After months of trying to get her back walk over…..she finally did it!
This summer we drove down to California to attend Grandma and Grandpa’s memorial. It was a beautiful military service. The service was followed by a luncheon. They lived a wonderful life and we are all blessed to have had them in our lives for so long.
While we were there we had fun with our cousins. A good time was had by all.
Noah is the hardest worker around. He just got a second job as a lifeguard. He worked as a junior lifeguard during the summer like Hunter, starting when he was 12. He’s now 15 and is an official lifeguard. He’s not crazy about me taking photos of him so these as as good as I could get.
Bagel job
Blast from the past of Noah as a junior guard and now a lifeguard.
Noah turns 15!
Noah for his birthday rode his dirt bike with his two buddies, Noah and Shep out to Paulina Lake for an over night camp trip. The boys set up camp just above the campsites with their bikes and slept in hammocks. Noah Lovejoy was responsible for making dinner (pizza), Shepard was in charge of all the snacks and our Noah made oatmeal and hash browns for breakfast. The boys swam in the lake and went to the hot springs. They were home by lunch time and can’t wait to do it again.
Our first major trip of the summer was a 6-day/5-night rafting trip on the wild and scenic section of the John Day River. This is a 70 mile stretch with a put in a Clarno and a take-out at cottonwood. Beautiful central Oregon desert canyon rafting trip. 2 years ago we did a shorter section upriver from here starting at Twickenham and taking out at Clarno which was our put in for this trip. the colder than average variable weather spring we have been having this year continued to play out on this trip with warmer temps earlier in the trip dropping to cold and windy near the end of the trip with a torrential rain storm one night and a major wind-storm another night but thankfully our days were more pleasant.
Like our raft trip to the Grand Ronde river last year we went with our friends the Lovejoy's and the Kerrs. This year the Noah's ran the smaller 'super puma' raft, while Hunter, Jack and Nathan kayaked.
This section of the John day only had one major set of rapids that were in the class 3 range. We hit this set on the very first day but other than that its light class 2 and river float for the most part through a beautiful canyon with some interesting frontier history loaded with stories from early homesteaders, farmers, ranchers, and cattle rustlers. This was the first longer trip with the new raft after its initial voyage in April on the lower Deschutes and first trip with the family.
Morning rainbow off the back deck today!
This summer Hunter and his friend Jack want to kayak the rivers when we go rafting. Mark (Jack’s dad) took them to a swimming pond to practice rolling in a controlled environment. This is the skills the boys need to be able to do at will in rough water before they are allowed to do the rivers in a kayak.
I have build and put up shelves in each of the kids rooms except PJ and he asked for some this spring.
I got a piece of cut juniper from a guy selling them on the side of the road near Sunriver for $20. I sanded it down, then cut it adding a light pre-stain and then polyurethane to bring out the color of the wood grain.
We used some shelf bars we have had from our first apartment in Huntington Beach after getting married.
PJ is super excited!
My good friend mark has been doing a high school boys Bible study since the start of the school year. He wanted to get all the boys out plus a couple of additional boys that will be starting high school next year (our Noah for example). We have been planning it for about a month. In total we had 18 people. 12 boys and 6 adults.
Mark and I would run gear rafts and our friend Justin who works for CRU at the college would run a raft full of kids and the older boys would run in a smaller raft on their own. (Jack and hunter both have familiarity running this one).
Mark and Justin ran the programming for the weekend and I was camp cook!
We were a bit worried about the weather as it had just been snowing a little over a week earlier but we were blessed with good weather. Cool at night but nice spring days during the day.
We did a 3 day run on the lower Deschutes leaving Friday and coming back Sunday. Boys had an absolute blast and it was amazing to see them bond as brothers in Christ.
Dads also had a great time hanging out and bonding with the boys as well. Food was great and always enjoyable to share meals together. Food pics- night 1 - big pot of chilli and second photo is a peach cobbler I did.
We have been rafting as a family the last couple of years on borrowed equipment. This year we invested in our own equipment. It’s hard to find something that everyone enjoys together and this is one of those things. With that you need a way to transport the raft so I set about building a removable platform for our trailer to carry the raft inflated.
