Merry Christmas

Here's the family gathering for the day. My aunt quickly went from shock, hugs, and tears of joy when three of her grandchildren (with their parents) unexpectedly walked in the door. The surprise visitors flew in from California!

Snowman Humor

Favorite Pics from last Saturday!

Four Boys and a Boat

Down the Slide

Up the Slide

Small Spaces

Yet another slide!

Short break with mom

Climbing,

Standing, so close to walking . . .


End the day with a Bath!

A good day on the River

Eighteen pound Chinook caught on the White Salmon. "Surf and Turf" dinner plans for tonight.

Fishing with Grandpa

Three generations of Spotts boys trout fishing on Northwestern lake!

A One Year Old

I can crawl,


explore,


and even drive.


Sharing cake with Camp Morrow family


How do you get this package open?


The boxes are really the best!

Family Fun

Almost a year old


and I can leap like a frog.


Actually I just like to hang out . . . with grandpa,



. . . or grandma,


and I especially love hanging out with my mom or dad!

No Fruit

As my hubby was getting ready to eat his cheerios this morning, he commented, “no fruit.” He has fruit every morning on his cereal. I chuckled. There are 28 jars of freshly canned peaches next to ripening peaches, but we froze the ripe ones last evening. The bananas range from ooh, brown ready for banana bread to green, but nothing in between. The last of the fresh blueberries I had mixed with the last of the mango and that is not a combination he enjoys. All the fruit in the house is either frozen, canned, ripening or overripe. Frozen strawberries were thawed and breakfast was redeemed.

Playground action with Shane!

Shane had the whole playground to himself.

Check this out.

Resting with the sawdust.

Run, run, run

Oh, the joy of the day.

On the Floor!

The best place for grandpa and Luke to hang out!

Blueberry picking with Shane

Find Berries

Um, um good!

Hey, how come there are no berries in my bucket? Do you have any in yours gramma?

Saving Money

It’s what we all are doing. Right? Finding ways to trim our budgets and save a few dollars. Therefore, I cut out the $10 off coupon from Safeway. It’s seems a simple task. Check the paper for the deals. Cut out a coupon or two and begin making a list. Add a few items that are special for a new recipe and head out to the store. All is well, until I am almost at my $50 threshold, the amount needed to spend to save the $10, when I realize I have my $1.49 milk coupon, but not my $10 off coupon. I remember exactly where it is on the dining room table. I leave a phone message for my husband who is out running and ask him to call me ASAP. Now what? Do I keep shopping and make it to $50 or do I wait and make sure Bob gets the message, calls and is willing to drive to the store with the coupon or do I leave my whole basket and drive home and get the coupon myself? Bob calls and is willing to drive down with the coupon. Whew! I think all is well. I am so wrong!

I am also trying to buy the “mix or match” items that will reduce to $4.99 each if I can find the right ones and if I buy three of them. The first item is obviously popular as the shelf is empty. The next one is confusing. The one advertised in the paper is listed for a higher price, but there’s another one with the $4.99 price. No problem, I can adjust. It is just paper towels. The dryer sheets are listed as advertised and I’ll just swap something else in for the first item.

At the check out stand, the food and other items are quickly scanned and double quick shoved into the bags. Dryer sheets in with loose produce, but I can pull that out at the car.

A crash sounds from the direction of the sweet young bagger girl. She says to the checker, “I dropped one of her bags on the floor and broke the eggs. What do I do?”

While asking this question she picks up the bags and drools the egg whites and yolks on my bag and then sets the oozing dozen on the counter. The checker instructs her to go get me a new dozen of eggs. As she leaves I ask the checker if she will know what to get me. The checker says she’s not sure. It is the bag girl’s second day on the job. When she returns she tosses (and I do mean tosses) the eggs into my bag. I cringe, thinking of the vegetables that have just been smashed, but realize it wasn’t that hard and so move toward the door. Just before exiting I think to check this dozen eggs and sure enough one is broken. I do a 180 with my cart and meet her as she is trying to find a mop. I show her the broken egg and she takes it to the back of the store and returns again. This time I open it in front of her to check for breakage and incredibly find another broken egg. She took that dozen to the back of the store and returned quickly with another dozen. It took four tries to get me one dozen intact eggs. But my shopping experience wasn’t over yet.

