DECEMBER - A MONTH TO TRAVEL 12/1-31/2013

What did your December mean to you?  Well to Wayne and Ann it meant that our 30 year old Christmas Cactus feels comfortable enough in its new home to put on a show for us.

It means that the storms give Ann an all new batch of treasures to find on the beaches of Gold Beach.

It means that it is crabbing season again and the crab boats run off our shores 24 hours a day.

It also means getting together with friends to celebrate birthdays.  We had Kenny and Beth Ashcraft over to celebrate Kenny's 80th birthday....

 ...and then go out to dinner with us at The Port Hole down near the harbor.

 December also meant traveling down to San Francisco to attend our #2 son's commencement exercises in which he received his Master's Degree in Sports Management from the University of San Francisco.

 The ceremonies were held in the beautiful church on this Jesuit established campus.

 Afterwards, we all posed with the honored graduate.  Here he is with his family.

Here is the graduate with his (how'd they get to be so short) parents.

And here he is with his (Gee, they're short too!) in-laws.

After a several day stay with the kids at their home, we headed home for two days, unpacked and repacked, and leaving Bobby with friends, we drove down to San Francisco again to fly out to New York to spend Christmas with #3 son and his family.  While there for several days, we slept in a rented flat in the red building on the right.  This picture was taken just outside our son's building where their flat is located. So, you can see that we were only a block away.

We spent our time mostly hanging out with the boy, # 12 grandchild,.....

...and cooking up the traditional Christmas Breakfast and Dinner (That's not the dinner!  That's Ann!!).....

...and then eating those special meals.  Jed and Kate are excellent cooks.  It was fun working together to cook, clean and eat.

December also means giving gifts in remembrance of the gifts the Three Wise Men gave the Christ Child and the gifts our Savior gave us through His instituting the Resurrection and the Atonement.

And it means little kids playing with boxes.....

 and their new toys!!

Grandma is strongly one of this little boy's favorite people!  She was his lap of choice!!

 Second came Grandpa Cowley.  Telling stories and reading books was a fun activity together!

Grandpa also taught his grandson how special it is to look at the photo on the back of the camera after the picture is taken and also taught him how to take pictures.  This is his first picture he took!  Not bad, eh?

 So, after a short week, we flew back to San Francisco and then drove home via Medford.  We had plans to attend a Memorial Service for a friend of ours, but Ann got sick, so we went home early.
Back in Gold Beach, we got our Bobby back from our friends house.  He resumed his position at his guard post and all things are back to normal.  Though Ann's New York Cold is lingering longer that we like.

But, she'll get better.  And we move into the new year of 2014 with more adventures Over the Next Mountain from our home overlooking the Pacific Ocean in little Gold Beach, Oregon.

MELLOW NOVEMBER 11/1-30/2013

 As being recently called to serve as the Branch President of the Gold Beach Branch of our church, Wayne's opportunities to serve increased in the month of November, but yard work slowed for Wayne and Ann due to the coming of the rainy season.  With less outside needs, it has given Wayne more time to research Family History and teach other family members how to continue in this Elijah driven work.  Plus, Wayne continued his quest of getting Volume 3 of his autobiography closer to publication.  Ann has stayed busy with her exercise classes, volunteer work at the local cat shelter, service in the church as a counselor to the Relief Society President, walks on the beach and selling our excesses on line and at local bazaars.  We have reached a stage of "Less is Better" and are trying to simplify our possessions.  Call us "Anti Hoarders" I guess.
With our monthly jaunts to Medford for various needs, like two trips in November for Wayne to get a crown on one of his teeth, we needed new tires on the Camry this month.  Wayne also spent a day helping our neighbor rewire and relight his garage.  He is a woodworker that makes furniture and decorative pieces from driftwood off the beach.  In the winter time, his garage is in need of more light, so Wayne was happy to have a project to be involved in.  It was fun!
We have been here long enough now to notice the seasonal changes that take place.  Winter, because of the ever changing cloud arrangements over the Pacific Ocean, is the better time for sunsets and massive waves due to the storms out at sea.  Spring, summer and fall are whale watching times.  We love watching all the goings on out our sun room windows.  Ann takes tons of pictures of her view.

 Bobby has found that as the weather gets colder, he likes being on Ann's lap a lot.  She can't sit down without Bobby begging to be up on her lap.

 Ann's volunteer work at the local cat shelter is very fulfilling to her.  She gets to pet lots of cats, give them shots and such.  What she loves most is when she is able to place a kitty in a loving home.  Below is her most recent placement of a kitty with its new owner.

 We love learning new things, especially when it involves harvesting from the bounty of nature.  In November we teamed up with some friends of ours, Arnie and Amy Boe, to go mushroom hunting in the nearby woods.
After breakfast out at a local restaurant we had been wanting to try, under Amy's and Arnie's tutelage, we learned how to identify and gather three different types of edible fungi.

