2022 – June part 1

In many ways, I can’t believe it is already June. The cool weather will be going away soon and the warm to hot weather will be here before I want it to be.

We finished painting our living room! It isn’t a white color, but actually a very light blue-ish color. Since we left the ceiling untouched people should be able to tell the difference. We will still need to do our kitchen/family room area (if you see through the squares in the photo below you see the ugly brown still present). In a time that will come very soon that color will be just a memory.

We have gotten some rain showers (which is unusual for June, we are normally pretty dry – but this year is our wettest on record). Since it has been warming up but raining still… it has allowed us the opportunity to play in the rain with the kiddos. One afternoon we just let them play and decided to join them in on the fun (even having the puppy get wet too). He looked less than happy about it.

It is such a contrast to the weather that Phoenix has. Normally June and July are the hottest months – and if you look at the graph above (showing the hottest days) I was in Phoenix for every one of those dates. Now, I’ve spoken before about how they are keeping those temps in the averages for Phoenix, and that it likely has been hotter than those temps even back when we lived in Mesa… but that’s a whole other issue).

We went to Gresham Bible Church as we have been trying to find a new church to call home. This church is… well the jury is out. I’m not so sure that the wife and I prefer the take on Christianity for the kiddos to grow up on. For example – when someone is getting baptized the kid/adult will get up and talk about how bad they are and how they were destined for hell.. and then good Jesus is to save them. Nothing wrong with discussing how good Jesus is- but maybe there is a different way of presenting things to kids. Talk about how Jesus IS love. Not the fire and brimstone scare tactics but the goodness and love that naturally will draw you deeper to knowing God. This is our view on it at least. I’m not sure how long we will stay here- but for now, it gets the kids at least some social outlet as well as some bible topics.

We took a trip down to Portland and stopped at the Rip City sign. The photo taken perfectly captures our kids at that moment. There are quite a few others where they all were happy– but not this one. Arabella is doting on Luca, and Luca is smiling right at the camera! At that same moment, Elijah is upset about something and no longer wants to take a photo. Epic photo. We went downtown and stopped here only as a pit stop – we went to see the Rose City parade (at least the floats). They leave the floats parked over the weekend so everyone can see them if they miss the parade.

There is a photo of a puppy Dog at work with me (at the time I was trying to get him to calm down a bit but the pup doesn’t have a chill button at this stage). We went back to see the USS Michael Monsour. Anyone who knows me will know that I’m not all gung-ho on the military. However, this was a boat that was only downtown giving tours as part of the Rose Parade. Also given the fact that we had just seen Top Gun: Maverick it would also give the kids an opportunity to see one of these boats up close.

Fun Fact: While talking to the captain I learned that when comparing this ship to one of the ones seen in Top Gun (where the planes can land on them) this ship is 1&1/2 the length of a football field. Those ships are about 3 football fields in length. Also, this ship weighs about 14,000 tons and a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier weighs about 104,000 tons. The cost to build an aircraft ship was about 13 billion whereas this ship cost a measly 1.4 billion. Did I mention that we spend too much money on the military in this country? No? Well then watch this:

I have mentioned that we saw Top Gun. It was so good we decided to see it a second time. We also saw the newest Jurassic Park movie. We had a coupon to see the movie a second time for $2 from T-Mobile. It was really good this will rank up with very few movies I’ve ever seen TWICE in the movie theater. First time since being married.

Our gas has now skyrocketed to 5.29 at the very cheapest we can find. It’s INSANE. These are the same prices that we were paying when we drove down to California in March. Now California is above $6 a gallon.

Facebook events can sometimes let us know about cool things that are happening in the area. On one particular weekend, we saw a notice that cars dressed up like the Disney movie “Cars” would be in the area for a free family event. It was over at Oaks Park and they would have free train rides too. Sign us up! We went and took advantage of them. Elijah was the biggest fan of seeing them. Luca likes cars in general so he was cool with it. Arabella likes the same things both her brothers do so it was a win for everyone.

Train rides too?! Yeah. They had a blast. It was fun! So despite all the negatives that Facebook has, it can occasionally have something positive come out of it.

just Pray