After I unloaded all my groceries into the car, I decided to check the receipt and make sure that the prices looked correct. One of my $4.99 items had rung up at $11.29. Oh, my! That meant the rest did not ring down to $4.99 either. I picked up the two that I thought were wrong and headed to customer service. The woman obviously thought I was trying to pull a fast one, until she and I both looked at the tag on the shelf and she agreed with me that it said $4.99. Now what? The tag might say it, but the computer was not going to ring it up. Truly I no longer care. Give me something else for the $4.99 price. Any old paper towel will do! I don’t know if you noticed, but I said I brought in two of the items. I needed all three items in order to return the originals and then ring up the new ones. I went out to the car, parked far at the end of the parking lot, to get the dryer sheets. All three were successfully returned. Two new items and the dryer sheets were then purchased. The three items all went down to $4.99 each and I saved a whopping $10.50 on those three items.

Total savings for the trip: $32.85! And I only spent $47.37. But is my time worth anything?

I do NOT love shopping.

Another Fishing Trip

Jennifer didn't mind being up close with her fish.
When she didn't have any bites for a while she reeled in her fly to see what was wrong and this is what she found. A new record in tiniest fish caught!

Another graduate

This super senior graduated Saturday, June 6th.

Diep and Amy have a developed a strong friendship.

Her table and board to celebrate accomplishments and share photos of family, friends and adventures.

One of many gifts from a friend.

Jenna has graduated

This beautiful young lady, my niece, graduated last weekend! After a weekend of many celebratory events she came to Hood River and spent a couple of days at our school. She will attend Texas Christian University next year, majoring in education and wanted to spend a couple of days shadowing a principal. She loved our students and had met them all by the end of field day.

Adventures with Diep

Tuesday while we sat outside, enjoying dinner on a warm evening, we heard the sounds of the ice cream truck. I looked over at Diep and asked, “Do you know what that sound means?” She did not, but when I mentioned ice cream, she was quick to run into the house for money while I ran to the street to flag down the vendor before she drove on to the next neighborhood.
Megan, our other housemate, deciding if she too will indulge.
Then on Wednesday, Diep cooked us a scrumptious Vietnamese dinner. My job, sous chef, chop, chop, clean, clean. Ooh, such good food and what a treat not to cook!

Diep goes fishing

A few months ago, I asked each of the girls that I mentor to tell me some of their dreams. Diep is an exchange student, a super senior, from Vietnam who recently moved into our home. She had some ideas of activities that she wanted to try while still in the Pacific Northwest. She wanted to collect eggs from under hens, gallop on a horse, and try wind surfing and golfing. A few days after she moved into our home, we went to a friend's home for dinner. As we drove in, twenty-four hens greeted us! I did not even know that they were raising chickens! Thank you Lord! Diep collected the eggs and nervously reached under “Sylvia,” the only hen with a soft topknot of feathers gracing her head. Sylvia was not inclined to give up her eggs easily and let Diep know that she was setting on them. Although not on her list, Diep agreed to try fishing. She had never caught a fish. Here’s one of her eight catches from last Sunday afternoon!

Party Gifts!

Have you ever wondered what to take to a party? My sister challenged all of the guests who celebrated with me last Friday to bring 50 of something. Some chose useful gifts and some chose for the laughter.

50 tea lights
50 pennies
50 petals (on a zinnia)
50 smarties
50 dum dums
50 plants in my planter (yah it’s packed!)
50 cupcakes
50 lottery tickets
50 colorful pencils
50 high performance mint flavored “flossers”
50 colored markers
50 coffee beans and a whole bag of more!
50 stick-on fish
50 seeds for my victory garden
50 jelly beans
50 smooth rocks surrounding three peaceful candles

The pennies came in handy for the lottery tickets and the cupcakes were delicious and we all devoured most of them. Diep, our exchange student, learned about smarties, dum dums, and lottery tickets! What great fun! I just want to know who is going to plant, weed and harvest my victory garden?

