Pullman Trip - November 2010

We had a great time in Pullman the first week in November for an early celebration of Ben's 4th birthday!






We had an interview trip to New York that pre-empted our previous plans to join in the celebration the following week on his actual birthday (November 11th) but this gave him the opportunity to extend the birthday partying for over a week instead!



Grandpaparatzi had fun capturing the grandkids!

Aren't they adorable!

GC 2010 - Day 4

Day 4 was a much more subdued day with our usual morning breakfast routine and after a leisurely morning the girls enjoyed cookie making after lunch.

Lydia enjoyed helping scoop out the cookie dough onto the pan ...

While Ellie suffered with my favorite role - cleaning those nasty mixer tines.  (someone has to do it!)

They both had a good time frosting the centers.

Notice Lydia's new dragon skin cape ... she loves it!

After Alyssa came home in the afternoon we went to Rose City Ceramics to work on some ceramic projects.

Ellie finished her tile painting early and so she and Grandpa decided to walk to Pirate Park ahead of the others.  Only it was a warm afternoon and the walk (about a mile) was a bit longer than we thought.  The girls picked us up before we arrived at the park.  Ellie is quite the hiker!  I was nearly out of breath keeping up with her.

After hamburgers and corn on the cob we watched Princess Diaries 2 and found that another day at Grandma Camp 2010 had wound down (and so had we).

GC 2010 - Day 3

Yes, another bright and early morning with the standard omelet and french toast breakfasts ...




The day was sunny and bright yet still nice and cool, so we embarked on a bike ride to Pirate Park.

and then on to Great Grandma Schutz's where they consumed mass quantities of Root Beer ...

They were very thirsty after all.

Quite a ride for little legs. (7 miles to Great Grandmas via Pirate Park)

Ellie of course, peddled more than any of us.  While she was frustrated with Grandma and Lydia pulling away from she and Grandpa, Ellie kept pushing along and did a great job on a very grownup ride.







After peddling up the hill back to Grandma's house the girls were deserving of the cooling off that came from the Oak Hills pool.

We cooled down quite nicely and then enjoyed a relaxing indoor picnic upstairs in our home theatre watching the Princess Bride ...


and a relatively early bedtime to recover from a more physical day 3 at Grandma Camp 2010.

GC 2010 - Day 2

The day began with Lydia up and pacing the house waiting for time to pass so that we could go to Powells book store.  She reported having dreams about going there and woke at first light and could not go back to sleep.  So it was just Lydia and Grandpa for first breakfast of omelets which she devoured.  An hour later second breakfast for Ellie (French Toast encore) was equally enjoyed and then the older girls arose and we were finally off to Powells.

The enthusiasm for the destination was contagious!

And, I have more shots of Ellie once again since Lydia was less of a model ...


























The girls (all of them) had a great time checking out the possibilities and were tickled with their choices.


We really expected to be there longer but there was some intense decision-making in a short period of time and then they were anxious to enjoy their purchases...




On the way back from Powells we watched as a pigeon played chicken with MAX.  You can see the small blurred spec on the tracks in front of the train (on the right) ... fortunately the bird was experienced enough to fly away just in front of the train and avoid becoming a lasting impression of our time together.






With the new books in hand the next step was to make some cool bookmarks...


And of course, read ...

For FHE later after dinner, we read the history of the Star Spangled Banner and watched School House Rock stories of the history of our country and what Independence Day was all about.

We had a reading party until dark.












And then we enjoyed the fireworks.














The sparklers were a hit.

I found some really interesting and fun effects of the dark and slow shutter speeds ...

Another fun day at GC 2010!

GC 2010

Grandma Camp 2010 has arrived!

Lydia and Ellie were really excited about the opportunity to spend another short week with Grandma Eucker.  We drove home Saturday night after celebrating Ellie's birthday and pretty much went to bed after talking about books with Auntie Alyssa for awhile, although Ellie had to practically beg to go to bed.

The next morning we started our morning pretty gradually, with the girls up at around 6:30 am 

Lydia doing some reading ...

and Ellie in the play area ...

After a french toast breakfast for the one non-fasting person we got ready and went off to Church.




After Church it was time to ...

Read ...

[notice the slightly blue lips ... that was from the blue sucker that Ellie's teacher gave her during Primary ...]

And play games  ... (in this case Clue)

After a short game where Grandma inserted a character and two weapons (no room) in the final clue envelope ... 

it was time for a fun craft!

(or at least the first steps - more to follow tomorrow).

After Ellie finished decorating her washers, she naturally ....

Got back to her book ...

Then it was time to prepare dinner.  

That blur on Grandma's left is Lydia trying to move out of the picture before her Grandpoparatzi can get the shot ... 

This will be sort of a pattern throughout the imagemaking process ...

Along with Ellie reading ...  in this case she was enamored with the Church News ...

Then it was time for treat making ...

Where Lydia tried her hand at the hand mixer ... while also trying to avoid Grandpoparatzi ...

Quite the challenge.  Even for a well trained image avoider like Lydia ...

Before the treats were finished we got to join in with the weekly Skype session with the Pulman Euckers ...
















The girls were a great help in showing cousin Ben the toys ...











But the real treat was to see how much Emma had grown!











The finale of the evening was to watch Saturday's Warrior ...

only the old video cassette had seen too many playings over too many years in what has become an archaic technology.

So they listened to the audio CD while painting their nails ...

And that wound down the first day of GC 2010!

Stay tuned!

South Africa

Now that I am semi-recovered from the travel I am able to post some of the pictures from my time in South Africa.  First of all, most of us in the U.S. know very little about Africa and many have expected that in my journey to the farmland south of Johannesburg that I might see wildlife and that the terrain might be similar to what we have come to know through movies.  Well, the South Africans laugh at our misconceptions ... as you can see the scenery is very much as you might see in California...

On the left is a beautiful bay on the east coast just south of Durban on our road trip to Kokstad. 

The trip showed quite a range of beautiful countryside and farmland as shown on the right.

And as you can see here on the left some mountains and gorgeous views.













There are even a fair number of forests that are harvested for paper.  We passed mills and log camps along the way.  We could have been in Oregon!

Here is a common homestead that make up the "villages" although they vary considerably from very well built tile roofs and stucco to thatch roofs and mud walls.

Here is Willowdale Lodge, the bed and breakfast where we stayed - a 140 year old ranch house.

OK ... so there were some interesting creatures such as this Orb spider.  They were all over the grounds of the lodge.

Here is an image so that you get a feeling for the size of this little wildlife specimen ...

Some of the most compelling scenes occurred in the morning from the front of the Lodge ...

It was a beautiful place and a very enlightening experience.