Home once again

Our trip to Oregon was great. The flights were all on time, smooth and landed perfectly, John may tell you differently but he's getting much better at flying. The weather was rainy the day we arrived and after that the sun came out for the rest of the trip. Oregon has laws that are so different than Wisconsin laws and as John was disappointed upon arrival.... no Miller Beer. We arrive on Thursday afternoon with a 2 hour time change so it's 4pm our time and there it's 2pm and we are starving so we go to a bar/grill for a drink and a bite to eat. The waiter takes all our drink orders and then asks for ID's.... including Adam. Waiter than informs us that Adam cannot be there since he is a minor and the bar allows smoking so they cannot have minors inside to be liable for the 2nd hand smoke they will consume. So the three of us leave to find a place to eat that does not allow smoking.... hummmm Applebees it is. After we finish eating Adam needs a nap since we woke up extremely early to catch our flight (oh off subject here... so Wednesday night we set our alarm clock for 3:30am which is only 1/2 hour earlier for John..... next morning John wakes me up at 4:00 and says "time to get up". I wonder for the entire time I'm in the shower why he decided to take a 1/2 hour shower when we need to leave?? He informs me later that the alarm clock never went off, he just happen to wake up at 3:45!!!! Whew good thing for his internal alarm clock or we would have missed the flight) So we drop Adam off and head back to the bar where the rest of the group is. We walk in and Lynn says "where's Adam", "we paid him $25 to wash the windows and dust the rental car", we order a drink and after about 20 minutes Lynn is getting a little concerned and asks us "Is Adam really in the car? Aren't you worried about him?" Adam then calls Lynn's phone and says "Can I come in yet?" Okay so maybe this doesn't sound so funny anymore I guess you had to be there.

Thursday's POTD is a view from our motel window, since after the couple drinks at the bar, the time change and getting up early we all crashed for the night. I couldn't even keep my eyes open for Greys.... darn it!

On Friday John and the kids decided to buy me a wonderful early birthday present while in Oregon (no sales tax).... so we went to the mall to pick out a new lens for my camera. I love it, thank you all.

Next we drove to the Roloff Farm (Little People Big World) the address was in the phone book, can you believe it? But when we got there the sign said they were closed for the season, of course Jesse just started driving up the long driveway.... the next sign said "Thank you for respecting our privacy" with a nice wide area to turn around.... we turned around but we did take our picture by their sign.

Unfortunately I used my new lens and didn't realize it was on Manual Focus and not Automatic.... you would think I would notice the blurriness in the viewer after Lynn took it.... well remember I am getting older and the eye site is beginning to be a problem... I can't see clearly close up so when I look in the viewer it appears blurry and I think it's my old eyes..... dang 40's

Jesse's Graduation was Friday night and I didn't bring my regular glasses (I can't see far away either, everything in the middle is great) so Lynn and "K" pick the very first row which I can see awesome but I brought along the new lens and now I'm too close all I can get is their nose hairs.... and where's my other lens? Back at the motel. By this time I had figured out the Manual focus thing too. I had a really tough time with the camera stuff this trip..... And I thought this POTD was suppose to make me smarter???

Anyway the real reason for the trip and another proud moment in our lives, Jesse's PsyD graduation (doctoral degree in Psychology). Here is Jesse during his introduction. The 3 stripes on the side of the gown is a big deal, not sure what they represent other than they are a big deal.

Here is Jesse during the hooding. After this Jesse gave his well rehearsed memorized speech which caused many tears from our entire row and the thought of taking another picture never crossed my mind. I cannot begin to tell you how proud we are of him and of Lynn for helping him through this journey. Congratulations!

Saturday we walked to top of Multnomah Falls which is the second highest year-round waterfall in the United States. Here is a stump I found interesting for my POTD.

During our visit the Search and Rescue Teams were practicing. There were people climbing down the falls and walking through the falls. The excitement brought hundreds of people there and with my new lens I got a very close up of the first guy down the mountain.

And the last POTD for this post is my very favorite. The bridge you walk over at the bottom of the first falls. You get soaked standing there with the spray of the falls. Those people are watching another climber coming down the rope. I love how they are all lined up in the white of the falls with the different colored jackets.