Indian Summer!

We arrived in Portland, OR early Sunday morning. The kids all did so well on the flights and with long hours in the airport in ANC. I was glad I had booked a direct flight!
Our planned trip to visit friends in WA has not happened yet. All of their children were down with a cold virus and the mommies decided it was wiser not to expose the wedding party! We hope to be able to visit sometime over the week-end.
The weather has been absolutely amazing. A bit of fog in the mornings, and beautiful balmy blue skies the rest of the day. We have all enjoyed spending lots of time outside enjoying the sunshine and playing. Brad took the kids crawdad fishing! They all loved it and managed to catch one each!
Today is ropes day. The littles are very excited and all have special things they'd like to do. Dillon is looking forward to the climbing wall. Anybody surprised?!?!? :)
Kendra's friends here on the base had a bridal shower for her last night. It was fun to meet her friends and to see the special, loving, godly women my daughter is surrounded with. God has so blessed her!

Salem, OR here we come!

We have been waiting for this day for 10 months and it is finally here! Susanna, Thomas, Dillon and I leave tomorrow for Salem to spend a couple of weeks with Kendra before her wedding. We are all SO excited! There are things we are looking forward to: McDonald's playland (nobody really wants to eat there, they just want to play!) "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" will be the first real theater movie the boys will remember being in, inexpensive gas and groceries, visits with Kendra and with dear friends, parks to play and run in, warm sunshine (just a little more Indian Summer in OR please Jesus! :)). And then there are things we are NOT looking forward to: lots of car time, traffic, driving "forever" whenever we need/want to go somewhere, stop lights, other cars, lots of people, did I mention traffic? :) Needless to say, we live a pretty quiet life here in our little bush city and the busyness of 'outside' holds little appeal.
We covet your prayers for travel safety as we make our way to the Lower-48.

Finally, FLOORING!

Oh my goodness! After reading the last posts about the barge and how ready our flooring expert was, I now look back and chuckle! Of course, this is Dillingham and nothing but nothing runs on the same time as elsewhere in the world. Long story short...the floors are laid and are in the process of being finished!!! Hooray! The kids and I went and peeked in the front door yesterday; the vinyl was not yet adhered to the floor, so we just looked from the porch. It was very exciting to see that the vinyl choice I had occasionally agonized over looked terrific, with no discernible seam! Thank you Lord!

The next thank you is to you our faithful praying freinds. The smoke smell in the house is no longer detectible. The side attics and floors had to be re-sprayed and that took care of the problem!