By way of updating you on the latest here in Oregon, I'll excerpt an email between Dan and our brother-in-law, Marty Benoit.

Our nephew, Jeremy, is spending his Junior spring semester in Sweden at Lulea University of Technology. His Dad (Marty) sent us this link to a Swedish TV show looking for Swedish-Americans interested in reseaching their ancestry. (Similar to the TV show here - NBC's "Who do You Think You Are?") In the process of checking out their website Dan ran across this comment - seeking "outgoing Americans with Swedish ancestry" that seems like an oxymoron. Shouldn't be more than a dozen or so.."

Most of us are not very outgoing, just big and dumb! Actually Nancy got some lutefisk for me for Valentine's Day so we had lutefisk that night. Normally it is a Christmas "delicacy", but I enjoyed it on V-Day. It keeps me in the Scandinavian club for another year.

It is going okay here. We had spring-like conditions in January, and then winter set in about two weeks ago. We hadn't had any snow on the ground for weeks and then we woke up to 10" on the ground 2 weeks ago ... and it hadn't been predicted so it was quite a surprise. School was canceled for the 6th time in 20 years. Then we got stuck with another 5-6" of unpredicted snow a few days later. Then it got cold. We seem to have turned the corner now in that snow gets predicted and doesn't materialize.

We motored to Spokane for a ballet audition a couple weeks ago. There is a whole lot of nuthin' in the 375 miles between here and there, with maybe the exception of the Columbia River which is quite scenic. This past weekend we went to another audition in Portland, which we did in a day trip. It is dicey crossing mountain passes in winter but we lucked out and did not hit anything nasty other than snow covered roads in the mountains. Chains are often mandatory (unless you have studded tires, which I refuse to do) so I was happy to not have to contend with putting on chains. Amy did not get accepted from the Spokane audition, which was actually for a summer camp thing in Seattle with the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Their acceptance rate is 30% so we were not surprised, and I was just as happy that she did not get in since Seattle is quite a long ways away for a 14-year old to spend a month or so. Don't know about Portland yet. Be that as it may, we have been tentatively planning on taking her to a week long camp in Long Beach, CA in August and then maybe another week in Eugene. With all this ballet stuff in the air, it is essentially impossible to make summer vacation plans.

Tonight we went to a high school to hear about their programs for entering 9th graders. I don't know the story in NY, but here it seems to be common to attend a school outside of one's district. The school that we went to tonight is not in our district, but we wanted to check it out since they have an International Baccalaureate program that sounds enticing. I was sold on it so we will see what happens.

We have not gone skiing for a couple weeks. We wait for nice days when we have time, and they do not arise that often. Last week the top of the mountain had 80 mph winds with 98 mph gusts at the top of the mountain. It is really weird because some of the other lifts on the lower part of the mountain had only 10-20 mph breezes. Today was windy here so I thought for sure the top of the mountain would be blowing away. Would you believe 2 mph "wind" at the top! However, a couple of the lower mountain lifts were closed since the wind was blowing 40-50 mph on the lower mountain. Really strange things happen at high elevations.