Jan's Journal                      

                  This month's calendar                         Archives                            Our Google Calendar                   

Click for Wheeler, Oregon Forecast
August 1, 2014

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Fancy feet

Jan

It is hard to believe that summer is half way over. The days are starting to get shorter and it is actually dark when I go to bed! I can't complain about the weather as it has been beautiful and I am enjoying these warm sunny days. It does mean extra work as my plants seem to dry out faster and so it seems like I am always dragging the hose around trying to water everything. We are enjoying the garden's bounty also and have had fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beets and lettuce. The green beans are starting to appear and so I am looking forward to having fresh green beans from the garden as well.

Oh, I so wanted to go watch my granddaughter Paige play her soccer tournament last weekend but fighting the traffic driving to Beaverton from the coast and then it being 20 degrees hotter over there, we decided to pass on it. We really should have gone as it turned out they won the championship! The final game was played in Beaverton at the Nike campus and that would have been fun to be there, just to see that. We did get a play-by-play account of the game from Leslie who kept texting us with score updates and this series of pictures of Paige "juke-ing" the goalie. In the top picture, she's running past the other team; in the second one she's running past the goalie and then there's nothing but net! Paige scored all the goals so the final was Paige 4, the other team 0!
We also missed out on one of Ashtin's games where she scored a goal! Time like these - we really miss being closer to the grandkids.

Lara's girls were in church camp this last week - at least two of them were, so we wouldn't have had a chance to see them anyway. Miss Jordyn got to stay home and I guess she really enjoyed having mommy all to herself!

It has been too hot in the afternoons to be outside in the sun - even down here at the coast. Since I was holed up inside in the shade and I was bored, I spent one afternoon making a feed bag into a shopping bag. It was rather a frustrating experience and my patience was running out as I was having trouble with the stitching on my sewing machine. I decided to switch sewing machines and brought out my ancient little Singer portable, but that didn't work either. I finally used a finer tread and that did the trick. I hope to sew more bags but sewing is not one of my strong points and my eyesight is not what it used to be. However, it was nice to know that I could still create something.

Boats

It is salmon fishing season around here and every morning the fishermen are out in their boats trying to get the "big" one. I can see them from our deck and also hear most of their conversations as their voices carry across the water. I haven't seen anyone catch anything yet. I have a thing about the fishermen who come to Wheeler from out of town. They don't have to pay to launch their boat at our little dock and they seem to park their boat trailers halfway into our flower beds at the park. Parking is premium and on a first come basis. They don't spend any money while they are here either; they just drive in, fish and leave. Sometimes, I just want to leave town while they are around.

Jan, Erlene

We had a former neighbor over for dinner the other night. Erlene Lemke had some health issues and so she moved to Washington to be with one of her daughters last spring. She really doesn't want to sell her home here and comes back for a couple of weeks for a visit whenever she can. This time, she brought her son-in-law with her as her kids don't want her to be alone. Her son-in-law was nice enough to clean out Leanna's gutters while he was here and wouldn't take anything for it so they were invited over for dinner at our place. It was sort of a "payback" thing too because Erlene fed Dave while he was here getting the place ready to move into ten years ago. It was a great evening reminiscing about the past. We have known her for over forty years.

Nick

There's not a lot going on this next week, so we'll get to hang around here and enjoy the weather. However, on Saturday we are leaving early to attend Dave's uncle's funeral in Vancouver. Nick was a very special person and will be missed by all of us. This picture was taken a few years ago on his 90th birthday party.