Snow arrives in SH...

The wild man...this is what an afternoon of sugar cookies and finger paints will do to a guy.

Painting on paper plates and themselves... Tierney later explained to me that life imitates art and thus her actions were an extension of her philosophy.

Rowen and Tierney hitch a ride through the junior high parking lot...faster, faster, they cried.

Taking a ride down a 10-foot hill...Patrick swore he wasn't scared.

Rowen and Tierney exploring the snow.

Five months pregnant and not afraid to sled...


Can you guess which one is not a real snow man?

The 4,000th photo of Rowen with the snow people...I think the neighbors think we're crazy.


Footnote: I should add that several hours later the snow people were decapitated by some passing hooligans... that's the price you pay for living in Sweet Home.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Christmas photos

This is one we didn't use for the Christmas card. Can you guess why?

Making sugar cookies with sugar frosting. Got to love the holidays.

Sampling the finished products.


Rowen and Tierney hang out as Matt and Patrick search for the perfect tree.

It's a .... boy?

An initial sonogram on Monday revealed this image of the new baby sucking its thumb in the womb.
While the doctor says it's still too early to be certain, she's "pretty sure" it's a boy.
Also, the due date has been pushed up to May 4 based on Jessamyn's conversations with the doctor.
Whether it's a boy or a girl, we'll be happy, but I told Jess that if it's a boy that will mean she's outnumbered three boys to one girl.
She said that leaves the door open for a third child, so she can have her chance to dress up a baby with something other than boring boy clothes.
I said that I'm not even going to think that far ahead.

Drill Weekend

115th MPAD group photo (minus the commander and the first sergeant) taken in Salem on Sunday, Nov. 15.

Sgt. Rutherford running through the high desert during our first attempt at a group photo. The camera on a tripod in the background is on a timer.

Sgt. Rutherford and Spc. Bacon haul our weapons from the building to a truck as we make our way toward a firing range outside of Redmond.

Just another creepy moment with the 115th MPAD.

Firing weapons indoors on the FATS (firearms training system) in Prineville. This was really fun. You shoot the little targets as they pop up on the screen and afterwards a display shows you where each shot hit.

We had one of the best drills this weekend in central Oregon. On Friday, we drove vans over the pass into central Oregon and bunked at an armory that was designed as a prison. Some people slept in little rooms designed for solitary confinement. The smokers relaxed in the recreation yard beneath a watchtower and Rutherford whittled his toothbrush into a shiv in the shower.

Saturday morning, we got to play an elaborate video game simulating live fire with M16's and M203 grenade launchers. Then we spent the afternoon firing the real thing at a nearby range. The simulator did little for me since I barely qualified. I'm going to blame that on the fact that I fired nine rounds and guesstimated my zero before qualifying.

Saturday evening we went to a MOUT site in the scrub (Military Operation in Urban Terrain) and played the opposition force for a company of engineers with paintball gear. I dressed in old fatigues and hid in windows peppering the oncoming troops with paintballs as we tried to hold a small plywood village during intense onslaughts. I still have the welts to prove it.

Weekend in Illinois

After twelve hours of travelling.

Jordan and Brando, straight out of "Deliverance."

Jumping on the stairs. A great pasttime at our house.

Ooooh, cute. It's a baby mutant.

McDonald's playland with the great grandparents.

Rowen and grandma sleeping on the sheep.

Jordan shows off his amazing acrobatics.

Rowen, following in his dad's footsteps, makes so much noise in the

house that no one can think straight.

Posing for the next J. Crew catalog.

After-dinner wrestling matches.



We spent four, "food-and-fun filled" days in Illinois, sandwiched between marathon travel sessions from Oregon to Washington to Minnesota to Indianapolis and back.

Luckily, Rowen slept the majority of the plane rides and thank goodness for portable DVD players to entertain him for another couple hours.

In just four days, we had a birthday party for Rowen, a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, drove to Bloomington for lunch with the great-grandparents, toured the University of Illinois, cleaned the gutters and raked the yard, and had multiple wrestling matches, scavenger hunts and games of hide and seek with the nephews.

A nice surprise on the way home. We got up at 2:30 a.m. to drive to the Indianapolis airport, and on arriving a worker with a flashlight standing in the road to the terminal informed us the airport had moved...but he didn't know where to.

Apparently, they'd built a new one and we had no idea. So we drove back to the interstate and found the new airport at 5 a.m. on it's opening morning. No wonder it was so clean.

Halloween and the science museum

Jess and Rowen on the thermo screen

Snapping a photo of the thermo screen

Rowen watching some girl dance behind the projection screen.

Rowen splashing around at the science playground.

Rowen and Tyson on Halloween.

Halloween came and went with few trick-or-treaters. Rowen dressed as a cowboy and enjoyed trick-or-treating at downtown businesses. We then took his candy and let him eat grapes as treats. He'll probably figure out this trick one day.

Saturday at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland. They have a cool kids' science playground where parents can sit back and let the kids go to town on elaborate exhibits involving water, sand, air channels and mirrors and stuff.

We postponed a crabbing trip due to weather warnings for gale force winds at the coast. We had planned to take the motor boat onto the bay at Alsea. But the pots are geared up and so is the boat for next time. It dumped rain this weekend, like buckets and buckets; the way I've only ever seen it rain in the Willamette Valley.

Just six months more until sunshine.

Fall Weather Weekend

We've been having a great Indian summer here in the Willamette Valley.

Nice weather for raking leaves and hanging out at a pumpkin farm.

On Saturday we snuck into a pumpkin farm on the outskirts of Eugene that was closed temporarily from an overload of visitors exceeding the farm's capacity.

After a long wait in to buy tickets for the Cow Train, Rowen decided the ride was too much. He had them pull over so he could get off after one lap around a field.

Luckily, we hadn't given them our tickets yet and were able to resell them to someone else.

$3.50 per person for a three minute ride!!!

Hi Mom. Hi Dad.

Hello Everybody,

I decided to start up a little blog to keep friends and family informed on our whereabouts and goings-on out here in Oregon.

I titled this blog "Hi Mom. Hi Dad." because I'm sure my parents will be the most frequent visitors to the blog.

As you can see, we're still the same group of squinting-smiling redheads you all know and remember.

This weekend we took a trip to Grants Pass to stay with Beth (see photo), our lawyer friend who recently moved back to Oregon after graduating law school in NYC.

She made Jessamyn a belated birthday cake and Rowen ate so many jelly beans and so much chocolate cake, we thought he was going to jump on the bed all night long.

Thankfully, sugar highs wear off.

I'm still getting the hang of how to layout photos on this site so look for better photo placement in the future.