Christmas after party in the mountains

After Christmas, a smaller group of us went for a road trip in Victoria and NSW. We drove up to the mountains through the snowy river scheme area, which included this flooded area.
We spent a few nights in Geehi campground with some incredible views of mountains and the Swampy Plains River provided relief from the heat and flies. It included an incredible swimming hole too.We took one day there to drive up to Mt Koscie and walked to the top. It was as incredible walk through some striking alpine scenery.

Then we hit the road toward the beach through these incredible fields of weeds.

Christmas in Australia

Traveler and I spent Christmas 2007 with his Aunt Lynette and Uncle George in Stanley, Victoria Australia. Friends and family gathered to camp in their yard.
Christmas was filled with really cool decorations that fit with the summer season....

Good food and wine

And we even drove up to Mt Stanley and walked to the top to check out the views.

Melbourne to start the holidays

Traveler and I had a few days in Melbourne to kick off the Christmas holidays. Melbourne is a city dear to my heart, and it was lovely to have a few days to just hang out there. It was rainy most of the time, but somehow that only added to the Christmas spirit for me.
People were lining up everywhere Friday night... which is sort of a grown up version the last day of school. Most people have several days, if not weeks, of vacation coming up. The whole city had a light hearted feel, in spite of the rain.

well there were some grumpy people at the bus stops as cars came by and drenched us.
We went out for a lovely dinner at a restaurant my friend Amber turned me on to down in St Kilda. On the way home, we took the wrong tram and got out and made our way across this park to our hotel. I can't believe in all the time I've spent in Melbourne I didn't even know that this park existed - seems that most of the cyclists were well aware of it though.

We also got to spend a bit of time with our friends and their two kids. This amazing kid, Luke, completely gets Traveler and vice versa. It was so fun seeing them play together.
Alana is pretty amazing too! I feel so lucky to be getting to see these kids growing up over time.
The goodbyes are always hard though...

Return down under

Well its finally time to fly back to New Zealand. I now feel that I have two homes, one in Oregon and the one Traveler and I are creating in NZ. I guess I am more torn about this than I realized as I just missed my flight back --- for wonderful and rather silly reasons.
I spent all night worrying about how my baggage situation would work out (they gladly checked it all the way through to Wellington for me and only charged me for one extra bag once) when the real problem was that I forgot to look at my boarding pass and failed to realize that my flight was leaving 45 minutes earlier than when I booked it. So my best friend and I had a lovely breakfast together oblivious that my plane was boarding while we chowed down enjoying a few last moments together:)

Oh well, it gives me an extra couple hours at PDX with its great atmosphere and free wireless Internet while listening to a man chat on a cell phone with a voice nearly identical to Traveler's uncle.

And as I sit here I realize I have ample time to post a few post flood memories...

There was the impromtu gingerbread house making with my honorary niece Aiden, who not only bravely dove in to follow my fearless approach to sugar icing application but also tolerated me braiding her hair to pull it out of the sugar zone...

I do hope I get a photo of the finished project
Then there was my family's day trip to the spectacular Oregon coast. There are few coastlines that rival Oregon's for awesome scenic power. After the recent storm we weren't sure what we would find... there were plenty of subtle signs of the damage, but most of it had been already cleaned up. Saturday's weather was perfect. Not too cold and uncharacteristically sunny. What the Oregon coast offers up in beauty, it pays for in windy chilliness.
We were there on official family business; It seemed fitting to mark my 29th birthday by giving up my paternal grandparents ashes to the Ocean, as was their wish. It was a simple affair marked my father's brief words (with lengthier pontifications on the car ride down) that I think would make anyone proud.

In Ketty tradition, we ate a good meal together. My grandma was always giving you some cash to take yourself out for a good meal. My only food memory stronger than this was her insistence to send me with tin foil wrapped pork chops on the plane.
This beach is were I spent much of my summer childhood. I was sure I'd get married there. Instead its become a touchstone of key moments for me. It was were I went before my surgery that may have forever changes our options for growing our family. Its where I took Traveler to try to reveal a bit more about who I was as a kid. Now in spite of the sunniness above, Oregon is known for rain. I've read novels where people talk about how Oregon houses all covered moss. This is not something that I associate particularly with Oregon, but near my best friend's house I saw this:

And really, you know that you are home in the presence of the best friend ever when you wake up in her house long after she's left for work to see this.... ... she has not only saved a toothbrush she gave you on your last visit in anticipation of your return, but remembered where it was and laid it out for you to find when you finally woke.

Other memories include my day in the city with Mom... shopping our hearts out, although I did have the will power to pass on these boots that I guiltily desired but realized the money would bring me way more joy spent on food, or camping gear, or bike lights or... well a million things really.
And nothing is as priceless as noticing new things about your home. For example I never noticed that if you get high enough in the Gallery parking lot you can see the hills in the distance!

We selected a tree to chop

I attempted to recreate Alex and Sean's wonderful Peruvian Chicken Soup with limited success..
But it feed us until birthday cake time
I even altered my own pants, which really isn't as hard as I thought it would be. Pinning is a more useful activity than I've ever really let myself believe before. It also was a reality check on how much my body has changed in this past year. I've never really had to alter my clothes before (other than altering great Goodwill finds that a different sized body previously loved).

Which brings me back to my dear Grandma Ketty. Next to my mom's sewing machine was this box. I'm nosy, I peered inside. It was filled with sewing notions that belonged to grandma. Maybe its technically “the modern day” but I bet more of us women than you'd likely suspect have a sewing box tucked away in each of our houses. We may not use them often, but we often do have one...

The flood of 2007

The week after I moved to New Zealand the Pacific Northwest was hit with a huge wind storm. Well this trip, another storm hit while I was home. When it decides to rain here, it can be biblical.

The property where I grew up is surrounded by a small irrigation ditch on 2 sides. Across the highway is a larger body of water, the Gales Creek. During wet times, a stream appeared in the middle of the back field. My father a few years back dug a pond where this stream tended to appear. The pond is dry much of the year, but not this week.

Last week my father and I went for a walk across the street to check out the beaver activity.

We took lots of pictures of the clear, calm water

A week later we could see a raging river overflowing its banks. Trees, stumps, and other debris flew down river.
Our house and surroundings were a case study in contrasts. Here are some before flood and during flood shots:

Now don’t get me wrong, flooding can be a horrible horrible thing. In ’96 there was another big flood that hit Vernonia, a local nearby town, very very hard. Our high school class went up to help clean up there after the 1996 flood. I was on the crew that had to throw out the bueatiful woodshop projects – all contaminated by sewage water. It was heart breaking. I hear that this flood was even worse. Talk of schools being closed until February… We probably won’t even know the full extent of the damage for several days.

That said, I do enjoy walking around the flooded fields in gum boots checking out the transformed landscape.
Its when homes and schools and businesses are in the flood plain that there is no joy in this activity. Most of my neighbors were lucky – tree branches crashing just feet from buildings and cars, rising waters silting water pumps but sparing the cars, and no reported injuries that I’ve heard of so far.

Here is some of what I saw on my walk

My mom and I also drove around the valley some checking things out around the valley:

This moat was actually dug before the flood, but was dramatically filling as the rains poured down.

And of course, there is always some work to be done when a big storm hits. Luckily all 4 of us were home to help out.