Reedsport

 Bethany and Laura left Grandad's Friday morning and we arrived with Dave and Gayle that afternoon. Lamar, Joy, and Solace stayed through Sunday morning, so we got to enjoy a little overlap time with them.

Grandad, Dave, and Lamar got a couple tuna, so we got to have tuna steaks and fried tuna for dinner one night. As usually happens when we are all together, we ate lots of great food the whole time.

We enjoyed some cooler weather with foggy mornings and evenings.

We spent a lot of time playing games together. This game of cribbage was particularly close, but Grandad and I just managed to win during the pegging.

After the hectic days of packing and moving lately, it was nice to have some time to relax and enjoy being with family.

Redwoods

The house we are now renting is a second house on some property out in the country about twenty minutes south of Eugene near a little town of about 5,000. It is a small house, but has lots of character and charm and we love that it is out in the country. There is a plot where we can garden, plus we were given a tomato plant when we signed the lease and there are grapes, blueberries, cherries, and apples on the property. Yes, I'm pretty excited about all of it.

The first tomato on our new plant is almost ripe. I don't think I've ever seen a tomato plant with so many tomatoes on it.

There are also great redwood trees on the property, so we had a little photo shoot.

Gayle brought her little baby giant sequoia tree along on the trip to Oregon.

Florence

 The rest of the family was visiting Grandad, so we all met up in Florence on Thursday to enjoy dinner at Mo's. After some delicious seafood, we had a few difficulties trying to get a family picture on the pier. First we tried to take advantage of the good late afternoon lighting, but a number of us were too sensitive to the sun in our eyes and ended up squinting.

 You can tell the lighting facing this direction is not nearly as nice, but at least we can open our eyes and have the bridge in the background. We also had wind and a few sprinkles to deal with.

We enjoyed walking around old town together for awhile after dinner.

Moving Days

 We are moving in stages. It began last Saturday when my parents helped us move some furniture, crates of books, and heat sensitive items like candles and home canned food and wine to their house. They will be bringing that stuff up later.

 On Monday, Dave and Gayle came down and we loaded up the rest of our stuff in the van, truck, car, and trailer. My mom and Ben P. came to help with the loading, for which we were grateful. Those stairs are a challenge. 

After some difficulties getting the right tow bar and hooking up the lights, we were able to tow the bug up with the van. We spent Monday night at my parent's house where Mom cooked up a delicious meal of trout, pasta salad, and toasted bread with frozen chocolate peanut squares for dessert. 

We left early Tuesday morning and spent 15.5 hours on the road with only a few minor difficulties. One of the tow lights fell off the bug on the way and broke, so we took the other one off and our goal was to make it to Creswell before it got dark. With that in mind, we didn't stop for dinner, just had snacks in the car, but we still had a bit of a dramatic finish as we were getting closer and closer as the sun was going down and it finally sank behind the mountains, but we still had enough light to just make it in time! It seemed a lot more dramatic than it really was to Gayle and I as we were in the Honda together after being on the road for so long. We were all glad to finally be there and for safe traveling on the way.

Work Shoes

It has become a tradition for me to throw away my old work shoes when I leave a job. After each of the past four jobs I have had, I threw away the shoes that I wore to work every day. These cheap shoes I got in the kids section at Target had a particularly hard run of almost two years and they were in sorry shape, but managed to stay together through my last day at Midtown at the end of June and then at 210 last Thursday. It is always kind of nice to throw away the old shoes; it gives me a feeling of closure.

Special Dinners

We had been planning to invite each of the kids over individually for dinner and suddenly realized that if wanted to actually do it, we needed to hurry. So we blocked off Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights of our last week in the apartment and had all the kids over (except Emery, but we had dinner with all the Trevinos on Friday). 

Evan was up first on Tuesday evening. Each kid got to help plan the menu for their night. We had pancakes and spam with Evan. All three of the kids wanted mini pazookies for dessert; that has become a special treat at our house.

 We had mussels with Micah and played charades.

 We had chicken with barbecue sauce, macaroni salad, and watermelon with Natalie. She wanted to take a funny face picture too.

We enjoyed eating, talking, and playing games with the kids one at a time. They are such special people and lots of fun to have around.