Living by the Poor Farm - by Brad

I was doing a little research for work and stumbled upon information about Chelan County's Poor Farm. I had heard the sayings such as, "you'll end up in the poorhouse." Well, apparently poorhouses and poor farms really existed. There is some interesting history about poorhouses at The Poor House Story.

Anyway, I was able to find some interesting information about the poor farm in in the Chelan County's annual financial reports between 1911 and 1935. The following is taken from the 1935 annual report, which was apparently the last fully operational year of the poor farm...

Before the 20's, the poor farm was located at a place called Springdale Orchards outside of Peshastin, WA. Sometime around 1920, the County bought 20 acres of the Red Apple Orchard Tracts. I wanted to know exactly where this was located, so I did a little research in our County's Recording Office, and found an old map that shows where this orchard was. Combined with some information in the financial reports, we figured out that this poor farm was right across the street from our current house! This is the view of where the poor farm used to be located...

I guess this means I can say that I'm not very far from living on the poor farm!

Lunar Eclipse - TONIGHT! - by Brad

Early tomorrow morning (August 28th) those of us on the west coast will be able to view a lunar eclipse. I blogged about it several months ago and thought you might like a reminder.

The only problem is that it starts early in the morning. According to an article in the Seattle Times, the partial eclipse will start at 1:51 AM, the moon will then be at full eclipse stage from 2:52 to 4:22 AM. The last sight of any eclipse will end at 5:24 AM. So you will have to be an early bird to see this one.

(Hey Mike... this might be a good photo op for you!)

Oh, to Have Just One Again - by Brad

After a long week of Lindsey helping at VBS every evening (and me watching the Wesley and Spencer each night), we were planning on a relaxing weekend. Lindsey's parents took Elliott and Wesley up to her uncle's cabin in Tonaskit (a few hours north of Wenatchee). It was fun to have a weekend with just one kid again. When Elliott was a baby, I didn't appreciate how easy it was with just one to look after.

Anyway, we were excited for a calm weekend that started off with Lindsey and her sister putting on a garage sale Saturday morning. It went pretty smooth for them, and they both did well for a morning's work. At least it was relaxing for me and Spencer!

We topped off our day by going out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and realized how easy a baby Spencer really is. It was great.

This morning we were planning on going to the annual Wenatchee Valley all-city worship service, but at 7:45 a neighbor knocked on our door and told us that water was gushing out of the rock wall and down the street. I quickly called to get our irrigation shut off and 45 minutes later, I was standing in a hole 4 feet deep trying to repair the irrigation line that is right behind our rock wall. Luckily it was pretty easy fix and by 10:30 we had the irrigation back on and the pipe didn't leak! After a long break for lunch, I went back out to scrape mud out of the road.

Even with all that excitement, the weekend was still more relaxing than having all three kids. Don't get me wrong, we are very happy to have them home. It sounds like they had a great weekend. The highlight seems to be that they got to ride four-wheelers with Grandpa and Uncle Rick. It's a good thing Lindsey wasn't there, or she might have had a panic attack!

P-Jak's Meme - by Brad

Lindsey and I got wrangled into some chain-blog thing called "Meme" from Peaby and Brazenlilly. I think the line might fizzle out with us, but we'll see what we can do.

The Meme Rules: (1) I have to post these rules before I give you the facts. (2) Each player starts with eight random facts/stories about themselves. (3) People who are tagged need to write their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules. (4) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. (5) Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I am following rules 1-3, but I will probably break rules 4 & 5. Sorry to fail the prior meme-ers.

Anyway, here I go...

1. If I could go back to school and choose another career, I would be an astrophysicist. It would give me a great sense of accomplishment to help plot the course for space shuttles and figure out how to use gravity to slingshot satellites around planets.

2. I own approximately 30,000 baseball cards. Most of them collected between 1987 and 1993.

3. I like to listen to Enya every once-in-a-while.

4. After I got my drivers license, I was pulled over 10 times in 4 years. However, I only got one speeding ticket. Now, I haven’t been pulled over in 7 years.

5. I never flossed my teeth until a couple years ago when I decided I needed to create a schedule to ease myself into flossing. I now floss every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.

6. The first song I learned on the guitar was House of the Rising Sun.

7. When I am talking, I often accidentally mix up the words “hundred” and “thousand.” Being a CPA, this is very annoying.

8. On the night that Lindsey and I started dating again (see #5 of Lindsey’s meme below), I lied to her about being cold so that she would share her blanket with me. It worked because we held hands under that blanket, and at that moment I knew we were going to get married… well I certainly wasn’t going to let her dump me twice!

Whoa... I'm weird.

Okay, so this was sort of fun... so in my feeble attempt to participate with this chain, I will "tag" my sisters Gail and Carol, Toby, and my mom... but don't feel any pressure. I sure didn't.

Linz's Meme - by Linz

Here are mine:

1) I can’t stand open doors or crooked pictures. I think some doctors might call this OCD.

2) In 1st grade a boy named Latigo France kissed me at the bus stop and I cried.

