Soccer weekend!

Thanks to Scott we enjoyed a weekend of soccer! He got us tickets to the University of Portland Women's game on Friday night. It is the first time I've gone to a UP game without a rain jacket! This time the weather was perfect, the game exciting and Portland won!

The U-14 Boise Nationals team that Scott helps coach was in Portland for a tournament so we got to spend time watching youth soccer again. Sitting on the sidelines with a group of parents seems so totally normal to us. My eyes automatically go to the tall blond players, even though I'm really there to support the tall blond coach!

And Barcelona won yet another trophy! That's 12 in three years! I love soccer!

Education Week

With apologies and compliments to my Education Week buddy, Jan who did this post about our week.......http://jandegiulio.wordpress.com/ I'm going to steal her post and adapt it to my blog.

Education Week was wonderful this year. I went with Jan De Giulio. We had a great time learning, laughing, visiting and eating together. She is the perfect ED Week partner! It was fun to have Jan's daughter, Terrah, join us for a day and go to a few classes with her. I will write more about the classes later. Here are a few fast facts.

• About 36 classes taken.
• Tons of good stuff learned.
• 114 pages of notes taken.
• Seven pages filled with inspiration that came into my mind as I listened
• New goals set.
• Lots of excitement about teaching the Old Testament this year

The most amazing facts are below

• No fudge eaten.
• No ice cream eaten.
• Only 2 Amazing BYU brownies eaten. How I did this I will never know! (But I admit I wish I had one right now!)
• One over priced Costa Vida Salad at the Marriott Center eaten. Learned my lesson there! It’s almost a crime how much they jack up the price to sell at BYU.
• Found out the bathrooms in the BYU Art Museum are amazing, with no lines EVER!!! I did not share this secret with anyone lest they be overflowing with people when I went in them.
• The Cafe in the Museum is a great inexpensive place to get a good lunch.
• Two dinners at the wonderful ZUPAS!
• Weight gain ZERO!
• LDS Women can take over a men's bathroom when the need is great!
• The speakers I've heard for years, like Michael Wilcox and Randall Wright, are still favorites and still inspire and teach me.
• My favorites list can grow longer with speakers like Brad Wilcox and Anthony Sweat and Kenneth Alford.

I've been to BYU Education Week over 20 times and each year is fantastic. For those who may not know what it is...it's five days filled with classes from 8:30 in the morning until 9:25 at night. Classes range from religious to financial planning to parenting to history to music to mental health and diet and exercise. There is something for everyone. This year there were 20,000 participants ages 14 to 96. I'm serious about the 96 year old! Some people stay in the homes of family and friends, some in motels and some in the dorms. Jan and I were in the dorm. Fun late nights talking and talking and talking! A great week in every way!

Birthday Celebration Part 3

Crater Lake National Park

Yes, the water really is that color!

I read in an old travel guide that Kodak used to send their apologies along with customers' photographs of Crater Lake, because they thought that they had goofed in the processing, so unbelievable were the colors of the water.

There is only one place where you can access the water. The hike down is pleasant but getting back up is quite the workout! They say that the hike back up is equal to climbing the stairs to the top of a 65 story building. I'm happy to report that we made it!

There was still SNOW! But we had a perfectly clear seventy degree day!

Doesn't this little guy look like he is posing for the tourists? One of our fellow hikers asked, "Is this Simon, Theodore, or Alvin?" I just learned that he is actually a golden mantled ground squirrel!

Crater Lake should actually be called "Caldera Lake" as a caldera is what happens when the center of a volcano caves in upon itself. The gigantic eruption of Mount Mazama occurred around 7000 years ago and was 100 times stronger than the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. Mt. Saint Helens sent ash as far as Idaho but Mount Mazama sent ash as far as Nebraska! That's quite impressive! I'm pretty sure that an explosion like that now would wipe out million of people. It did make a beautiful lake which is the deepest in America and the cleanest and clearest in the world. The Rangers will drink from the lake to prove how pristine it is. All the water has come from snow melt and rain. No rivers run in and no rivers run out. Years ago, before people were concerned about such things, steelhead, trout, and salmon were introduced into the lake. Now environmentalist want them out, so you can fish the lake with no license and no limit! The Ranger thought that they were fighting a loosing battle with the fish.

The island in the middle of the lake is actually a cinder cone that formed sometime after the eruption. It is called Wizard Island. Next time we come we want to take the boat ride out and hike to the top.

These 100 foot tall spires form a surreal landscape. The spires are 'fossil fumaroles' each marking a spot where volcanic gas rose up through hot ash deposits, cementing the ash into rock. Most are hollow inside.

I think it looks like the set for a futuristic movie!

On a completely different note...on the way home we saw the Medford, Oregon temple!

Sigh! It was a super birthday celebration and now I guess it is back to real life!

Birthday Celebration Part 2

Friday we drove down to Ashland to the famous "Oregon Shakespeare Festival" to see "Love's Labor Lost". Confession time here! I always think I SHOULD like Shakespeare. I'm an educated person with a college degree and an avid reader. But I will have to admit that for the first ten or fifteen minutes of any Shakespeare play, I sit there listening, totally confused. They could be speaking Chinese for all I'm following the storyline. Then my brain shifts into 16th century English mode and I start enjoying it. I laugh when other people laugh and I know why they are laughing. I understand what is going on....at least most of the time!

I had a bit of help this time as I had read the synopsis of the play beforehand. Good thing because there was all kinds of confusion from disguises to mis-delivered love letters! Pretty typical Shakespeare! I love the comment in the playbill about "Love's Labor Lost", "At the center of this play lies the question of balance: How do we allow access to both our heads and our hearts? This is journey that begins as we enter into adulthood and a challenge that remains with us for a lifetime."

Beautiful Elizabethan theatre! Here they are preparing for "Pirates of Penzance" which was being performed that evening.

A totally different night from the Portland Timbers and LA Galaxy game! But equally enjoyable!

Birthday Celebration #1

Portland Timbers and LA Galaxy....LA is the #1 team in the division and have won 14 straight. Timbers are next to the last in the division and have had a less than stellar season......it's their first season in the MLS.

Outside the stadium they were selling shirts that said, "Beat LA and that English Guy". Do you know who they're talking about? None other than that very fine looking superstar - DAVID BECKHAM!

He is a one fine looking man! I know he has long hair and a headband and a scruffy face but he is handsome enough to make this old lady's heart go pitter patter!

And he can still bend it like, well bend it like Beckham!!!

What he couldn't manage to do last night was to score any goals or make any assists!

The Portland fans are crazy. Hundreds are in the stands behind the goals. They spend the entire game on their feet and have an inexhaustible number of cheers, some of which involve choreography! Get a load of this skirted cheerleader!

Every time the Timbers score, Timber Joey cuts a slice out of a huge log.

And holds it up to the hysterically happy fans!

Last night he got to use his saw three times.....final score...

Timbers 3 and LA 0!!!!

Our friend Vinu got introduced to American sports crazed fans!

Part 1 of my birthday Extravanganza!