Family Fun

 

Time to catch up again!  Let’s just start with August….the Franz Family Picnic!  We flew out to NY to spend a week in the beautiful Adirondack mountains…the day we flew in was the annual Franz Family picnic.  It was REALLY great to see everyone (some we haven’t seen in a very long time)!   

The day consisted of GREAT food and the annual water balloon fight…which turns into an annual ‘how many cousins can we get soaked’ fight (we forgot about that one and were fully clothed!).

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The day ended with our annual campfire, songs lead by Myra’s uncle Paul – this year he even brought ‘instruments’ for others – it was a ton of fun!

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For the rest of the week we had rented a cabin with Myra’s parents and brother on a nearby lake.  We had a great time biking, tubing with family, canoeing, golfing, hiking and of course playing cards with Grandma!

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Graduation (finally!)

 

So even though the defense  was back in April, we celebrated Joe’s PhD graduation again the day he walked in the ceremony.  His grandparents, parents, aunt and uncle and Myras parents flew out for the event.  We got to take some trips to the coast and to the mountains before/after graduation day!  It was also cool that two of our closest friends were getting their PhD’s at the same time (and one who couldn’t make it to the ceremony because she already moved to Australia).  The ceremony was pretty typical and thankfully we were allowed to leave before they handed out all the undergraduate degrees.  We followed it with a BBQ for all three graduates their families and friends at our place.  Good times all around.  The wives of the graduates surprised the crowd with photo collages (embarrassing actually) and T-shirts to start a feud!.

Here’s just a few snaps from the day …

Rooster Rock

We want to try and soak in all the Oregon scenery while we still can!! So a month or so ago we went for a day hike up to Rooster Rock. The peak itself is a bit hard to get a picture of but the views from the top were better than we even imagined!

April 2009

Now that I look back, April was a pretty busy month for us. I suppose most notably is that Joe defended his PhD on April 20th. His parents flew out to celebrate Easter with us and a number of our friends and then worked on a number of projects around the house while he crammed to finish up during the last week. He did take a few breaks to join in the remodeling fun but really Mom and Dad deserve all the credit for these jobs!!

Joe's professor had a celebration dinner/party the night of his defense which was a great way to finish off the day.

After a few days of finishing up some details of the dissertation we took off with Joes parents up the coast of Oregon and Washington and into the temperent rain forest in the Olympic National Forest. We stayed a night at Ocean Shores, Washington and woke up early to find we were in the midst of hundreds of people who came to the coast for the one open weekend of Razor Clam season! Joe's parents flew out from Seattle and then we took the train back to Oregon. You really can't beat the west coast views! Click on the picture below to see a few more!!

We finished off the month when Myra hosted a baby shower for our friend Joani. You can tell we are a bit late posting all this because little Alilson arrived over a month ago!!

Catching up ...

Well considering it's been since Thanksgiving since we posted anything, a little catching up is in order. So of course descriptions of everything are going to be pretty limited but hold on to your hats, cause away we go.....

Farewell to the Chileans:

In December we had to say "goodbye", or at least "So long for now" to a couple of our dearest friends as they returned to Chile. It is time for Pato, Ximena, Bea, and Max to head back to their home and families but nonetheless we had to have a party and a few tears to say our goodbyes.

Christmas:

We celebrated Christmas in a number of places this year. First in Oregon with a couple white elephant exchanges, then in New York and Pennsylvania with our families. It snowed in Corvallis which is a bit of a rarity and caused everything to come to a screetching hult. And last but not least, the Christmas tree we eyed up in our side yard finally came tumbling down and made it's way into the house.

Grandma Franz Turns 90!

It wasn't long after we got back out west from Christmas that we turned around and flew back for a long weekend to help celebrate Grandma Franz's 90th birthday. Short trip but it was a great chance to see the entire family which hasn't happened for a number of years.

Thanksgiving Double Take

Yeah, yeah, it's a little past Thanksgiving - but, again, better late than never! We drove up to Washington to spend Thanksgiving with Melissa (a friend of Joe's from high school), her husband Giancarlo and their two ADORABLE girls, Angelina and Victoria.