3) I enjoy irony and sarcasm

4) I like watching and listening to my kids play when they don’t know I am there. There’s just something about a conversation among a two and four year old that is so darn funny!

5) I married the only man I ever dated (after breaking his heart when I was 14 and taking a 3 year hiatus)…long, but sweet story!

6) I wish I was a health-nut, but I love candy

7) I have always wanted to be a gymnast (or at least be able to do a flip). I even asked for a Mary Lou Retton outfit for Christmas…and I got it. It was hot!

8) I love being outside

Spencer Laughing... and some pics - by Brad

Lindsey was playing with Spencer before bed and she got him busting up laughing...



Also, we have some pictures from the last few weeks of our youngest. The first two are from a little photo shoot Lindsey had with him...

Somewhere buried in there is a little boy. Elliott piled up a bunch of toys on Spencer's high chair... and Spencer wasn't sure what to make of it.

We walked in on the boys a couple nights ago before we went to bed. Again, I couldn't resist this sleeping photo. Somehow, Spence managed to stick his pacifier behind his ear and fall asleep! Maybe he was saving it for a midnight snack...

Creative Commenting Tutorial - by Brad

Have you ever wanted to use italics, or bold when you post a comment in blogger? What about adding an website link that actually works?

Well, with some basic html knowledge you can!

HTML tags are started using the < > brackets. They are closed the same way, but by adding the / forward slash.


HOW TO BOLD:

The text command for bold is "B". See the example comment and results below:

HOW TO ITALICIZE:

The text command for italics is "i". See the example comment and results below:

You can even do both italics and bold at the same time!


HOW TO HYPERLINK:

Now for something tricky. Do you want to leave a link to a website in your comment? This requires a little more html coding. Make sure you include the equal sign, quotes, and http:// just like the following example. See the example comment and results below:


There are many, many more html tags, but blogger's comments only allow these three. So for now, you can't underline, or change the text color when you comment.

Feel free to test these out by commenting on this post. There is always the comment preview button so you can see what is going to post. Don't worry, we won't make fun of you!

Bugs. Berries. Boys. Camping. - by Brad

This past weekend, we took a trip to Oregon to go to my cousin's wedding in Sandy, OR. While we were there, we spent the weekend camping with Mike and Becky. This stressed Lindsey out a little since she had to pack for a wedding AND camping at one time, but she pulled it off quite well (thank you my lovely wife)!

We camped at Camp Creek Campground in the foothills around Mt. Hood. The boys did surprisingly well, so we were pleased. I can't say it was a relaxing weekend, but it was fun. I am not sure what we would have done without Mike and Becky doing most of the cooking and cleaning. I guess it would have been much more crazy for us. Thanks you two (and a half)!

Elliott and Wesley had a good time running around in the bushes and playing like boys in the woods. Once I heard Elliott say, "Wesley ate a berry!" I went over to him and he showed me what it was. None of us knew whether or not it was edible, but I tried one anyway, just so he wouldn't be the only one. However, now I know it was a red huckleberry!

FYI - a berry I called a salmon berry is actually called a thimbleberry



We drove up to Trillium Lake and broke out the canoe. The boys enjoyed it, and so did the girls... those pictures will have to show up on Peaby's blog because I didn't get any.




The boys were given bug collectors from Becky's mom, so they spent much of the weekend finding bugs and trying to catch them. Mike and I even went out in the canoe and caught a couple dragonflies in the reeds.


Spencer loved being outside... especially if someone was holding him...

Mike and I decided to see if we could start a fire without using matches. At first it looking promising, but we couldn't. I did just stumble across this article I am going to have to try out sometime... coke can and chocolate bar....

Intergalactic Dancing - by Brad

Elliott dancing to Intergalactic Planetary with a mouth full of apples.

Of course, this dancing was filmed during his "pre-conversion" years.

He must get his moves from his dad (I am saying this before anyone else does!)

Pearrygin lake - by Brad

My parents have gone to Pearrygin Lake with their church each summer since I was in high school. This year was the first time we were able to make it up to join in on the fun. We were only up there for the weekend, but we had a great time.

In the evenings, we went into Winthrop to have ice cream and the boys played mini-golf. There was a hole where the cup was located on a little plateau. The group of adults ahead of the boys probably hit the ball over the plateau 10 times before they could get the ball in. Then Elliott teed up behind them and sank a hole-in-one!

There were deer all over the place at the campground. They would walk around the campground and one even bedded down for the afternoon by our camp site. It might have to do with the fact that we were feeding them apples...



Here are a few pictures...

Mmmmm... s'mores...



The first morning, Elliott slowly got into the lake. He has always been pretty timid around the water, but once he got used to floating around in the life jacket, he didn't want to do anything but play in the lake...



And Spencer enjoyed his time outside...

Greatest Joy! - by Brad

Over the past couple weeks, Elliott has been asking a lot of questions about how you get to heaven. He has understood the simple plan of salvation, and today when I was home for lunch he told me that he was ready to "say the prayer."

Today my son is born-again! What overwhelming joy!

It's things like these that can make a father's eyes well up.