Backyard Expansion - 2023

Over the last two months, I have been working on a backyard expansion.   I started the first week of April and just finished (end of May).  

Left (south) side of the back yard

Before: In 2018 we put in the first stage of the backyard in April of that year and I also built a garden off to the left side completed in June of that year.    You can see what was left natural.  




Here is the new expanded south side completed.

Right (North) side of the backyard

Before: We had a small rustic fire pit with log that got overgrown as you can see in the second picture




Here is the new right/north side of the backyard:


Some pictures of the project at various stages 

Cafe Racer Project

Hunter and I drove to Washington yesterday to pick up a ‘project bike’. It’s a 3 cylinder 82 Yamaha 750 with a shaft drive (vs chain). It’s not running now so first part of the project will be engine work. 

Below are some pictures of what people have done with these bikes to get an idea of the finished product. 

John Day - Wild & Scenic section - Rafting

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.  

PJ bedroom shelves

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!

High school boys Bible and rafting

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.  

Prepping for Rafting season

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.