Lorena checked the apples in our trees in the back yard and found that we probably could have (should have) been harvesting them for a couple of weeks now. She bought herself the business end of an apple picker pole and attached it to the end of the very long pole, Carolyn C. give to her as a gift about a decade ago. I have to tell you that has been about the most useful gift she has ever gotten. She has used it for a gazillion things and now it is receiving double duty both for apples and 
dusting of very high places. Now she is a state of high applesauce production mode. We need to get Bob over here soon because we have entirely too many of them. I think the pruning we had our yard crew perform in February really did the trick. So far we have gotten peaches (crazy sweet), pears–really small, but tasty, and now the apples. We really need to get set up to put a garden in which mostly just means we need to level out a spot, put up a really high fence to keep out the deer, and maybe put in a raised bed.
Category: General Page 2 of 116
Today would have been Grandpa Milo’s 89th birthday. He was an exceptional father and an exceptional man. Every man has his flaws, but Grandpa Milo was always kind and pulled out all the stops when he saw a need. He and Grandma Sarah both truly had a heart for the underdog. It is nice to remember him and to be thankful to God for such a father.
Everyone is now gone from the Fourth of July holiday. I am back to work, getting ready for my job change and finishing up well with my old job. The best part of this kind of transition is the pressure is relatively low for awhile. That means that on a Saturday afternoon, I can eat popcorn and read my book, mostly to my hearts content. Kiwi goes with me wherever I go. Right now, she is sitting on my chest hoping that I will head down to get her evening meal, but knowing (I KNOW she knows) that is really over an hour away. Lorena is off at Costco and Good Will looking for stuff for her house. Life is back to normal again.
Lorena and I made it to Puerto Vallarta after two excellent flights from Portland to Phoenix and then on down to Mexico from there. Tio’s Jorge and Lauro, along with Grandma Conchita picked us up at the airport. Much to our surprise and great happiness, we found we were staying at the same place we stayed the times we went with Uncle Doug, Aunt Sheila, Grandpa Milo, and Grandma Sarah the two other times we vacationed in Puerto Vallarta. Of course, the very first thing we did when we got there was eat way to many hand made tamales brought on the plane from Monterrey. We all agreed the one true style of tamale comes from Monterrey. The picture is of Jorge’s family (L-R) Jorgito, Valeria, Mari, Brandito, and Jorge.
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Lorena took this picture in a mall parking lot, waiting for the stores to open. We are down in Arizona visiting Christian, waiting for our friends to get here from Chula Vista, and wondering why everyone does not want to live in Arizona with its fabulous weather, unique culture–heavily influenced by Mexico and Mexican food, and lots of things to do and see. I know we might think differently in the heat of summer in a few months, but right now it is very, very nice.
Thanks to Bonnie and Kiwi for holding down the fort for us back home.
We had the fruit trees in the back yard pruned in February with the hope they might produce a better crop than we got last year. The reality is that it was not so bad last year–Bob brought his apple picker over and harvested a good amount of apples. Lorena made applesauce with her own apples for the very first time. The trees had not been pruned for a long, long time, so with this pruning we are hoping to see some improvement over last year. Now, all we have to do is get Bob to come back over with his apple picker…
We are seeing lots of amazing things around the place now that the sun has begun to shine. We need to put up our birdhouses and bird feeders so we can enjoy some of this. It is fabulous to hear all the birds singing and the woodpeckers pecking. There is lots and lots of activity right now.
The tulips have been in bloom for awhile and the rhodies are now out in all their glory. In the meantime, I got absolutely nothing accomplished this weekend other than a great visit with friends on Saturday morning. During the traditional time for spring cleaning, I sat on my duff. I have always been a rebel that way. I broke my diet badly, too. I like to think it was all in the name of mental health. No excuses going forward though–I have three big new projects, my day job, and a week of vacation with Christian in Arizona coming up, so the busyness starts today.
