looking out and the arrival of kevin

hello from (mostly) sunny portland!

all is well in the city of roses. we are having fun visiting with sam's oldest friend kevin, who came out here to relax for a week before he starts law school at tulane. this photo, though blurry, shows sam and kevin having fun. also, it was kevin's birthday! kevin is now 29 years old.


one reason that sam and kevin are so happy is that they just ate some of the amazingly delicious chocolate chunk cookies that sam baked us. for breakfast.


but we haven't only been eating cookies! we've balanced out our diets with a healthy amount of beer, which is plentiful here in portland.


there is more to come in the kevin adventure. we have lots of fun things planned, and also, kevin is really good at talking to the video camera, so you might get to see some live-action action. but that will be later. for now, i'll backtrack a bit to the old fire lookout, where we spent three nights.


this fire lookout was built in mount hood national forest in the 1920s. now it is used for fire-looking-out only in emergencies, so people can rent it out to see some beauty and spend some time relaxing in pretty much complete peace and quiet. in the beauty and the peace, sam wrote two beautiful new songs. he is very talented.


here is where sam spent some time writing, after chopping wood in the shed and starting up a nice fire. (it was surprisingly chilly up there!)


at night, we could see many stars. my nieces and father-in-law, far away on a beach in alabama, also happened to be stargazing from their porch. i like thinking that we all admired the same big dipper. and i'm sure rebecca and georgia, who are two of the smartest girls i know, could have taught me about a few other constellations if we had been looking together.


it was so fun to be in the fire lookout that we pretty much just stayed in there and enjoyed the view (which included many trees and three enormous mountains). i didn't even feel too nervous about being forty feet up in the air.


on our way back to portland, we drove around the "fruit loop," a little highway that circles through orchards, vineyards, lavender fields, alpaca farms, and fruit stands. we visited a blueberry patch, where we picked our own berries,




a lavender field, where we picked our own lavender,



a country store, where we drank a huckleberry milkshake, and a cherry orchard, where we got to wear special cherry-picker baskets and pick our own cherries.

we miss and love you all and hope you're happy where you are.