It’s been over a month since my last entry and things have happened that you may (not) be interested in, but I’m going to share with you, anyway. So, continue reading at your own risk with the understanding that you may quit any time you wish.

This was a trip to Fort Stevens State Park in July. Max had a good time and showed us the joy of having a white dog. He loves the water and the sand, in any order.

We would have spent more time on the beach, but it was pretty crowded.

Max having a staredown with a buck in our back yard. The buck backed down after a long contest of wills.

Here’s how Max helps us make the bed.

Our Winnebago friends showed up out of the blue and hooked up for a 3-day visit. These visits are limited to 3 rigs because that uses all the space in front of the house. Another limiting factor is power. With this many rigs plugged into the garage circuits there’s no doubt a breaker will eventually trip. But, it all works out with a great visit.

Then, our old PT Cruiser friends appeared for a visit. This is most of the visitors. I’m sure others took photos but I got caught up in visiting and totally forgot I had a camera. Sorry folks. We’ll start out with Max demonstrating how shy he is.

It’s really sad that I failed with photos because some of these people have been able to avoid us for 15-20 years. We all don’t mingle like we used to.

Then, all the sudden, they were gone.

Our standing family gathering in July included friends from Intel which provided us with a visit with Jered, a guy she found in the Intel cafeteria.

In addition to whatever happened over the past weeks, we’ve spent the last three days in Waldport, Oregon with the Walters Family. Since all the adult children work different shifts for Intel it wasn’t easy to get them in the same room together on a good day, carving out three days was difficult. But, my live-in trip planner managed to make it work. She got a 12 bedroom house on a cliff that worked nicely so everyone had their own room. Sounds good, but there was only one bathroom with 2 urinals and 2 stools, which was nice but, due to shy bladders, only one of us could use it at a time. Kinda weird.

We drove to Waldport after church on Sunday. Three cars made the trip from various locations and we all arrived within 5 minutes of each other after a 3+ hour drive. Quite remarkable. That made Jerrie very happy because having everyone there meant he didn’t have to unload everything alone. Once the three cars were unloaded we all thought that turning the Littles (Siah & Jasper) free to play, then Diane got busy preparing dinner. She made her best Sloppy Joe stuff on Saturday so all she had to do was warm it up.

The big kids kicked around the neighborhood and found a path to the beach pretty close to the house. The rope tied to the block goes all the way down. Wearing gloves is recommended but I wasn’t going back for them.

This is what it looks like at the bottom. (that’s Cedric leading the way).

We played an UNO game that was hilarious, aggravating, and lots of fun. It was a very un-normal version of the game. The objective is to get people kicked out of the current game by winding up with 25 cards in their hand. Easy to do when everyone gangs up on you and you wind up drawing 20 cards instead of 4.

Tuesday was a trip to the acquarium.

On the way in Jennifer took my hand. When she was little, holding hands didn’t appeal to her so I never got to do that. On her wedding day, when I walked her down the aisle I offered her my elbow but she took my hand instead. That was the first time she initiated hand contact. The next photo was the second time, as we walked in to the acquarium. That made my day.

Taking a break …

We took turns cooking. Sunday was sloppy joes that Diane cooked on Saturday, Monday Jennifer cooked taco/nacho meat very good with lots of choices to spice things up, and Tuesday Lydia cooked a classy pork and noodle dish that was very good.

After dinner on Tuesday Lydia and I took Max for a walk on the beach. In the dark. He loved it and thought it was great fun to run away from us into the dark. He finally tired of that game and allowed us to reconnect his leash and head back to the house. We were delayed a little longer because Lydia couldn’t find the log she assigned to watch over her flipflops. Thankfully she found them. Thankfully, we had flashlights because it was very dark for the trip back up the path.

We spent a lot of time at the beach after we found a more suitable access point for everyone. The closeby rope path wasn’t a good idea for the Littles.

It was a wee bit foggy every day we were awake. Still, it was fun. Even Jeran enjoyed it.

Loading up for the trip home didn’t take long, then our visit to Waldport was done.

Our first stop on the way home was Seal Rock where we had to stop at the Chubby Lil Mermaid Pastry and Gift Shop to get one of their whale shaped, caramel covered doughnuts. Sadly, I didn’t take a picture of the one I got Diane. I checked their website for a photo, but they don’t have one, either. Guess you’ll have to visit them for varification.

That’s it for the Waldport visit. Everyone made it home safely.