Fun with the grandsons this summer! . . .

Grama has been enjoying some quality time with the grandsons since summer arrived. A couple weekends ago we went camping at Barview with Chad, Nicole, Lucas & Andy. Weather was not the greatest, except we did have Saturday that we managed to stay dry and spend some time on the beach and in Rockaway. Lucas LOVES to camp and enjoys being outside all day long. He especially likes to ride his little quad around and eat yummy camping food. We have noticed that he has a crush on Andy's girlfriend "SAREWAH" (aka Sarah) and enjoyed being tossed in the air until he nearly wore everybody out. Grama especially enjoyed the snuggles by the campfire when he was getting real tired at night.

Brayden came to stay with Grandma for the day on Friday. We had lots of fun playing, going shopping at Target and we made a stop at McDonalds where he ate his lunch that mom prepared (absolutely loves strawberries!), plus he got to nibble on Grandma's chicken nuggets which he loved. Then it was out to the play structure to climb on the slide and he was totally facinated watching all of the kids.

Pretty good summer so far!

So he went and did it . . .

What's a Mom to do? In conspiracy with his father to boot!. . now HE wants one again too. He bought himself a motorcycle. What is it with boys and motorcycles anyway?? "Hey Mom . . you guys gonna be home this weekend?" . . "Yeah" . . "Well, I thought I might come by and show you something" . . "OK, we will be here" . . . So in he pulls, with a chopper. It does look nice and all, it sounds very loud and rumbles like a Harley but it's a Honda. He is grinning ear to ear . . but Mom is not. I don't like motorcycles . . they are way too scary. Dale road a Honda for a number of years that belonged to my brother Phil . . I went on maybe 2 rides the entire time he owned it. One time around the block, the other when he tried to take me out to Hagg Lake on it and I squeezed his middle so tight that he had fingerprint bruises, we turned around 1/2 way there. And apparently, I lean the wrong way . . you are suppose to lean with the bike . . not the other way in an effort to save your life. So I am a motorcycle passenger failure . . which is perfectly fine with me. Dale says, "You should be proud of him he took the motorcycle safety class that he didn't have to take, it's going to be cheaper on insurance and gas than his truck was, it will be fine just quit worrying." Aaarrrghhh . . . Easier said than done you co-conspirator! boys!!

Time for the Class Reunion . . .

It happens every year I will get a call in the office. "This is so-and-so I am from the class of 19 -whatever, do you have any contact information on members of our class?, Do you know if our class is having a reunion this summer?" The answer to that is no. Unless you would like to enter our fireproof vault and go through each huge notebook to locate individual student transcripts from the 60's, 70's, 80's and part of the 90's (pre-computer age) to find their address at the time of graduation. Once you walk across the stage and receive that diploma in their hand, we don't keep a compiled list of addresses. Usually the high school office doesn't hear about upcoming reunions, we refer the call to the local newspaper. "Oh" they say. "We just figured the high school kept up on that stuff". It's normally 99% the responsibility of the senior class president to initiate any class reunions and to maintain an ongoing up-to-date contact list. Thanks in part to Classmates. com, Facebook and MySpace news of class reunions begin to spread like wildfire. I bring this up because Josh & Dani have their 10 year reunion this weekend, my how time flies.

Here were my observations at the reunions I attended -

10 year reunion - Everybody still primarily mingled with their high school friends/clicks (as we called them). Lots of bragging or posturing about careers and kids. Really good attendance at this reunion from the Friday night classmates only, the big dinner on Saturday and golf/picnic on Sunday. Some girls already had 4-5 kids (primarily the Mormon ones). Many guys were balding already and many wallflower types had become real beauties (according to my husband who I had to smack a couple times for staring).

20 year reunion - Not as many in attendance, but a few who came made it their summer vacation from out of state. Lots of high school sweethearts who had married were now divorced. Some were already grandparents. The guys that were balding before, were now working on potbellies. The gals (to me) seemed to look even better, but you could definately tell that hair coloring was happening to alot of us. My biggest disappointment was that alot of my close friends from high school didn't attend. Most all of them live locally, so that bummed me out. This reunion was really fun. I think people were much more comfortable in their skin and where they were in their lives, no need for one upmanship. My favorite story from this reunion was standing next to a former classmate (guy) who had been married and divorced from a gal in our class. She had since remarried some Attorney from Portland and brought her new husband to the reunion with her. She was all decked out in a beautiful dress, looking very shapely and "hot" as my husband said. As I spoke to the classmate he began telling me a bit about their divorce when suddenly he began staring at his EX . . I could tell he was looking at her chest. I just sort of smiled slightly as he proceeded to tell me "She didn't have those when I was married to her". . oh my gawd it was hilarious, apparently she had gotten a little plastic surgery since the divorce . . we laughed it was a good time.

