July 11, 2012

We are in eastern Oregon at the small town of Boardman, right on the Columbia River.   It’s one of our favorite places to camp, and Gypsy loves it because there is a lot of wading and chasing sticks in the water.  She is kind of like a really good paint brush – load her up with water and she drips for an hour, but it’s cool on her belly!

 

We’ve had an strenuous 3 weeks since we rolled into Hillsboro with Indy on June 19.  Maggie, Shane and Micah flew in the next day and we all enjoyed a rather frantic 4 days of catching up with friends and relatives, and then the Orens all went home because Indy had an International Cooking Camp starting on Monday.  She has the greatest series of camps lined up for the summer.  In the first one, they learned how to make their own pasta so now she wants a pasta machine.  Yes, she’s 6, and making her own pasta. 

After they left, we tackled Liz’s kitchen.  A year ago they did some remodeling, much needed, and instead of just moving the cabinets, she decided that it would be great to paint them.  HGTV has much to answer for.  When they say that kind of project takes a weekend, they lie.  Lie, lie, lie.  So we became the elves who showed up in the morning after Liz and Josh went to work, and we painted shelves, drawers and cabinet doors.  It was actually about a 10 day project, not a two day one.  But we got it finished and the doors all hung and Liz finally has a finished kitchen!  Only took a year.

It wasn’t all hard labor.  We went wine tasting a couple of times, once on a wine trolley with Ger’s cousin, Andrea and some of her family and co workers.  The trolley ride was fun until the end of the day, when the driver was ready to go home and, rather like a barn-sour horse at the end of the ride, we went galloping back to the drop-off point.  It resembled Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride with traffic.  A more relaxed trip was the next weekend to Liz and Josh’s favorite winery for lunch and lots of good samples.

                           

 

Now we’ve just been enjoying 3 day of doing not much of anything except reading and taking the dog for walks.  Tomorrow we’re heading in the general direction of Boise, Idaho.