July 2010

This photo captures what our summer was all about!

Well my friends, the majority of July and the entire month of August and now half the month of September have passed with no updates from me.

I have had such an amazing summer. The best summer I have had in a long, long time. Our summer was filled with fun, friends, food and adventures.

After the fourth of July, the big doings was our trip with some great friends to Lake Billy Chinook for a weekend of camping and boating. Chris and I had never been to Billy Chinook before, but it lived up to the hype in every way. It was gorgeous, huge, hot and sunny. We camped for two nights with three other couples, one child, McKenna (poor thing-hanging out with all us adults!) and three dogs.



We rolled in Friday night and spent the evening socializing and relaxing. Saturday morning we were out on the water by about 10:30 and spent the entire day relaxing and checking out the lake.







By mid afternoon we had a need for some shade and Miss McKenna wanted to go on the “fast” boat. Apparently she was tired, too.



This is McKenna totally zonked out on the boat. So sweet. :-)

Later that night Chris and I prepped dinner for the crew, serving marinated beef, chicken and veggie skewers, along with my famous (recipe stolen from a good friend) pasta salad. It is the easiest pasta salad in the world to make, and a huge hit with almost everyone. It is GREAT for potlucks and parties.



Sunday we got on the road after breakfast (provided by Charlie and Julie-Thank you it was delicious!). On our way back we stopped along part of the Rogue River and took a few pictures.





On our way up to Lake Billy we discovered another lake that is about 40 minutes from our house. We had no idea it was there. It is a big reservoir called Lost Creek Reservoir. The following weekend we took our boat out there for the first time. It was awesome! It is not a busy lake; there is plenty of room to go and lots of little coves and beaches to hang out.



Plus, best of all, Chris’ pager and phone work at the lake, so it is someplace we can go, even when he is on call.


The rest of July flashed by in a blink and then we were into August.

I was back in school and Chris was working, of course, but we still managed to do a lot of fun things. The end of July I rode with Chris to the beach for a couple of days. It is always very relaxing for me to go because I have NOTHING that I have to do. I read and relax and enjoy the sunsets.

Chris had a class in Portland one week so I rode along and we spent three days in Portland. We had an awesome time. The weather even cleared up for us while we were there! We went to an excellent Happy Hour at Hayden’s Lake Front Grill in Tualatin with some good friends, where we laughed and laughed and drank wine and enjoyed lovely company. We did some excellent people watching there. Who knew there were actual call girls in Tualatin?

The following day we spent with some other friends at the Tualatin Crawfish Festival. It was fun, but really hot! Our friend Danny ate some crawfish (no thank you!), we saw some other friends as were wandering through the exhibits, did a little wine tasting and then decided it was time to cool off. We spent the rest of the day on our friends’ boat on Haag Lake in Forest Grove. It was wonderful. Our other Lake Billy Chinook boating/camping friends were there, too. It was great to have no boat ownership responsibilities and be able to just hang out and relax on the water. That night we enjoyed the hot tub at Danny & Sarah’s where we were treated with several shooting stars from the Perseid Meteor shower. All in all, it was a fabulous weekend; very rejuvenating.

We had lots of great times with friends all throughout the summer and feel really blessed to have such great and caring friends in our lives. We really appreciate all of them for letting us stay at their houses while we are in town and for making the trips down here to see us.

More on August in an upcoming post!