Running across Oregon

The past week for me was spent mostly at home in and out of the rain, feeding, grooming, petting horses and waiting for the weekend. This week we did find eggnog at Safeway, so we have been treating ourselves each morning with an eggnog lattè; that is worth making note of here. This is like an annual highlight to start our day as the daylight hours are now getting colder and shorter. A couple of weeks ago we started running our Happy Light in the evenings to ward off the getting shorter days blahs.
As the week came to a close we found that once again we had become a two school bus family. Nope we are not in the business of dealing in school buses, just staying a bit too busy... to get the job done with just one big yellow bus in the driveway.

Friday, Kittee was in Milton-Freewater city court for half a day, while I made three school bus trips to Walla Walla taking elementary school kids to concerts at Whitman College. Friday afternoon I mended fences from the hard wind blows of the week, and packed my travel bag with some extra cold/wet weather clothing for Saturday's out-of-town bus trip to the west side.

Saturday, I got up at about daybreak as usual, to make a trip to Wilsonville, OR for the Oregon State Boy's 4A Soccer Championship game. Our Mac-Hi School soccer team was playing the final and state championship game this day. All was going well and I was on time working on breakfast, put my bags and coats in the little silver P/U and headed for the downtown school bus lot to pickup my trip bus. Now, this day of all days, out of living here for over seven years, I go down the road about a mile and hit a deer... can't stop; gotta get to town and prep the bus to hit the road. Not sure what happened to that doe. I made it to town OK, as the buses (4 of us) were loaded with allot of hometown soccer boosters/fans and was ready to roll at 8:00 a.m.. It was a good trip, very uneventful and we made good time to get to the game on the other side of the state by 3:30 p.m.
The weather forecast was for cold and wet on the west side of the state, but when we got to Troutdale, the skies were clearing with a few sun breaks. By the time we got to the game it had clouded up a bit, but no rain, and game conditions were great for running, running, running after a soccer ball.

All in all it was a good game with the first score being made at about 55 minutes into the game. That made it 1-0 La Salle Prep School... the team in red above. At this point the game got a little testy as the clock was running down in the second half, when a La Salle player broke out of the pack, dribbled the ball down field and facing the MacHi goalie one-on-one made the score against MacHi... score 2-0. After this goal MacHi came fighting back and in a few minutes scored a tight goal making the score 2-1. Now with just a few minutes left in regulation play, MacHi made several strong attempts to score for the tie, but as time ran out La Salle had the ball in their possession/ hands, jumping and shouting in victory. It was a good game, great temperature for playing a running game, and no rain until we were back on the buses and driving out of the school parking lot. It was about 11 o'clock pm when we got back to Milton-Freewater after a great day's outing of traveling across Oregon. The only thing that really disappointed me about this trip (other than losing the state championship) was seeing the large number of wind turbines that have been place along the rim of the Columbia River Gorge. It really has screwed up the wide open river scenery on both sides of the mighty river, having the white needles showing up everywhere. As I drove through the gorge, I wondered what Lewis and Clarke might think about this view.
Saturday, Kittee was going to work at her Pendleton office, but decided it felt too good to stay home and enjoy some down time with the horses, and a little reading. She told me she spent quite a bit of quality hands-on time with our babies -- Rosey and Summer.

Again today we woke up as the wind was blowing hard, and the rains fell off and on all night; forecast for the day was more of the same, with lots of snow to fall on the mountains to our east. After having breakfast, feeding the herd; with these weather conditions, Kittee and I decided to make a run to the local pottery/art shop - Clay in Motion, to visit that operation (our first time there), have a mocha... Mmmmmm that was good, and venture on to Walla Walla for awhile and do a little shopping. With the weather and our schedules we got no horseback riding time this week. This afternoon, we were out petting horses as the sun had sunk slowly in the west, then out from under the clouds over our heads, the sun gave us a beautiful flood of golden lighting along our backyard bluff. That was a beautiful site... wish you could have been here to see it.
This entire week coming at us is time off, NO SCHOOL, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Got plans to stay close to home and horses ;>)
We have the Walla Walla indoor arena to ride in next Sunday, rain or freezing... Gettyup!!

And that's the way it has been around the ranch this past week --- Dale