Maybe politics.....

......would stir the waters enough to make joining in the conversation more fun! Or maybe discussing parenting, or hymns vs. choruses (!), or turning 60, or American-made vs. Japanese, or abortion rights, or travel, or what the kids are doing, etc..........................................this was started to offer a way of keeping in touch as painlessly as possible.....no postage, no stationery, short paragraphs, little time................but haven't seen a lot of activity yet.

Feel free to comment. Would love to hear from everyone.

Amazing Grace

Hey, Alan, does this get you going? We haven't heard
anything from you yet!!! :)

(We happened to drive by this sign recently!)

First rain

On Sunday, we headed for a Kite Festival (Floyd's boss's husband was performing) at the beach, but the first storm of the season blew in and the festival was canceled. We took the long way home, going thru the area around Logsden where we lived for 6 years. This spot holds a memory of one winter night when we were returning from the valley, back to our home at Logsden. Floyd and the kids were asleep and I was driving. Just as we approached this corner, Floyd sat straight up and gasped something about me slowing down to make the corner. I panicked, and in a brief moment, made the decision to head for the driveway off to the right! I forgot to put in the clutch, so the motor choked and we were suddenly sitting there, silent, and wondering what just happened. Floyd said that he was subconsciously concerned that there might be black ice on that curve because it had gotten quite cold and there had been water draining across the road. I quietly backed down the hill and continued on home uneventfully. To this day, I don't think I was going too fast, and wondering if I would have made it around the corner. We'll never know, but fortunately we lived to tell the story!!!

Ellis Residence

We made a day trip on Saturday out of a visit to Mark and Susan's new house in Bend. That's me walking along the side of the house. Four weeks ago it was just a cement foundation! It was fun walking around in the "rooms" that aren't yet enclosed - only studs so far. Mark and Susan depend on photos to watch the progress of their house.

Amanda has made a new friend
this year, she is an exchange student
from South Korea. She is attending a
neighboring school, and is 16 like
Amanda. These are photos from their homecoming dinner/dance, last
Saturday. Amanda designed her dress,
a friend sewed it for her and I did the embroidery, it was a fun creative project.
17 of her friends all got together for the
dance and we had a dinner for them at
the inn.

An October afternoon

After being apart for 20 days, it was good to have Floyd home again!! We headed to the coast on Saturday to deliver some postcards, but mostly just to relax. With warm sunshine and almost no wind, it was an unusually beautiful day at the beach. We wandered around along the winding roads, enjoying the scenery. We had lunch at Rosana's, overlooking the beach. We found these inquisitive cows along the road as we were headed home.

Amanda, Jeanie, and Cherise sang one song with the group.

Daybreak at Line Lexington

Looks like we are all enjoying some wonderful music, young and older... I am holding Fred Miller's youngest daughter, I'm sure you all know who the beautiful people are in the background. It was so good to see Lois and Laura. We missed you Ben and Gary. Thanks to all of you that could come and see Daybreak play.

Daybreak Concert at Line Lexington

Want a grape??

Wish we could share our grapes with you! Yamhill Co., OR has become well-known for it's grape-growing ability. Vineyards have popped up on many a slope with the subsequent flourishing of fine wines. We are not pursuing that with our grapes, but we do enjoy eating them whenever we are in the backyard. They are just getting sweet as the days remain sunny and warm and the nights cool down into the 40's. We have more than we can ever eat (I make juice sometimes, but it looks a bit like dishwater, so we don't remember to drink it very often!!!) Hope to see more of you show up on this space sooner or later. You can comment without signing in. You can also post without putting up a photo, remember.

Love to all!

Hong Kong afternoon

Sure enough, I am in Hong Kong. Not that I have much time to do any "touristy" things, but it's fun to look around and see the changes that have taken place since I last stopped in here. Lots of money in this town, apparently, and I always manage to contribute a little more to their economy. But if they send me a few students I won't complain. As for the fishermen, they actually catch some feisty fish in this gray water, but I hope their catch doesn't make it to any restaurant where I might eat.

