Thanksgiving

Long time, no typing.
For Thanksgiving we went to Sunriver, OR and shared a house with Matt, Krista, Zoey, Allie and Terry, Janet and Shasta. Have had a lot of fun and great turkey! Internet here is somewhat erratic so don't seem to be able to upload any picture. Went to the snow one day. Z and A had saucer sleds that they rode down this sorta steep downhill; about a 30 foot run. They both got air at the bottom of the run just as they slid onto the road. (NOTE: the road was closed to vehicles but not walkers or cross county type skiers.) Shasta took the hard job of giving them each a push down the hill after they got set at the top of the hill.
We did miss Dawn, Todd and Lynn, Dave.
Will do pictures when we get back to Vancouver

Slugs and Procrastinators

Yes, I was procrastinating and sitting at the table drinking tea. I wasn't wearing my glasses so looking out the window i saw what I thought was bird doo on the house next door. They have had a problem with starlings nesting in the exhaust fan tubing and I thought this was just some left overs from them. A couple of minutes later, I was surprised to see it had moved down the wall. Got the camera because it was closer then my glasses and took a couple of pictures to finally be able to figure out what I was looking at. The real question is why was a slug sliming DOWN the wall? No flowers or green leaves up the way it had come from. Why was it up there in the first place? Just a sign that I was dragging my feet?
I still managed to put off what I was not wanting to deal with so this diversion only forced me to acknowledge that I was dragging my feet. Picture was taken 6/19 and is just now getting posted. Perhaps I'll be better at posting. Then again, proofs in the posting I guess so we'll see.

Mother's Day Dinner

We had a great Mother's Day. Terry did the ribs and salomon and Janet did the asperagus and Maggie did the salad. Food was great! OK, so I'm not looking at the camera. I thought the other side of the table was being done, not both sides so you're stuck with a profile.

Maggie's not in the picture as she is the camera person.

Banana Cream Pie by Allie

This picture is much clearer then the one of her holding the pie. The pie and cake were very good.

Mother's Day Aprons

Maggie made the aprons, Janet made the cake. Could it be possible that Matt is looking for a piece of cake?

Mother's Day Tulips

From the front yard

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens - April 2008

For Maggie's birthday, we visited these gardens. Flowers, ducks, geese, squirrels and even a few fairies made it more beautiful.

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens - Portland, OR

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens in Portland, OR

The Northwest is full of incredible beauty all the time, but in the spring....

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens

This is the end of our tour of the gardens. We have more pictures but why don't you go and visit the gardens? Then you can take your own!

Go to their web site at: http://www.rhodies.org/xtal/pdx-cyst.htm

The Restaurant at Fort Vancouver, WA

This is a really nice restaurant, foods good, service is good also. Once a month they have a 'Wine tasting dinner". A local WA winery will come in and work with the chef to come up with complementary food and wine selections. The menu is generally around five courses. We've gone a couple of times when it fits into our schedule.
Seating is mixed with people you may not have met before unless you come as a group. This last time, we were seated with two couples who had come together and had been friends for many years. Really nice couples. One of those husbands did a lot of traveling for business. We'll call him Al (Albert A. Nonymous). Seems that they had gone to Washington D.C. to attend a wedding and were staying at the Embassy Suites. Needless to say, they were tired when they flew into town and the driver (Al) and navigator were not on the same page of the map while driving. He spotted the Embassy sign and went that way. She said "I don't think this is right" but as we all know, the driver is always right.
He pulled into the parking lot, saw a guy standing by the door and told him to get the bags out of the trunk. She said she wasn't going in. Grumble, grumble, stomp off to the front desk.
He got to the front desk and told her he had a reservation for the night. She of course needed his name. Weeelllll after a few minutes, the receptionist got through to him that this is the Nigerian Embassy, not Embassy Suites.
Al, being very embarrassed at this point, turns to the man who had brought in his bags and apologizies. Al then reaches for his bags to go back out to the car but the man says "No, I'll take them out for you. This is going to be priceless".

Lynn came for a visit

Lynn came for a visit last week from sunny CA. Normally, you'd expect the sunshine to follow her around but WA weather being as unpredictable as always fixed that! Now when did that ground hog say winter was going to be over? It was sunny in the afternoon. Check the picture. Video clip ran for hours so deleted it.

When we moved up here, it seemed like it rained for the first couple of months every single day. Was talking with one of the neighbors and asked him when would the rain stop. He said generally it stops right after the 4th of July. Not too bad right? So the next question was when does it start again? The answer was the second week of August! Wow! The good news is that it is always very green and pretty up here so you adapt! It's worth the rain.

Dawn/Todd Sword Ceremony

Maggie figured out a way to animate the weddings' sword ceremony which is presented here for your viewing pleasure.

Click on the picture to run the animation. It will run repeatedly until you hit the browser back key.

Have a banana?

Banana trees like this grew all over. This one is beside the road to the small village that was close to where we stayed.

Pond with lily pads

The little house was where the staff stayed during the day and had the computer that gave us wireless access to the internet.

The pond was at the back of our villa and covered in lily pads and flowers. It was full of fish who swam under the back windows waiting for leftovers.

Start of the day

Every day started around 6:30AM with a swim with the grand daughters. Maggie and Zoey having fun! Some days you could even get your coffee in the pool. Terry (Krista's Dad) made the first pot almost every day. Thanks Terry!!

Long boats

Length = 30 ft, has a water cooled V8 on a pole. Propeller was at the end of a 15 ft shaft. So, long shaft is long tailed. The boat driver stands just in front of the engine with his legs on either side of the shaft that runs from in front of the engine all the way back to the propeller. He rests on the shaft and steers the boat by leaning one way or the other. For sharper turns he either moved further left or right or got off the shaft and pulled/pushed the shaft. The boats had three seats across and held about 9 people but could be crowded to holding more. We took these to the various islands.

Where we stayed

The villa faced the Thalane Bay in the front with the back of the house located over the pond.

No Clue

This guy was holding the traffic lights in Karbi. There was one on each of the corners. No idea about why or who or what in the culture this might be related to if it's even cultural. A closer look will let you see he looks rather 'cromagnum'. Any thoughts?

Mangrove tree in a lagoon

Our boat took us into a lagoon through the single entrance. Spotted this mangroove tree. Plants are so very adaptable. If you look closely, you can see where a few new trees have poked out of the water and have a few leaves showing.

Rock Fish

Exotic rock fish climbing the walls. Apparently Thailand is a rock climbers paradise. Lots of people come to swim out to the rocks and then free climb.

Disappearing into the jungle

Same lizard moving into the jungle. After it was another 5 feet or so into the underbrush, we moved up to see if it was visible but it had totally disappeared. We could still hear it moving around. It actually sounded like a cat moving around in there. Spooky to think that something that large could make such a small amount of noise.

Monitor lizard in Thailand

This monitor lizard was approx 5-6 feet long. It was on the main tourist path into the jungle and was a real surprise. When it finally moved it didn't seem to move very fast but I have a feeling if it was hunting, it would be a lot faster. Check out the claws on this puppy.