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!!!!

SEPTEMBER - A TIME TO REMEMBER 9/1-30/2013

September found us busy, busy, busy again!  We had more work on the house in Medford and then Ann flew to New York to babysit Jed and Kate's son for a week while they did some movie making things.  The first half of the week she was gone, Wayne tackled a problem he had seen on the north side of the Gold Beach house.  There was evidence of water damage, so Wayne removed siding and sheeting to find the problem.

Working on some home made scaffolding was interesting.  And with Ann not home, he had to make extra sure he did not fall because there was nobody to take him to the hospital!

After removing all the damaged siding, sheeting and other materials, he then painted the all the new and old materials with a yucky smelling compound that prevented any other damage from taking place or spreading. Then he primed all the materials with an oil base paint before replacing them to further protect them.

Then after re-sheeting, the new lap siding was installed....

...primed and painted.

The first coat was not good enough, so a second coat was added later.

Bobby was Wayne's constant companion, but he was not very good at pounding nails.

Then came the work on the inside to repair the cause of the damage.  The refrigerator ice maker source had a small leak in it, which had leaked inside the wall.  The refrigerator was pulled and...

...the source revealed.   After further removal and replacement of the damaged sheet rock and studding, that nasty smelling chemical was painted on everything.  Yuck!!!  The house smelled terrible.  Wayne opened up the house windows and doors, ran fans and hoped it would all be cleared out before Ann came home from New York!!

Wayne, after spending years watching his brother in law do sheetrock work has become pretty good at it and texturing.

After that project was done, Wayne headed to Medford to help his brother with a few projects

and pick up Ann at the airport from New York.  We stayed another week to attend our niece's wedding and help Ann's brother and family move from their old house.
The wedding was well orchestrated by all our niece's family.  Here is the happy couple, Gary and Sarah!

This is Ann's brother, John's boys.  L -R; Tim, Andy, Pete, Johnnie, Matt and John.

Wayne's brother, Cliff and his wife, Linda, sided by Ann and Wayne at Sarah and Gary's wedding.

The bride's entourage; Back - L-R, Anna,Marcie, Monique  Front L-R, Robin, Katie, Hailey

The judge that married them.  This is the only wedding we have ever been to where the person performing the ceremony was an hour late.  There was some mumbling going on about him.

 The ceremony began.

Dad brought in the bride.

And in the end.....the ceremony took place. There was good company and good fun.  It is good being family!

Then Ann and Wayne began a week more of helping John and Karen have a yard sale and move. 

40-45  pickup loads and a few trailer loads and we had all their stuff moved or sold!

John and Karen's daughter, Anna, was our resident ram rod and Craig's List expert.  Here we are taking a break for lunch.

Big Brother and Little Sister in Big Brother's new home!

In the end, we finished out the month with a meal together at Home Town Buffett with John and Karen, Cliff and Linda, us and Cliff and Linda's daughter, and family before we left for our home in Gold Beach. 

We found our home in Gold Beach in good repair when we arrived and it was oh so good to sleep in our own bed!!  Bobby, after about a month of staying at 4 different houses and four different back yards and tons of little kids and adults to keep in line, ran around in circles on our living room rug when we got home and then collapsed.  He slept 12 hours that first night home!

We hope October is a quiet, relaxing month at home with no major activities in our life.