Expert foragers the Boes are!  It was a beautiful day spent together in the woods!

 Ann became quite adept at spotting the little buggers as they cautiously popped their heads above the forest duff.

 Then they taught us how to clean, prepare and preserve our harvest.  Amy is an expert at cooking and preserving!  Not only was it a fun time together, the mushrooms were delicious!!

 This Thanksgiving we were without our sons and their families.  We were going to cook a feast and invite over some of our local friends that were family-less for the holiday.  But then we learned that this nice little community we live in puts on a massive Thanksgiving feast at the fairgrounds for all the community.  We inquired more and found it was always good food and very well done, so we invited our friends to join us there.  We were pleasantly surprised with the activity!  Very well done!  We were told there were over 400 community members there that day!  Here is one table of our group.  We also found many friends we were not aware were attending scattered throughout the building.

 After a long eating extravaganza and lots of visiting, we realized we had not documented ourselves being there, so had a friend take this post dining picture.

The month of November was was a little more laid back than previous months, but gratifying none the less.  It is strange to us to realize that we have been in this community of Gold Beach over a year now and this coming December 20 will be a year that we have been in our house.  It is a good season of our life.   However, Gold Beach is not our final destination.  This too shall pass someday and we will be off on another adventure as we travel through our lives and Over The Next Mountain!

OCTOBER 1-31, 2013

Nobody came to visit us this month, so we have been taking advantage of the opportunity to work in the yard and work on family history research and autobiographies.  A gentle month with little rain.
October, we have learned is the month of calm change on the Oregon Coast, least wise it has been that way in Gold Beach, Oregon.  We get to see the fog come back with a beautiful vengeance as we have the weather changing, but virtually no winds blowing.  The sunsets have been varied in their style and color.

The sunsets in October, we think, have been the best, with different ones each night.  The fog bank out in the ocean creates beautiful ones with magnificent colors.

 The cloudy days have even brought their own beauty!  We love to look out our west facing windows.  In fact sometimes we spend a little too much time doing this view gazing.

We took time to bake some home made bread to eat and share.  We took one loaf and some home made jam down to the missionaries as they worked in the Family History Library.  Yummy!

We also got to attend a couple of our church congregations famous pot luck dinners.  This one was a farewell lunch for Elder and Sister Kieffer who are leaving the first part of November to go home.  We will miss them greatly.  This is not them.  This is Kenny and Beth Ashcraft who decided to luau up our meal .

 And we thought we should Halloween the night up.

 There were lots of people there from our church and the community to say good bye to the Kieffers.  They have had a large impact on us all.

 Lots of people and as usual.....

 ....lots of food!  We love our little branch of the church out here in Gold Beach!

 Ann aged another year this month.  To celebrate we took a full day to celebrate.  We began the day by inviting the Kieffers to go out to breakfast with us at a restaurant in town we had not been to yet.

 The owner of the restaurant surprised Ann with her own personal birthday cake and sang happy birthday to her all by herself!!

 Then we went to serve at a local food bank that was packing weekend lunches for some of our local needy school kids.  After that we headed south towards Brookings.  On the way, we stopped and explored a few trails we have not frequented yet.

 One of those trails took us to Whales Head Beach where we let Bobby run a little and had a nice stroll and explore on this beautifully peaceful beach with only one other couple on it.  Bobby ran and ran and ran big circles around us, through the water and around the rocks.

 As you can see, he was a happy dog!!!

 When he finally slowed down a little, Ann and I got to do a little exploring.

 This is Whales Head Rock and the beach where we were.

 Then we got into Brookings, ran a few errands and went out to dinner at a Thai Restaurant .

 And then went out to a movie.  We saw "Gravity"  Intense!  Good Popcorn!  Good Birthday Date Day!!!

 So, anyway, the month has been kind of laid back, slow and relaxing.  We ended it with Ann decorating up the house, inside and out, buying lots of candy for all the Trick-Or-Treaters (because we live in town) and then we spent a nice quiet night with not one single visitor!  Wayne was happy!  He does not like to share his candy.  Ann was sad.  She likes all those little kids coming over!

 We spent half a day helping the Kieffers clean their apartment and load their car and then took them out one more time before they left for home.

 Then we ended the month with Wayne being called as Branch President to preside over our little Gold Beach Branch of the church.  He will be a much busier little boy now.  Here he is with his two counselors in the front row and the Stake Presidency (they preside over the coastal region from the California border up to north of Florence) in the back row.

 So, there you have our month!  For more detail you can check out Ann's Facebook Page.  She's really good at keeping things up to date!  On to November we go!!!!