On Thanksgiving Day, Giancarlo had to work so we enjoyed our Thanksgiving day meal on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Afterwards, Giancarlo gave us a great tour of the ship - it was very impressive and quite interesting for a couple engi-nerds!

On Friday, we enjoyed the traditional Thanksgiving 'fixings' at their house. It was a great, relaxing day of reminiscing, playing with the girls and catching up. Of course, their was lots of food preparation going on and the day wouldn't be complete without a couple minor 'incidents' (misreading ingredient quantities and early 'removal' of the turkey), BUT, no worries, the meal turned out FAB-U-LOUS and of course, put us into an early food-induced coma. We ended the night getting schooled by Melissa and Giancarlo in the game Sequence. I blame it on the food-coma and want a REMATCH!

Cape Lookout

With a break in the rain last weekend we took the chance to head out to the beautiful Oregon coast. We went up to Cape Lookout and did a hike out to the end of the headland. We got there a little later than we had planned (darn outlet malls along the way!) but it gave us a great view of the sunset over the ocean. It just meant we had to hike a little faster on the way back so we weren't stuck in the dark!! If you haven't seen the rocky shores of Oregon...you're missing out. The trails had some pretty muddy spots but nothing impassable. Really of course the highlight was being able to watch Myra use the logs across the trail as the catwalk for her model runway (sorry no pics of that...that was just for Joe ;)

Halloween Fun...

We spent Halloween over at our friend's Jen and Todd's. Jen is a FABULOUS cook/baker - check out all the great spread! And this wasn't all! Soooo creative with decorations and food! Yumm, yumm, yumm!!!!!

It's been a few years since we dressed up for Halloween and we decided to do a 'group' custome with our friends Dan and Natalie. We all voted and decided on dominoes, of course Myra and Natalie couldn't just settle on the boring description of putting white dots on black clothing. Sooooo, here we are as dominoes - the women decked out with dominoe earrings, headband and braclets. Don't you think the guys pulled of the gold 'Mr T' like domino 'necklace' and 'Rambo-like' headband well?

We entered the party in 'true' dominoe style, that is, falling down knocking each other down. Here is an reenactment, although we were MUCH less graceful coming in and ended up scaring little Ethan (sorry!).

We weren't the only ones sporting fun outfits though! Check out the other great costumes.

Fruit Loop Day (what do you think this means??)

We decided to take a day 'off' this past Saturday and drive the Fruit Loop in the Mt. Hood area. Now, get your head out of the breakfast aisle (or gutter) and stay with me here - the Fruit Loop is a 35 mile loop around 30+ orchards in the Mt. Hood/ Hood River area (yes, only in Oregon). On the way up, Myra decided she wanted to take the scenic route to check out the changing leaves through the mountains (this way took about 3 1/2 hours) - it was very pretty, but nothing compared to the changing leaves of the Adirondacks!

The 'loop' started with a visit to a real, live, Alpaca farm - lots of baby Alpacas, soooo cute. We found out that female Alpacas are worth $10,000 when there little baby feet hit the ground! The owners were talking about how this farm has really helped them diversify their portfolio - no kidding! They really do have nice 'fleece' though...but $10,00???

Next, we stopped at a place, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, for a BBQ behind an old country store. It was very good (with cider baked beans and pear coleslaw) - a bit crowded as there was a tour bus - yup - a tour bus! They were also making fresh apple butter the ol fashion way over a fire in a big copper pot - Myra took a turn stirring the pot to relieve the worker (really, just because she likes doing dorky things like this).

The rest of the afternoon was spent going to different orchards, getting some fresh fruit and some hard cider from the locals. Then we took the 'non-scenic', scenic, route home (an interstate along the Columbia Gorge), which was only a little over 2 hours....But, after all that, we were still back home in time for take out and a movie - what a great day!!

Harvest Time!

Myra decided to do a major harvest of the garden the past couple weekends. The tomatoes and squash plants were dying so it was time to bring the 'veggies' of her labor inside for some major cooking!

The tomatoes made some fabulous salsa!! Only about half of the squash have been cooked (those things are a pain!). So fun fact - when different varities of squash are planted close together they crossbreed and you never know quite what you will get! But, still, there was enough 'buttery' squash to make a ton of squash gnocchi - yummy!!