This is a photo of the changes being made at our house. We had a hard time deciding on the siding color. But we did decide to keep the house white. So we are going with the lighter color. The trim colors is clay, and the peaks will have russet colored scalloped shingles. I never remember this house being brown like this. As you take the layers off it is fun to see the history of the house. Hope all is well, Floyed we are looking forward to seeing some photos from Hong Kong and I told Alan to take some photos of his shop for you.

Hong Kong

(I asked Floyd to send me a photo with him in it!)

Here's Floyd having tea in his room. He's currently on a 20 day trip for Linfield College, visiting Phillipines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. He's meeting lots of prospective students and their parents.

Between my being gone to PA, and now his, we aren't seeing much of eachother. In the meantime, I'm getting caught up on some chores. Froze corn on Friday! (Can't help the Styer in me!)

Smiles

I like this one better!

Just checking......

Looking for signs of life from Framingham, Hellertown, Telford, etc......
:) :) :)

Any questions about posting? Please ask.

Progress

Here we are on the day I left to return home to Oregon. The huge bouquet came from a neighborman! It was so good to be able to help Mom and Dad. Their progress is slow, but PROGRESS never the less! I'm so thankful for that. And we're all thankful, I know, that Aunt Vivian has arrived!!
And the new sidewalk and railing is almost finished!! Things are "looking up".

Maybe it's true!

We took an R&R day yesterday, leaving at sunrise, and journeying over the Cascades and onto the edge of the high desert at Bend, OR. With my having been gone over 2 weeks, and Floyd anticipating a 3 week trip to Asia coming up this week, we wanted to take a break from "being busy", celebrate our 37 years together, and also take a peek at the progress of Mark and Susan's new house. While Floyd walked around taking pictures of the foundation, I was talking to Susan, describing what we were seeing.
They were up here in early August, before dig-out. They will probably not see it until move in, although they might come at Christmas time. We plan to try to send monthly installments to them so they can watch the progress. The weather was perfect. The view of the surrounding mountains was great.

Color

We have been exploring new colors of red at the Styer household. Here are a few examples, Amanda with her new Cherry/Cola hair color and our Red Barns, finally finished.

The Joys of Summer

Ahh..., life on the farm! A sunny day, a load of hay... A good excuse to go outside and get some exercise! :-)

Ancient history

Ok, for a change of pace, let's take a look into the past. I'll bet these little angels never even THOUGHT about doing any mischief. :-) (Lois, try just telling blogger that you forgot your password. You can get a new one without waiting for another invitation from the administrator.)

Waiting for the boat

Well, I'm not willing to let this blog die on the vine, so I'll send up another photo from the trip to Santa Rosa Island. By the time we (the three Schrocks plus Peter's friend, Patrick) were headed back to civilization, we were pretty well scorched by the sun, and ready for a shower and a stop at Starbucks. But I'm sure we would all be ready to do it again in a heartbeat.

Out to Sea

Had a great time with my "boys" last weekend on Santa Rosa Island off southern California. Miles of hiking on some steep ground, sleeping under the stars, finding birds (of course) and exploring the pristine beaches and cliffs. Now Jonathan and I are back to work in Oregon, while Peter takes off for Serbia and Hungary today.

That's our boy, Eli!

Eli can make most anything into a good time!
Here our sprinkler made for a good game!
Sadly, Eli and his mommy and daddy are not here anymore.
Gladly, they had a safe, uneventful roadtrip back home.

Tonight Floyd and Jonathan are on different flights to LAX.
After a hair-raising trip thru gridlock on the freeway to the airport, we managed to get both of them at their gates on time, in spite of the silly terrorists in London.

