Blog Slackers

Cassie wants to go for a walk. She has been adjusting to me going back to work and has seen a sudden decline in the amount of walks she gets to go on. She knows that I am going to take her today, she just doesn't know when. Look how patiently she is waiting!


What?!? A new car you ask??? No, not a new car. This is our totally rad rental car while our car is in the shop (see Early Hunting Season post). I took it to Costco and Winco this morning, and I think I actually put the hurt on it after I loaded all the groceries in. It was not quite as zippy coming back down the freeway. :)

Jason is taking a practice exam today in preparation for his Professional Engineer exam that is coming up in October. Good luck.

My parent's (Sara's) are coming up this weekend. We are going to go to the Oregon State Fair and do some golfing. Yeah!

Okay Cassie, get your leash.

Update from "The New Teacher"

School starts a week from today!!! Soon I will be trying to remember 180 kids names and faces. And as mentioned in a previous post, I actually went back to work last week for some workshops and a couple new teacher inservice days. Today was the first official day back for all teachers, and it was a frenzied day that left my head spinning.

-I introduced myself a bazillion times.

-I drank somewhere between 7 and 10 cups of coffee. (I lost track at about 10:30 am)

-I ate my lunch between a morning meeting and afternoon meeting, during a lunch meeting.

-All the while being glad that I am an elective teacher that does not have to do state testing for my content area.

-Also all the while fearing for our kids (Jason and my future kids) high school careers and what high schools will be like when they get there!

It has been a very good experience so far though and I am loving it. I enjoy the teachers I work with and it has been nice to get back into some kind of routine after the summer. I feel so blessed to have a job and not have to be doing the substitute thing. It's going to be a wild and crazy year, no doubt! :)

Portland CityFest '08

Last night and Today we spent our time standing on our feet in the middle of the crowd shown in the picture below. Portland Cityfest, put on by Luis Palau, was held this weekend. We went down for some great music and it was all free.

We stood even closer than this next picture is taken. For most of the concerts we were probably 30 feet or so from the stage. We were close enough that we didn't even need to look at the jumbo screen.
So the bands we saw: Kirk Franklin, Kutless, Chris Tomlin, Marisol, Hawk Nelson, Mercy Me, and Toby Mac! It was an awesome time, and tons of people committed their lives to follow Jesus during Luis Palau's talk!

Before & After

Here are a couple before and after pictures of our roof.

Before:

After:

Before:

After

Back in the Saddle Again

I should be working on a curriculum guide I am writing for a literacy workshop. But what am I doing?? Watching the women's beach volleyball gold medal match. :)

I went back to work this week, starting off with a loverly 3-day literacy workshop. It's been a really good way to meet some of the other teachers and get in the groove again after a long summer break. But holy cow! I just have to keep reminding myself that I am .......

Wait..... hold on a sec....they won! USA gets gold in women's beach volleyball!!!

Okay, where was I?

Oh yeah, the work. At least I get some grad credit for it, and I don't have to pay for it, so that's good.

But now that I know the outcome of the volleyball game, I can shut down the computer (since I was working the whole time I was watching that match!!) and go to bed.

Cabin Weekend

A couple weekends ago, right before we roofed the house, we went to the family cabin with the whole Harden side of the family. So, that's Sara's Mom's side of the family. Sara and I went down on Thursday ahead of everyone else. our plan was to leave early in the morning and get a nice mountain bike ride in somewhere on the way down. We had a slight delay though when the cold water would not shut off in the shower in our house. It took about 1.5 hours and a trip to home depot to fix. Then we couldn't find a part for the yakima bike rack so that was another delay. Eventually we were on our way to Union Creek (near Crater Lake) and we decided to head straight there.

Friday morning I got up and did a little fishing. I caught about three trout and brought one back for breakfast. a little later we went for our first bike ride of the weekend. Its a 7.5 mile slightly downhill ride. We took Cassie and she tore her pad. That put her out for the rest of the weekend. Later we had to go get the shuttle car from the bike ride and Sara's dad and I decided we should ride the trail again so we did a power ride and pretty much went as fast as we could.

Saturday we got up and headed out for a hike. This was a hike with the whole family, all 20+ of us. Quite a feat. Rabbit Ears is this cool rock spire thing that we were planning on climbing. The plan was to get to the top of the one on the left. You can see them in the bottom right of this picture:

This is where we started to climb up:

Here is Mel showing us all the surrounding landmarks. The peak you can see in the background is not the top of the one of the Rabbit Ears that you see in the picture above. Its just the center of the two. Our plan is to climb up to this peak and then over and up to the top of the big one.

Sara climbing:

This is where we stopped:

The plan was to get over and up to the top of that peak in the picture above. We climbed the wrong place and couldn't get over there. It was still an awesome view though.

Here is the view back down. If you look closely you can see the rest of the family all the way at the bottom:

When we got back we went for another bike ride and then did a bunch more fishing and hanging out for the rest of the weekend. And all of this came right before we roofed our house!!! We got home on Sunday afternoon and my parents were already helping take off the old roof so we changed and got on the roof.... weeeeeeeeeeeee Good times, good times...

Deep Sea Fishing & Early Hunting Season

Yesterday we went deep sea fishing out of Newport with David, Diana, Vic, and Uncle Joe. We woke up around 3 am to drive to Newport, and we went out for 5 hours of fishing. It was pretty rough seas yesterday, really foggy and cold. We limited out pretty quickly, and spent the rest of the time trying to keep our breakfast down! Unfortunately no pics. Our camera batteries died when we were roofing earlier this week. Just picture a little tiny boat, rocking back and forth, splashing, fishing, puking...you get the picture.

And tonight, I opened deer season. I ran over a deer on the way home from Forest Grove. The deer had already been hit by another car and was in the middle of my lane. I had no time to react, and ran right over it. There is some damage to the car, but not sure to what extent yet. It drove home fine though, and we will be calling insurance tomorrow. I'm a little psyched out right now, so I am going to distract myself by watching the Olympics.

Poor deer...

Roofing Pics

Here are some pics from the roofing project. We started ripping off on Sunday afternoon, ripped off through Monday afternoon. Rooftop delivery of shingles and stuff came Monday afternoon, and we started roofing on Monday afternoon through Tuesday evening. It's all done now and we have the best looking roof in Sherwood!! :)

THANK YOU to the following: Uncle Joe, Grandpa Vic, David, Diana, Mel, Terry, Jozi, and Andy. We could not have done it without you.

Ouch

Jason's face explains it all.
We will blog more when we don't feel like Jason looks.
The roof is done though.
:)

Roofing Update

Alright. We are tired. So this is short. Actually, I think Jason is already asleep.

We came home on Sunday afternoon after spending the weekend with my mom's side of the family at our cabin at Union Creek.

We started tearing off the roof Sunday afternoon.

We finished tearing off the roof today.

Shingles were delivered.

One section of the roof is completely done.

Should finish tomorrow.

One injury = my right hand has a quarter-sized blister. :)

Lots of food, water, popsicles and gatorade.

LOTS of help from friends and family. (THANK YOU!!!!)

Tons of pictures, but too tired to post them tonight. We'll catch you up on the visuals later.

Sleep.

Happy 3rd Anniversary!

Wow! Was this really 3 years ago?
Happy Anniversary Jason.
I love you.

Camping

Just some photos...