50!

Today, I am turning 50 years young! Wahoo!! It is so fun to see how creative my friends are! It's only 8:30 in the morning and already I have roses, a strobe card, a caricature, e-cards and a fun necklace (from Vietnam). I am looking forward to a day full of surprises. I am going to start with doing community service/school service with a young boy = weeding for a couple of hours at our school! Tonight we are having a party at the house! Lots of family and friends will be arriving!

Sixth Year

But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.
Psalms 73:28


The nine of us had a great time together this weekend. It was our sixth year of retreating to catch up on each other's lives and kids, study God's word and pray together. And did I mention eat and snack. We did walk and shop, played some games and lots of sleeping for tired moms in a very busy season of their life.

Published

At-Harvest Prediction of Gray Mould Risk in Pear Fruit in Long -Term Cold Storage

"Crop Protection," an international scientific journal, chose to publish our paper. I am one of nine authors on this work and did get to travel to New Zealand twice to do some of the research in the pear orchards and in the labs at Nelson Research Station and Lincoln University. Surprising, I am sure for you, I was not the brains behind this paper, just technical assistance. Some of my high level techniques included:

Picking boxes and boxes of pears in six sunny New Zealand orchards.
Punching holes in a nice little pattern on perfectly good fruit.
Cutting pears stems in half and then into little pieces with a scalpel.
Sonicating & shaking to death perfectly good fruit to get the mould spores to drop off.
Holding petri dishes up to the light and counting different colonies of spore growth.
Handing the "first author," R.A. Spotts, well, whatever he needed for whatever task he was accomplishing.
Reading & editing drafts of the paper.

Enough of my work . . . what does this model do for you? Well, orchardists can use the use this information to predict which of their fruit will spoil in cold storage and must be sold to you soon after harvest and which of their fruit will last well in cold storage and can be sold to you later. More good fruit for us all to enjoy in the middle of winter!

Stairs ~ They trip me up!

I have a love/hate relationship with stairs.

They are certainly good exercise! I can remember running up and down the three flights of stairs in our high school for basketball conditioning. I remember falling down cement stairs at a restaurant a couple years ago which resulted in a broken ankle. Just as it was getting better, I overused it and strained other parts of my foot. That led to tarsal tunnel foot surgery a year ago. I have tripped on our steps--fallen to the bottom only a couple of times. I usually catch myself because I have learned that I MUST hang on to the bannister. The whole Christmas season is rough because we decorate the banisters with lighted greenery and I then must hang onto the spindles. I have not broken a spindle yet.

Tuesday I received my new glasses! Yahoo!! I don't have to look over the top of my reading glasses anymore. I now have progressives! Clear on the top ~ middle section for computer work ~ and the bottom for reading! I was warned that it takes two weeks to get used to them and be careful with depth perception-especially on stairs. I have clung to our bannister for these two days and have not stumbled or tripped.

Yesterday, I threw caution to the wind (OK, I just forgot) and started walking swiftly down the bleachers at the school. Can you picture what happens next? I looked down and the steps got all fuzzy, but my momentum was moving forward and down! And so although I could not see where the next step was, my body kept moving in that forward, down motion. I grabbed for the railing and held much of my body weight off of the ankle turning at a funny angle under me and managed to get the other midair foot onto a flat surface.

I am really quite well for such a feat! My neck and right shoulder hurt a bit from the wrenching they received and the front of the foot that was turned under me is a bit sore. A few other sore spots from strain or stretching, but all in all, great disaster averted! Thank you Lord!

When I got home I had a phone message from a friend who fell down 13 steps at her home yesterday, broke her ankle in three places and is having surgery this morning. I am even more thankful. That could have been me! My ibuprofen size pain is nothing compared to her surgery recovery! (Feel free to pray for Janice as you read this!)

Snow, snow, snow

Another two inches came down overnight and blanketed our street and the golf course greens!
We took off snow shoe-ing. Did you know it is hard to run in snowshoes, turn and smile before the self timer runs down? Any guesses on how many "takes" we had?

Fun framing with downed trees and snow covered branches.