30 year reunion - I didn't attend and I regret it. I heard from a number of people that it was the best one yet. It was local and there was really no excuse for not attending. I have compiled a list of the gals that I hung out with during those 4 years of high school and I am going to definately call them all to attend the 35th. I guess as we get older we have reunions closer together as people begin to kick the bucket sooner. OH MY GAWD!! our 35th will be next year . . . geezz I'm getting old. Be ready gals the call is coming!!!

All aboard, it's Pear country! . . .

Yesterday we took a trip on the Mt. Hood Railroad. We had received a gift certificate at Christmas so decided to use it for their Brunch train. Upon arriving at the depot at about 10:15am and checking in we had about 45 minutes to wander in downtown Hood River. It was a perfect sunny day for grabbing a cup of coffee and browsing the downtown shops. We discovered Hood River is really a cool town. Lot's of bike shops, eclectic kitchenware & clothing shops, lots of places selling windsurfing gear and the outfits to go with that gear. A McMenamins type Historical hotel, a few brew pubs, lots of coffee shops with beautiful hanging flower baskets out front. It's weird sometimes how you judge a town that you quickly drive by on a freeway frequently and it's nothing like you thought it would look like. As we boarded for our train trip, which was a total of 4 hours that included a delicious 4 course brunch, we discovered what is hidden from freeway view of the "real" Hood River. As our train climbed back behind town, headed toward the halfway point to the town of Parkdale our conductor gave us a brief history lesson. Hood River is the "Pear Capital" of the world . . it's true, we passed acres and acres and acres of gorgeous pear and cherry orchards. There are a number of fruit processing plants that we traveled by that have been in business since the 30's.As far as you could see there were trees, with the beautiful backdrop of Mt. Hood. We learned to make pear wine that when the fruit is very small on the branch, they place a wine bottle over the fruit so it continues to grow inside the wine bottle. When it is harvested at a certain size, they send the wine bottles to vintners that fill them with pear wine. The fruit is forever preserved in the bottle and apparently if you are a fan of pear wine, it is the best you can buy. This is a trip that is well worth the fare, especially if you can catch a sunny Oregon day as we did. So tell your friends and visitors to Oregon, take a relaxing trip on the Mt. Hood Railroad.

New design, same old me . . .

Oh lord . . . it's taken me about 2 hours but I finally came up with a new design for my blog. I was brave and moved outside of the basic Blogger "classic" templates menu. Browsed the web for free blog templates, saved, copied, pasted and wah lah!!. For all you computer geeks out there this would be a very simple task I know, but for me not so much. I was scared that I would lose everything that I've posted over the last couple of years, but it still seems to be there. Lost some of my items down one column of the page. Oh well, it will give me something to do in redesigning it again. I've really been slacking on my blogging. There has been lots going on, just not finding the time to sit and gabb about it. Perhaps my renovation of the webpage will motivate me, we'll see!

Congrats! FG Grads!

Today's the day!! . . . before you know it your reunion will be here . . Congrats class of 2009!

"The greatest danger to the world is not the bad people, but it's the good people who don't speak out" . . . Hamilton Jordan

You know it's going to happen . . .

Some days you just need a Martini . . .

This week at school is crazy!!! Our last week for Seniors. I'm frantically printing a gazillion certificates for the spring sports athletes and the senior awards coming up, shipping trophies to the engraver, retirement party organizing, preparing for the huge awards assembly on Friday, contacting presenters and speakers, the staff golf scramble, . . . . aaahhhh! I want to hide! . . But first I have to share a "drink" find with you. My niece sells this product through one of those home party companies, it's called Tastefully Simple. They sell food and drink items online, through parties or their catalog. They have a fantastic beer bread and really great sauces (especially Teriyaki & Apricot dipping sauce) YUM! Anyway, on the order form was a product called "Mango Breeze Margarita Mix"

. . . but instead of Tequila or Rum as they recommend, I added Absolut Citron Vodka to the container. HELLOOOO!!!!!!! it's absolutely delicious!!! So as this week has been overly booked and busy . . I enter my kitchen and remove the container from the freezer to scoop some of the instant frozen stress relief and gracefully place it in my glass . . . take a sip . . . and all the world is good.

Happy Birthday Brayden! . . .

Who are all these people and why are they all singing to me??

"Hey, Daddy can I take it out and ride it now?"

"This eating cake is hard work."

"Taking some pool time with my friends"

Great party Mom & Dad!!