The "How 'Bout Them Beavers!" Special Edition

Okay, you "Beaver Believers" out there, despite my previous caustic remarks about the respective Duck and Beaver win/loss records....I felt compelled to do the right thing and comment on the stupendous victory over those evil Trojans on Thursday evening! Any day that a team from California can come up and be soundly trounced by an Oregon team is a great day!

It just proves that the Oregon State Beavers when they dig down deep and try really hard can actually walk the walk instead of just talk the talk!

So, I just wanted you all to know that we root for the Beavers, absolutely! In spite of what true "Beaver Believers" believe...(say that three times fast!)...we derive great enjoyment from watching Oregon State Beaver victories, unless of course they are playing THE University of Oregon Fighting Ducks! We wonder however if our Beaver supporting compatriots would be so magnanimous as to publically make such audacious statements about the Ducks....hmmmm....well I'll just have to resort to quoting one of my favorite "philosophical" commercials........the world may never know!

The Rod Is Runnin' !!

So most of you know that Shawn has spent the last few years getting his dad's 1931 Model A back up and running in her former glory and with some improvements! The rumble seat and new upholstery are finally complete and today we took her out for a little spin to our new Sonic drive-in! It was pretty fun! The girls don't seem to mind the wind in the rumble seat! I guess it adds to the enjoyment! Can't beat that old-fashioned "air conditioning"!

The Back To School aka How 'Bout Them Ducks (!) Edition 2008

So, here we are again! The First Day of School - well, a few days ago anyway! We have officially survived our first week! Ashley is a junior in high school and Alyssa is off to middle school in 6th grade! Good Grief - how can it be?! Me, I'm still in Kindergarten! But that's just fine with me! You learn everything you need to know there! How to share, how to get along with others, how to follow, or not follow, the rules! And you get to have fun and do cool projects! What more could you ask for?!

So in celebration of surviving our first week of school we treated ourselves to our yearly Oregon Duck football game! And for you "Beaver Believers" out there, and you know who you are, hmmm...well I suppose the respective win/loss records so far this season tell the story!

All in all, it was wonderful day at Autzen Stadium (where it never rains!) and we had a great time enjoying the Duck victory! GO DUCKS!!

Where oh where has the summer fun gone?!

Good Grief! My last entry was the beginning of June and now it is the 1st of September!! As you have probably noticed (or maybe not!) there has been a lack of activity on my blog lately! Not because there hasn't been much going on - are you kidding?! We just haven't been home! That's par for the course during summer in the Crawford house!

So, where do I start! In addition to all the trips we took, we enjoyed partaking in our new obsession, uh, I mean, our new hobby, and did quite a bit of geocaching this summer.

We started off our summer with our annual Oregon coast trip with my folks. This year we decided to rent a beach house in Oceanside near Tillamook instead of camping at Beverly Beach. It was great fun! Introduced my folks to geocaching and of course had to visit the Tillamook Cheese Factory!

We ended June with Alyssa's dance recital. She participated in Tap this year. Their perfomance was a karate-themed piece to of all things - Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song"! Way Cool!

Before we knew it, it was July, and Shawn and I traveled to Lake Tahoe for a weekend getaway to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary. We decided to relive our adolescence just a bit and got tickets to see Cheap Trick, Heart, and Journey in concert. It was fantabulous! I was a little nervous about hearing Journey, one of my most favorite groups, without the vocal stylings of ol' Steve Perry, but I have to say their new guy, Arnel Pineda, does a stupendous job!

Shawn and I decided to try a little geocaching on our own as well. If you're ever in the Lake Tahoe area, we recommend "The Full Monty" geocache! The view is quite...hmmm...remarkable!

So, let's see, after that we traveled to La Grande with Shawn's folks to visit with the Erickson clan for our annual summer get-together. Decided to try a little mountain biking this year! Boy, do I feel old and out of shape! This wasn't just a little casual trail riding, oh, no - the Erickson's don't mess around - this was the real deal! We first shuttled the bikes by truck up the ridge near Mt. Emily. I'm thinking okay, this is pretty easy - then came the part where we actually got on the bikes! We then rode the bikes uphill a little more before making our way back downhill to the house! Let's just say, I walked kinda funny for a couple days afterwards and I don't think my hands have forgiven me yet for gripping the brakes during the entire downhill trek! But don't get me wrong - we had a blast and the scenery was gorgeous!

Oh, and yes, we did some geocaching too!

After La Grande, we headed home for a few days of laundry and then were off again to the coast to visit Shawn's grandma in Coquille and his aunt, who came out for her summer visit from Nebraska. And you guessed it....more geocaching!!

Then back home again for a few more days of laundry before we headed south to San Diego for our last trip of the summer. Enjoyed the sunset at Mission Beach and then took the girls to Seaworld and the USS Midway aircraft carrier the following day. Didn't think the girls and I would enjoy the Midway as much as we did. We ended up staying for most of the day - it was pretty darn cool! Then we were off that evening to see Shamu and the other sights at Seaworld.

Then we were off for a drive north on Hwy 1/101 to enjoy the California coast on our way back to Oregon. We stopped for a couple of hours at Huntington Beach so the girls could swim in the ocean, where you can actually swim without first numbing your body to the water temperature or have to resort to wearing a wetsuit (for those of you who are not sturdy Oregon coast natives!)

One of our other sights along the way was the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Had heard about it many times, but had never visited before.

