Back in April, we were privileged to visit the Meadows & Lake Kathleen Railroad located near Deadwood, Oregon. This fascinating hobby railroad project is the subject of a protracted land use battle in Lane County. Its owner’s past is also the subject of a separate controversy. But to expound on either of these topics would [...]

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Evan and Erin’s Friday play group arranged a visit to a nearby Eugene fire station today — Sheldon station 6. The older kids in the group are all just about to turn 4 years old, and the younger siblings range in age from 16 months - 2 years old. The kids — and Jen especially! [...]

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Some cool video of the resident wolf eels and octopus at Hatfield Marine Science Center:

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Since we bought our house in 2001, we’d wanted to replace the many old, single-pane windows in it. These were wooden double-hung windows that had, over the years and after many coats of paints, become difficult or impossible to open and close. In addition, they were miserably energy-inefficient, and we had some really large openings [...]

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On Sunday morning — early, before the crowds arrived — we made our annual pilgrimage to Lone Pine Farms for pumpkins. Of course, it’s more than just pumpkins — it’s also the hay ride, the farm animals, and this year, for Evan’s first time, it was the Cow Train (see below). We spent about three [...]

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Every fall the garden spiders start building lots of webs around our house and fattening up before the winter. The one in this video built its web just outside our living room window.

If you’d rather not watch the crappy-looking YouTube version of this video, there’s a couple things to try.

Watch the superior-looking version in [...]

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You can also watch a significantly higher-quality version of the video above in our Me.com gallery.
In addition, it turns out our neighbors were in the parade this year. So, for them I assembled a separate video of “The Peace Train” entry and Rob Handy’s campaign group. You’re welcome to watch it as well!

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Why not take two minutes away from your stressful, busy day and watch this peaceful little video of our hike to Proxy Falls? It will transport you to the Three Sisters Wilderness, where vine maples grow like twigs of green, orange, and red paint from the charcoal grey lava rocks that are their canvas. Then, [...]

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We headed out to Mt. Pisgah early this morning for a “breakfast picnic” and then to “hike” around for a while. Erin, who turns 8 months old tomorrow, rode around in the backpack for the first time. She absolutely loved it, cooing and giggling almost the entire time.

Evan walked on his own the whole [...]

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It had been several years since our last jaunt north to Junction City for the annual Scandinavian Festival, but today we made our return to this popular festival. We arrived just as the festival opened at 10am and promptly got in line at the Faith Lutheran Church booth where they serve the single most popular [...]

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