Happy Early 30th Birthday, Jeremy!

On Monday, Jeremy starts training to operate tugboats. It's an exciting new advancement and we are very thankful for it. However, it means a change in our schedule. Jeremy will be working "regular hours" M-F in the harbor and then he'll be training whenever he can on top of those regular hours, so we won't have the big chunks of family free time we've become accustomed to after upriver trips. It will be a blessing to experience having him home every night, but we will be more tied to the Portland area than we have been.

One of the ramifications of this change is that Jeremy won't necessarily have time off around his birthday later this month. Since it's his 30th (and he's been dreading it for at least the past 5 years), I wanted to do something memorable for him. This morning at church, there was a note in his Bible that informed him he was being kidnapped. We had some good friends watch our boys for the afternoon, so just Jeremy and I left church and he had no idea where we were headed. He didn't follow the kidnapping note's instructions very well...he was supposed to be the passenger! Since he ended up in the driver's seat, I had to tell him which towns we were headed toward along the way, so I thought for sure he'd guess where I was taking him, but he never could! He thought we were going to tour the Evergreen Air Museum (which we ended up doing later in the day anyway)...he thought we were gonna visit our friends who live in that part of the world...he thought he might have an airplane ride. That last guess was VERY close, but not quite accurate enough. I had arranged for us both to have a mile high glider ride. However, I missed the part about there being a weight limit, so we weren't allowed to go at the same time (guess we gotta lay off the ice cream! :-). I decided to wait for the proverbial "next time" and Jeremy went up for his mile high ride by himself. He got to fly it for most of the time it was in the air and he reported really enjoying it. He says it's amazing how quiet it is to be up there without an engine attached to you. After he came down, we went to the Air Museum because it was right across the street. It's where the Spruce Goose is housed and it's an impressive experience. It was a very fun day!

PS - the pictures at the bottom are of our newest vehicle getting its first wash, and the boys washing a vehicle for the first time. They were very good helpers and had lots of fun with Daddy that day.