Then it was off to San Francisco! We had plans to visit Alcatraz, but soon discovered, as we found was the main theme of our trip, that you just can't travel spontaneously anymore! At least not to popular areas! Unfortunately, we mistakenly thought we could just drive as long as we wanted and would be able to find a place to stay for the night without making reservations ahead of time - boy were we wrong! After trying this for a couple of nights, we had to resort to finding a wireless hotspot and making hotel reservations online. Which brings me back to Alcatraz...found all the information about the ferry trip online and saw that you could buy tickets ahead of time, but we thought, what the heck - we don't mind standing in line to buy tickets - we're on vacation, man! We're not in a big hurry! There's lots of departure times on the ferry! So, we got there in the morning, parked the car, walked to the ferry dock, got in line, and.....they were SOLD OUT! Not just for that day, but for five days out! You've got to be kidding - I wish I were! So, dejected, we got back in the car and crossed the Golden Gate in the fog! It fit our mood! Oh, well, we decided that we would just make a special trip back in October! And we learned our lesson - so much for spontaneity! But that suits my Shawn boy just fine anyway! He's the planner - I'm just the navigator! And speaking of navigators - our GPS "Lori" was a wonderful addition to our trip - she told us where to go all the time - we didn't always agree, but it was good to have her along!

So, after getting on track with reservations, we headed north through the Redwoods. Breathtaking as always! Even found the "drive-through" tree! Amazing that it is still a living tree! Oh and yeah did I mention we did some geocaching?!

Ended our trip with a visit to the Oregon Caves before heading back to Central Oregon. It was the girls' first visit. Shawn and I hadn't been in about 20+ years. It was a scorching hot day, so it felt good to wander around in the caves. And the trip wouldn't be complete without some more geocaching!

So, that's about it! Tomorrow is the first day of school (and work, for me!) Can't believe it has gone so fast! Oh, well, it will be Christmas break before we know it!

Our new electronic friend...

Yes, after much research and pondering, we recently acquired a TomTom portable GPS unit. Since Shawn and I are getting older and are finding that we can't remember stuff more and lose things more frequently than we used to that we better get this new gadget before we lose ourselves! Since I have always been the "navigator" when we travel we were surprised and amused to find that our new GPS has a navigational voice named, yes, you guessed it, "Lori"! Ha Ha Ha! Very fitting! Kind of even sounds like me, but to Shawn's thankfulness, GPS Lori tells him where to go without any attitude. That's okay, I have enough attitude for both of us!

Anyway...not only does GPS Lori help us when we travel, but we have found that she can also help us with a new hobby we have heard about but never tried until this weekend! We decided to try "geocaching" this past weekend with our longtime pals, the McDowell family.

For those of you who don't know, geocaching is kind of like a treasure hunt using a GPS unit. All sorts of folks go out and hide these little treasure "caches" all over and then enter the latitude and longitude coordinates and other information about their "cache" on a very cool website called http://www.geocaching.com/ for other people to go out and find. We have found that cache etiquette allows you to add to the treasure (as space allows) and even take a little momento from the cache if you choose.

Our first excursion led us to an old cemetery near Tumalo where we had to look for clues on headstones to get the final coordinates to lead us to the hiding spot of the cache hidden in the cemetery. Very clever! It took us a little bit to get the hang of how the GPS works, but what great fun!! We are hooked!

Today we decided to try it again on our own after the McDowells took off for home and were able to locate another cache near the Deschutes River just outside of Tumalo.

We think it will be a great summertime hobby and help us and GPS Lori get to know each other better! Happy Hunting!

Happy 11th Birthday, Alyssa Rae!

Can you believe it?!? We sure can't! How can it be that our very own Miss Alyssa has turned 11 already!?! She's our baby! But a baby no longer - she is turning into quite a young lady and will be off to middle school come fall! She is quite excited at the prospect. It has been a challenge for her to wait and watch her big sis gain her independence and get to do all sorts of new things while little sis watches from the sidelines. She is so ready to spread her wings...sigh...as mom and dad watch from the sidelines as now our two "goosers" become more and more grown up before our eyes! Ah....snap yourself out of it, Mom!

Like everything she does, Miss Alyssa likes to party dramatically as well, and this year was no exception. So, her dad and I were most brave and allowed her to invite a few of her most special friends for a sleepover to help her celebrate being a decade plus one! Six pre-adolescent girls in one house! Whew! But, being the smart mom that I am, I acquiesced when Alyssa suggested the girls go to open gym at one of our local gymnastics locations for a couple of hours. Yep, let's just say that by the time we got home at 9:00 and they hopped into the hot tub for a little soak and some ghost stories, all was quiet by no later than 12:30 a.m. Thankfully, no bad dreams or bouts of homesickness!

So here's to a new year of memories with the youngest member of the Crawford clan...our "Sissa Rae"!

The Crawja 4000

Watch out Baja 1000 racers, it's the Crawja 4000! We may be small, but we're spunky! One of the Crawford family's favorite activities is taking our little "be-bop" 90cc ATV's and Shawn's "antique" 1980 Yahama Enduro 175 (no laughing please!) out to one of our local OHV trail areas and tearing around the sagebrush and kicking up the dust! And I would just like to say, it's not the size of the machine, but the amount of fun you can have with it!!

We recently went out and had our first ride of the season. We're hoping to get a little more riding in this year than last year which amounted to no more than two trips! Pitiful!! Too busy doing basketball stuff and pageant-y stuff, I guess. But I think we have successfully reprioritized ourselves, thankfully!

So, let's introduce our racers....!

Here comes "Atomic" Alyssa......!

Next is "Ass-kickin" Ashley.....!

And here is the mutha' of all riders...."Leadfoot" Lori!

And last in the lineup, but definitely not least ~ "Speed Racer" Shawn!