Summer Wrap-up and School Begins

About 2 weeks ago, I was getting ready to do a summer wrap-up post on all the happenings in our extremely busy month of August, and then my technical nightmare occurred!!!

My computer crashed and took the harddrive with it!!!!

If you know me very well, you know that I am very fond of my computer. I would say that next to my family and friends, this thing is just about my most precious possession (not that my family and friends are my possessions or can really be compared to it at all, but you know what I mean--I hope). More accurately, I guess I would say that the photos and files this thing houses are my most precious possessions. Thank the good Lord that my wonderful husband had the wherewithall to buy an external harddrive AND set it to automatically back up most of my harddrive each and every Monday. If he hadn't have done that, all my precious photos for the past 8 years of our lives would have been GONE!!! I would still be crying and probably shelling out hundreds of dollars to attempt to recover anything from my harddrive. The only casualties I can think of are one batch of photos from the McDonald family reunion that I had downloaded to the computer but they had not made it into the last backup (my sister has some of the same photos so I can get those from her), dozens if not hundreds of fonts I had downloaded for scrapbooking (yes, it was an obsession for awhile to download new fonts), and my entire Outlook email address book. If that's all I lost, I can handle it. We did give my computer to our tech savvy friend, Mr. Gove, and he did all he could to attempt to recover the harddrive to no avail. He proclaimed it DOA. So Dale and I went out and bought me a new laptop--a faster, bigger, and I suppose better one. I'm not real thrilled with the Windows Vista operating system, so I look forward to when I can upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out. Anyway, enough about the computer. I'm up and running again, and that's all that matters.

So in an attempt to summarize the end of our summer quickly, I will list and provide highlights for the activities we had for the month of August.

• August 7th-9th was my 20 year high school reunion. How can I be that old? There was a get together at a local tavern on Friday night that just I went to. I almost didn't go to that, but was glad I did. There was a great turnout, and I got to see a lot of friends that I haven't seen since graduation or the 10-yr. reunion and some that I have kept in touch with but still hadn't seen for 3-5 years. Saturday was the main event. I mostly talked with my friend Gretchen while Dale spent just about the entire evening with her husband, Dana. I'm glad they had each other or Dale would've been lost I think.
• August 14th-16th was the McDonald family reunion. It was at a campground in Lincoln City, OR. The kids had a great time just riding bikes and running around in the big grassy area. We also took them to the beach where Owen and Collin played in the sand while the bigger kids tried to run in the surf, but the waves were so huge that they could've been knocked down and wash out to sea in an instant. I would show you pics but those are the ones I lost.
• August 25th Grandpa and Grandma Lough arrived and then the whole bunch of us piled in one car to Sunriver, OR on the 26th for 4 days. We stayed in a house there, which we have done for 3 summers now. It worked out perfectly for us. Dale and I had a room upstairs with the kids' room next door with 2 twin beds (Owen got thrown to the floor), and G'ma and G'pa had their own room and bath downstairs. Even though they lived in Corvalis, OR back when Dale's dad was doing his doctorate work at OSU and had been through Bend, G'ma and G'pa had never been to Sunriver and they just loved it. The kids loved having them there too. It was perfect weather and a very peaceful and relaxing little vacation.
• Grandpa left on the 31st to return to Indiana while Grandma stayed on for another week.

Here are some photos from our Sunriver trip:

Enjoying a day at the pool

Bike riding on the miles of trails is a favorite activity

The kids at the High Desert Musuem

Without much transition, the kids went back to school on Wed., Sept. 3rd, which was the first time I remember going back before Labor Day. Hannah started 3rd grade and Justin started 1st, so this is the first year that both of them go all day. Justin has the same teacher Hannah had for 1st grade, whom we just love, and he has done great from the start, although we're less than 2 weeks into the school year, and he has already stayed home the past 2 days because he's been sick and throwing up. Hannah once again is having a tough transition into school. We didn't know anything about her teacher, although from what I can tell so far, she's very nice. Hannah has shown the same signs of anxiety that she has the past two years and done a lot of crying before going to school. She even gets herself all worked up the night before, although it has gotten better the past couple days. She had a little bit of a setback today, but I hope that it all dies down soon. Thankfully, her teacher and the counselor (who she has a pretty good relationship with from the past couple years) are very supportive and helpful.

Hannah and Justin seemingly happy to go to school

Owen also started preschool this year. I can't believe my little baby is even old enough. He just turned 3 and seems so young to be going off to school. He also isn't potty trained yet (we're working on it), so luckily the school was lenient on that. I wasn't really sure how it would go because he kept insisting (complete with fist pump and foot stomp) that he did NOT want to go to school. Not even the chance to pick out a backpack or new shoes or anything helped to convince him. We did go for a visit, and he did decide it wasn't too awful. The teacher promised to have animals there for him to take care of. Well, on his first day, he ran right in and sat down at theanimal table to take his charge. I left and he seemed fine. I picked him up, and he was even wearing his huge backpack on his little shoulders. The second day didn't go so smoothly. The teacher had to pry him off my leg, and I left him crying, but they assure me he did okay and that they think he will do fine. We'll see how it goes next week. Now if we could just get him potty trained.

This is what I get when I ask Owen to smile

Owen happy with his animals at school

Whew, I promise you I'm almost done. With Grandma here over the Labor Day weekend (we asked her if she could stay until then) Dale and I took a belated 13th anniversary road trip. Last Friday, we drove to the Gorge Ampitheater in George, WA to see Dave Matthews Band. We were a little worried because they had cancelled a concert just 3 days earlier due to Dave's vocal chords, but the show went on, and it was great. We've been to the Gorge once before for Creationfest Christian concert, and while the crowd was definitely different (let's just say that many DMB fans enjoy smoking anything and everything), the view and the entertainment was just as spectacular. It was a perfect evening for the concert, but it was a late night. The concert ended, and we still had to drive an hour to glorious Ritzville, WA (in the middle of nowhere) to our hotel. I'm glad though that we did not decide to camp at the campground there at the ampitheater because I could not imagine what it would be like to camp with that let's just say "diverse" crowd. After our stay at the LaQuinta Inn in Ritzville we headed further East to Pullman, WA to visit WSU and see the Cougs play their home opening football game against Stanford. They lost 39-13, but they had some bright moments, and it was an improvement over the 58-0 loss last year. It was fun to walk around campus. So much has changed since we left over 13 years ago. Again, how can I be that old? One big change was that the bookstore (Bookie) that we knew was empty and moved into the newly remodeled CUB (Compton Union Building), which was awesome. We wish the CUB would've been like that when we were there. After the game, we drove up to Spokane to visit friends from college, Tim and Michele Greenwood. We used to go see them every year and go to a game prior to having kids, but that all ended once the kids came along. It was good to see them and hopefully we won't go that long before seeing them again. Then it was the long drive back home to the kids and Grandma. It was a lot of driving (riding for me) between all our locations over the weekend, but it was a fun trip.

Dale and I with our new Coug gear

A new statue outside the stadium

a tribute to the last living Butch

I posed with Butch

This photo is for G'pa Harold showing one of the windfarms

that are all up and down the Columbia Gorge