Dianne and I woke up at 4 AM Time to get our flight from Portland back to Burlington… Pretty uneventful flight. Spent the whole time writing grad school applications for people… I have a huge stack to write.… It’s one of the pleasures I’ve been in the business so long… But it does take a lot of work

‘Kyle picked us up at the airport around five and we came home… So nice to be here. Light snow everywhere which is a great contrast portland .

Trying to log in the bathtub using speech is just not working so I’ll say an early good night

nite all,nite sam

-me

tonight was our last full night Portland for this trip. We had a great day… I am dead amazing job and shampooing all of the rugs gabes Place… They look like new… Sort of do I

In the evening we all went out to sushi to celebrate fantastic Gabe just learned that he’s gotten a grant that completely covers his stipend for the next year… It’s a big deal… And a great endorsement of his work!… 



We had such a great trip and it was so nice hanging out with Gabe, sam Sean and nova !

note all, nite sam

-me

we had a really nice yeah yesterday… Very slow start… I took a longest run… Then went over to gabe’s. GabÉ and Sam showed up around noon… (… I know it must be strange to see “Gabe and Sam”…)… Sam is his really nice girlfriend.

Anyway… They showed up around mid day and we went out to brunch.… That’s a real Portland sunday.



Later that day… when brunch wore off… People started showing up at the house for our locket party…

Diane Mayday gift to gab of his grandpa gabes folding ruler… It was a treasured toy when she was a kid… And grandpaGabe always Told him to be careful with it. It was cool seeing Gabe get that gift… While wearing his other grandfather sweater to… Two grandfather moment grandfather moment

That seems like a good time to decorate the tree that we picked up the day before.… It was Sean, Mel, Emma, I’ll be on… I think that’s it. We had a lot of fun decorating the inside and outsidetrees.

That Included placing angel on the tree that had been at Diane’s family since before she was born so let’s say 62 years old?

Meanwhile… Diane was grinding cutting and chopping boiling to make us the most delicious latke dinner.. It was the first night of Hanukkah… And we were doing our family Blend… It felt good

Gabe did the blessing over the candles

He also tried the chocolate chip cookie… A new tradition perhaps?



nite all, nite sam

-me





Our main mission today was to help Gabe and Sam find a Christmas tree. It turns out that you can apply online to be able to go and cut your own tree anywhere in the Oregon wilderness for five dollars…

We selected a dead in dirt road somewhere near Mount Hood. We paid our feet and print it out certificate… Then we went to a fabulous used to store and got the cheapest single use bow saw you ever saw

We drove about an hour up into the rainforest and boy was it raining… We were all pretty well dressed for the weather so it was a gorgeous hike

We were soaked pretty well through when we got to the point we had to turn around for time… We had movie reservations in the evening.

We spent a very wet 30 minutes looking around for the perfect tree… They were all pretty small and uneven… But we finally settled on a cute one

It was pretty small and spindly so we actually crammed into the car with us… No small feat for four people and a fairly large dog

As we were driving out we noticed a stand a much larger and much fuller trees… So we stop there and cut down another one which is fully 10 feet tall… It’s gorgeous… And we tried that one to the roof so with two trees and toe… We headed back to Portland… Soaking wet but happy.

Got home with just enough time to untie the trees put them in the backyard and change into dry clothes so that we could drive to the movie theater… It was an amazing place. Tickets were no more expensive than a normal movie theater but you got to sit in these wonderful lounging sofas and order food and drinks… We had these great snacks and great drinks…. The movie was the new Sequel to Ghostbusters. Which was actually pretty good. It had some great effects and great characters… Dan Aykroyd, Phil Murfet and Eddie Hudson were there… They even had the spirit of Harold Ramis… Even though he died in 2014 he was digitally put back in as a ghost… Very effective. Sigourney Weaver even made a small cameo. I really like the movie… And I loved the company and the place we were watching it

I just got home happy entire… Gabe and sam just cut the tree to put it in the stand… I think we’re going to start decorating it in a little bit. I want to blog before I fell asleep though

nite all, nite sam

-me

Such a great day!

nite all, nite sam

no y it