This is just a marker post so we will remember when this happened. Christian received notification yesterday that his first, first-author refereed journal article was accepted for publication by the journal Entropy. I am not sure when will be the actual publication date.
Lorena and I were given a room on the fifteenth floor this trip to Canada. The highest we had before was 9. We are pretty sure it is because there are not so many people her, but we definitely have a better view!
Crazy weather–yesterday we had both rain and sun. Lorena took this picture of a rainbow as we arrived home from town.
As I write the snow is coming down hard here at our house. It might not be as hard a places like Montana and Alaska, but is is beautiful and it will make a total mess of the traffic for the rest of the day. We are not sure yet whether we can get down off the hill and over the bridge to meeting yet. I think if we could get to I-5 we would be fine, but the traffic maps show the traffic slow or stopped even there so maybe I should not be so sure about that.
It has been truly an odd year. It was partly odd because we held the funeral for goth Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah in February, we moved from an apartment in Texas to Washington State after having moved from an apartment in Oregon to Texas the year before and from our house in North Carolina to Oregon the year before that–all to deal with aging parents. We were so much in upheaval, it really felt odd to be settled in a house again.
During this time, we had no time nor inclination to pay attention to or participate in one of the strangest elections in American history. The funny deal was that we were thankful for that in many ways–looking back it made me realize that there is no reason to lose one’s peace given the sure knowledge that God is in control. We will probably participate in future elections, but with a fundamentally different mindset than in the past.
The other odd occurrence, was the movement of our children from a status of students to a status of being truly on their own, making their own decisions, paying their own bills, and living on their own. Actually, they have lived that way for three and a half years now, but this year there seemed to be some finality to it. We had a wonderful time at Christmas, not always calm, but always wonderful. Lorena and I are always sad to see them go, but this time, more than any time before, it felt like they were going home after a visit rather than leaving home to go back to school.
This all puts us at a new place in life. It seems like Lorena and I are more in upheaval than the kids. We are still trying to figure out what to do next. As a New Year’s resolution, I have decided (beside my perennial favorite to be less fat), to sin less, love more and find a peace in my God-given vocation whatever that might be.
Lorena and Kelly
Christian
After a week of crisp, clear, late fall days with beautiful territorial views from my office of the town belows, the foothills behind it and the mountain behind that, today I can barely see to the edge of the property. Still, it is not raining and any day in this part of the world at this time of year without rain is a day to be enjoyed. I walked to the mailbox twice yesterday in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I hope to do it again today even if the fog does not burn off. If we get a drought this summer, I suppose I will lament all this, but right now I am enjoying it immensely. I can see that I am now one of those guy who talks about the weather and the birds in the backyard. I have turned into my grandparents.
Lorena will never let me retire if my company keeps doing stuff like this. They sent a huge Christmas package with multiple boxes from Harry and David down in Medford. We LOVE this. I am beginning to see LMI’s strategy. They actively push for Lorena to travel with me to the corporate headquarters and put us in an incredibly nice hotel close to the largest mall in all of Canada whenever I go there. The do a gazillion additional nice things all the time. Some of the projects are difficult and the hours are often long, but it is truly one of the best places I have ever worked.
After Lorena and I got married, we decided it would be easier to just get married again in the US. We had planned to do it on the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. We missed it by one day. It was a fifteen minute affair in the County Clerk’s office of Palm Beach County, Florida. I thought I should just put this here for the sake of posterity.
Duane and Josiah, our new painter friends, finished up the painting for the remodel yesterday. It completely changed the appearance of the entire main floor of the house. Lorena was ecstatic with the result which the only measure of success. We have really enjoyed eating lunch with the painters every day and we will miss that a lot, but it is very nice to be able to see the hardwood floors again (they were covered with paper and blue tape to protect them from the painting process). Mark came in on Tuesday to put in the base moulding and finish a couple of other items on the punch list. He is scheduled to be here on Friday to do the final pass. The kitchen now looks pretty close to how it will appear when it is complete, but we will wait until it is all done before we take some pictures of the final result.
