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August 3, 2007

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

It's been another one of those "where did all the time go?" weeks.

I didn't get to mention to you that last Friday, we took the girls to Silver Creek Falls State Park. The park is only 20 miles from their place so we decided to go. It is in this beautiful setting of a lava gorge with about 8 miles of trails and ten waterfalls that we could hike to. A couple of the falls we could actually walk behind. Anyway, we hiked down to the bottom of the gorge to the two South falls on a 2-mile loop. It was great to be outdoors and the weather was perfect. The only problem with the short 2-mile hike was that half of it was up hill! You know what goes up must come down, well; in this case what goes down must come back up. The girls were real troupers and didn't complain, but we were all pretty tired by the time we got back to the car. I had packed a lunch so we found the picnic area and ate our lunch. When we returned home later that afternoon, we all hit the pool and boy was that refreshing.

Friday night after Leslie came home from work, we got off duty from our babysitting stint and headed for home - but we gave ourselves high fives for a job well done. We had such a great time with them and I think they enjoyed the "break" from their usual activities at the caregivers. We will get together with them the last week in August for a camping trip up the Columbia Gorge and to celebrate Ashtin's eighth birthday and Grandad's 65th.

The weather turned warm again, so I have been spending a lot of time outside claiming our property back from the brush and blackberry bushes. Boy, can they take over in a hurry. It just seems like it was last summer when I hacked them all back! Some of those berry vines were 2" thick and I have scratches on my arms to prove it. It looks like I have been in a fight with a couple of cats! Dave has been down at the dock getting the Captain Bell ready for the steam meet up in Seattle in a couple of weeks and I have been giving the brass one more shine.

Sunday we happened to see all the "speeders" out on the railroad tracks. There were about a dozen or so of them and they looked like they were having a good time. There's a pretty active speeder group around here. One of the organizers used to live here in town and he got a lot of people on the coast interested in the hobby. On their big outings, we've seen more than a hundred of those things go by the house!

I also heard the familiar "fish on!" from the living room as Dave had spotted someone with a fish on their line. We watched this single fisherman with a pole in one hand and a net in the other land about a 15-pound salmon while at the same time maneuvering his boat around all the other fishermen who were envious of his catch! That's the first one we've seen caught so far this season. Fishing has been kind of slow so far this year, but there have been a few diehard fishermen out their trying their luck. We were surprised to see a catch because we haven't seen any seals in the bay so far. The seals are a sure sign that the fish are in.

I have also signed up for a watercolor workshop for a couple of Sundays coming up. I have always wanted to watercolor, and have been doing a lot of research. I just haven't found a local instructor who got me motivated enough to give it a try. The lady who is putting on this workshop lives in Rockaway and has several of her paintings on display in the Portland Art Museum, so hopefully I will be able to pick up some pointers from her. I was thinking that it would give me something to occupy my time (as if I don't have enough things going on) in the winter months anyway.

The Trail Blazer schedule came out yesterday, so we can now plan the next year of our lives! We pretty much have to live by that schedule, and if we're going to go on vacation or go to the Shakespeare Festival, the NBA tells us when we get to go!

I threw this picture of us in the July 4th parade in here this week too. Some friends took the photograph and just sent it to us, so I thought I'd give you an idea of what we look like when we're all dolled up for the festivities!