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.

Orlando 2010

We had a great time in Florida this past week!  Tom had a conference to attend while Ruthann and Alyssa played at Universal Studios ...

Of course they posed especially for this photo.

We had a lot of fun on the various coaster rides at SeaWorld ...

And also at Busch Gardens ...

Tom was very pleased with the new zoom lens for his camera as he captured some decent shots of the dolphins and killer whales from the stands at SeaWorld.

We had a great time there in sunny Florida!

Surprise Snow!

We were definitely surprised by the accumulation of snow today!

December with the Howells 2009

We enjoyed a visit from Rachael, Lydia, Ellie, Carver & Grace this month.

Christmas Cookie decorating was one of the fun activities that were enjoyed.

Grandma also helped Lydia and Ellie make quilts

The kids got a chance to visit Santa

We also enjoyed a tour of the Christmas displays at Portland International Raceway

Next week ... Pullman!

Thanksgiving

We have had a mild and wet fall, and while the leaf season was mediocre we did have some nice color.

Ruthann demonstrated her jungle decorating skills for the pack meeting in October

Alyssa enjoyed her 24th birthday!

We had an enjoyable Turkey Day in Dallas with the Bowmans

And we completed our traditional decorating tasks on Black Friday!

Fall has come!

So while it has been some time since the last posting, much has been happening in our lives.

Leah and Ben came to visit in September for a few days.  Of course aside from the Cozy Coupe we enjoyed the Zoo ...

And as always, the highlight had to be the ride on the zoo train ...

We really enjoyed having the time with Leah and Ben while the summer lingered and look forward to Ruthann and Alyssa's visit to Pulman for Ben's birthday.

Speaking of birthdays we had a good time with the Howells for Carver's 4th Birthday ...

Carver had a group of friends join in birthday party fun including painting little cars, duck-duck-goose, london bridges, and of course enjoying birthday cupcakes!

Clearly Carver's favorite gift was his power tool set.  He was very safety conscious.  He wore the goggles regularly and loved playing with the various toy power tools - just like daddy!

We also had a chance to watch Lydia's soccer match in the beautiful autumn sunshine ...

We have been enjoying the color of the season!

And hope you have too!