from afar

First off the bat, I want to tell you about my driftwood from the Oregon Coast. If you look in the middle far left of the first photo below, you can see it sitting there on the sand just waiting for someone to stop and take a rest on it. I thought it would be nice to have for someone to take a rest on at my house. So, my dad willingly carried that heavy, water-logged stump up that hill to our beach house rental. There was a staircase, but I don't think that made it all that much easier! We wrapped it in a garbage bag and it rode down to California in the back seat under Wyatt's feet. I got it home, took the hose to it and got (some) of the sand, etc. off of it and then lugged it up to my second story balcony to dry out. Later that day I noticed some termite droppings under it. Not good when you live in a condo complex... or anywhere else for that matter. So, not willing to let my piece of the coast go, I asked my father-in-law if he could fumigate it for me (it helps to have connections!). So he willingly drove it two hours away to work and took care of my little friend(s) and then let it dry out. When it dried, it almost completely split in half. Now another dilemma. What lengths am I going to go to for a log that I saw on the beach? We've invested so much into it now, so we had to press forward. Nathan thought of putting some straps of some sort on it to hold it together. So, my father-in-law took it back to work and one of his guys put epoxy inside and then fashioned some steel straps for it. It made the drive back to our house and it is now dry, termite free and we like it. Whew! So thanks, Dad's for all you did!


Now for the more important part of the post, Uncle Gene and Aunt Lindsay came to visit from Sicily! It was a quick visit, but we're so glad we got to see them. I didn't get a whole lot of pictures, but following are a few.

An early Christmas.

An early birthday celebration. : )

A cooking class for Lindsay's birthday.

A visit to Amelia's ballet class with her friend.