Oregon Update

Hey Fam! Been awhile, so here are a few random pictures and stories. Hope everyone is doing great!

 We went to a local cut-your-own tree farm nearby in Oregon City, OR to get our first tree for our house. Here is Alisa picking it out. It was fun to go cut it down and drag it back, but it wasn't quite the same as going into the deep woods to find one. I miss that tradition!











Here is Alisa decorating the tree. We have quite a few ornaments, but not quite enough to fill it up. Alisa says that one of the first things she thought of when seeing the little alcove in our main room is that it would be a great place to put a tree. So, there was no discussion on where to finally put it when we got it back to the house!

The tree is starting to accumulate a few presents. Most of which need to get in boxes and sent to Utah for the Blaines. We will miss you all next week (and a few days)!

 I had been taking a picture a day for every run I did. Here is a picture on my last run before my knee (supposedly my good one!) decided to not play along with marathon training and get injured. I've been off it for a good couple of week, and while I don't expect to finish fast in Florida, I do hope to finish! I even was able to run 3 miles today without any pain. Oh, yeah, back to the picture: there is a cool little farm with all sorts of fowl along the bike path/running trail that isn't too far from our house. On that day I saw that there was also a family of otters(?) near the farm. I caught one of them "sunning" itself on the bank.

 Our fence along the house next to us starts at 6 feet and goes down to 4 feet. That is about 4 times as tall as Zoey is, so there is no way she can jump over it, right? Wrong. With the arrival of a new dog next door (a cute pup named Peanut, formerly Mango), Zoey was motivated to try to get over and say hello. Well, she was able to jump over by first getting just high enough to get her hind legs on the little perch there at the top. The neighbors said that she was free to come over any time she liked, but we somehow felt that they would actually get sick of us constantly retrieving her. So....

  Over a very cold weekend we put up a trellis system above the 4-foot section. Thankfully, the length was exactly 24 feet long and three pre-framed 8 foot sections fit snugly in place. I had to extend the short posts by a couple of feet, which looks great on our side, but you can see the metal connector on the neighbor's side. They are a very nice couple however, and even helped us put it up. We had to quickly stain the trellis, no easy task in short wintry days, and here is Alisa showing how much she enjoys the task.

 We are happy with the result and look forward to the spring when we will probably put in one or two vertical trellises (the plural of that should really be trellii as I like the sound of it), and plant some jasmine to climb along the fence.

 Zoey, however, isn't nearly as happy. Here she is checking out the fence. I swear she knows which fence slat she is at by smelling them. Prior to Zoey jumping over the fence, there was a loose fence slat that Bill (the neighbor) repaired after she had gotten through. She would sniff along the fence and return to that one to scratch at it. Anyway, I think the trellis has locked her up pretty well in the back fence. Though now, I worry she will some day learn that she can probably get over the gate we built for her!

  I've been volunteering at the local science museum both in the "featured exhibit" hall and in the laser lab. The laser lab is fun, but I am stuck back in a dark room where it can be half an hour before anyone comes in. I was wiling the time away last time I was there by taking long exposures of the diffracted light we pass through fog creating a rainbow. You can also see green speckling from the laser we use to display a hologram and some fiber-optic light fixtures. 

Finally, I was going through pictures to post on the blog and found this one from our house-warming party and had to post it. Alisa is getting ready to fill those cupcakes with lemon curd. They were great! Anyway, love this picture and it gave me a smile.

Thanks for reading! See you all soon!