregon coast and Cannon Beach. We weren't disappointed by what we found!

Our first stop was at Ecola State Park and we did a couple of hikes to different look out spots and were thrilled by each new view.

This is Tillamook lighthouse. Said to be in one of the most exposed lighthouses in the country.

More views from Ecola State Park.

We then headed through town and found our hotel. It just had 5 rooms and they had these chairs we could sit in and watch the sun go down.

I sat for about 5 minutes until I realized that we needed to walk up the beach to get the best pictures of Haystack Rock (very famous). Reluctantly Garth followed me along. He was glad he did though when we were treated to beautiful views of the rocks, sunset, ocean spray and sand reflections. Here are just a few of the hundreds of pictures we took.

Thursday was our only rainy day while we were in Oregon. I think we were very lucky. After breakfast at Pig in a Pancake, we still stuck to our plan and headed south along the coast stopping at all the lookout spots and hiking to the beach.

When our family went to Alaska, we hiked in a very similar forest and I have a picture of Preston posing in a hole in a tree. I found one similar and posed the the same way.

We did some shopping the town and then headed back to see if there would be another beautiful sunset. Since it had been cloudy all day, we didn't expect much and we could tell no one else did either because there were very few photographers out. But we were amply rewarded and thought the sunset was even prettier that night because of the clouds. So here are some more pictures of Haystack Rock.

Before we headed out Friday morning, I had to take one picture of Haystack Rock in full sun.

We stopped at Wanda's for lunch. To say the decor was unique would be an understatement! That is an old TV with a fake fire going in it at the end of our table and a genie lamp on it with the skeleton faced native guy in the sombrero. Unique decor and great food!

We then stopped by the Tillamook cheese factory and watched them process their cheese that Garth eats every night. Garth's dad loved this cheese as well and we both wished we could call him and tell him where we were.

We headed back to the coast and stopped by a lighthouse and the Octopus Tree that has 8 trunks.

It is in Ripley's Believe it or Not.

We sat on the coast as long as we could just watching the waves crash on the rocks and then headed back to Portland. We found the Portland temple and were so impressed by it. Garth decided to tell Jason to look for a girl from Oregon to marry, because it was such a beautiful temple.

We hit horrible traffic in Portland and it look us much longer than we had anticipated, but we eventually made it to the Rose Garden in Washington Park. It wasn't the season for roses but we were still treated to some beautiful roses.

The next morning we headed to the Saturday Market and had a good time realizing where all the hippies from the 60's moved to and what they are doing now - selling stuff at the market!

I cracked up at the headbands with pencils, hatchets, screwdrivers, hammers, etc. on them. They looked really good but didn't stay on your head very well or we would have bought a couple.

One last photo of a beautiful city and state before we had to head back to the desert. Oregon is definitely a place we want to return to.

One last look at Mt. Hood from the air.

We loved the lush green vegetation, all the waterfalls and especially the coast. We had had wonderful food and were glad of our decision not to eat at any chain restaurants, it paid off.