Praying for Dad and Mom tonight!
Mary
(It looks like sayornis posted this, but it's really me, Mariposa. For some reason, my log-on doesn't allow me to post under my name.)

ok I think I creat a real post. Photo and all. It is so fun to see your activities with Eli. So this is a photo of our main focus. yes the process of Red Barns. We'll keep an update of this remodeling that we are having fun with so far. Three sides of the garage and one side of the barn are done. the reason the back side is not done is because the ground was too wet and the lift kept getting stuck. Hopefully they can complete it this coming week. Yesterday Alan put new windows in the dining and living rooms... So the saga of the Greenford Red Barns and our remodeling projects ...
Hope Poppie is feeling better soon. We have had a busy Sunday and I am ready for an early evening nap.

"I Dig Dirt"

Eli loves dirt and diggers! A new parking lot is going in close to our house on Linfield College's campus and we make frequent visits to check out the progress. Last evening, Floyd and Eli spent at least an hour just hanging out over there - sitting in the seat of the digger, climbing on the rock pile, and just looking at the big machines. Of course, a good bath was much needed after that.

On another note, I just spoke with mom and it seems that her mouth issues are showing some improvement finally. Irene is spending time with her, as well as Lois spending nights with her. Blessings to all of them for caring for eachother.

Dad's nurse said that there were good results from an enema this afternoon which is very good news. They plan to do another xray series tomorrow to check the progress of the ileus in his bowel (a general term for a bowel that isn't functioning properly). In the meantime, he is taking small amounts of clear liquids by mouth, is getting IV nourishment, and still has low level discomfort.

Sure hoping things can be resolved soon for mom and dad!

Grandparenting...

We spent the afternoon visiting the animals at Portland Zoo. In spite of the fact that the sun was hot, and it's the middle of summer when everyone else decides to go to the zoo, we had fun viewing the animals thru Eli's eyes. Since the parking lot was full, we had to park and shuttle....and Floyd left his camera in the truck, so no pictures. We did have some ice cream when we got home, though!!

The Cowpath Chronicles

The Cowpath Chronicles

Matt's Pictures

Just in case you're not reading the comments down below, Matt put up some fine pictures on his own blog. You can find them by clicking here. And make sure you click on the pictures that he has posted. They each open up to larger galleries.

Celebration

Of course, such a reunion could take place now only because of the two special people at the center of it all who started it all more than 60 years ago. Congratulations and blessings on you, Mom and Dad, Grammie and Grampop!

Reunion

A memory already, and a very good one. Thanks to Jim and Beth for welcoming us all to the farm for several days. Only one suggestion for next time: Please arrange for lower temperature and humidity. Otherwise, it was perfect! (Click on the photo for a larger image.)

Some Instructions

Hi there,

For those of you just joining us...some have wondered how to create their own post on this electronic bulletin board. Well, wonder no more...

The simplest way to create a new post here is to click on the "I Power Blogger" button on the lower right. This will take you, most likely, to a log-in screen where you will type in your selected username and password. The next screen you see will display a "+" sign and a title above it that says "new post".

That pretty much answers that question, doesn't it.

You can upload pictures by clicking on the "add image" button. A variety of other options are also available. Click around. You can't break anything.

Ok, that's it.

Elijah

Another test, since I have learned that a better way to send a post (including photos) is to click on the "I Power Blogger" button on the lower right side of this page. Also, this is another chance to mention that I'm so pleased to be Eli's Poppi. :-)

The Cowpath Chronicles

The Cowpath Chronicles

Okay, this is a test. I'm not sure if this is the way to send an actual blog entry, rather than a comment, but I'll try. I just clicked on "BlogThis!" and started writing in the space that popped up. I hope the other members of this blog group will figure out how to register with a user name, and then start sending news items. I believe that the member who set it up for us (that is "ScrappleSandwich") will be happy to answer any questions about the process. Well, I'll hit publish and see what happens.

Welcome To Cowpath

We have reached an historic moment. We have attained a pinnacle of peaks. We ARE the cutting edge. We have started a blog.

So, now that we have harnessed this fearsome technological power, let us commit ourselves to use it for good and not for evil. Let's talk about important things. The zucchini and the beans are doing great! We painted the kitchen! We went to Tallahassee! The car needs a new fan belt! World peace!

The possibilities boggle the mind!