California Dreamin'

Our week of Spring Break was spent in California. We hit 3 CA hotspots - San Francisco, Disneyland & Palm Springs.

1st stop - San Francisco

It's an 8 hour drive to SF and Amy amused herself with some self portraits.

Dan's good friend, Jim Cella was receiving an award from the American Chemical Society, in San Francisco, and would be there with his wife, Cheryl, on that 1st weekend of Spring Break. Jim & Dan met at Ohio State, sharing a lab and playing basketball & softball together, and then Dan was instrumental in getting Jim to come work at GE. So they have know each other & worked together for almost 40 years We made plans to meet them for dinner and as an added surprise another Ohio State friend was also in SF - Xavier Creary. Here are the 3 chemists - Xavier, a prof. @ Notre Dame, Dan & Jim, both retired from GE.


2nd stop - Disneyland

A trip to Southern California would not be complete without a stop at Disneyland! It isn't quite as WOW as Disney World but it still has that Disney charm AND rollercoasters! Dan is not a fan and our last trip to Disney in FL, Amy was still a bit scared to try the 'big' rides, but not this time... We did them all - our favs being Space Mountain in Disneyland & California Screamin' in California Adventure. Dan was very patient while Amy & I rode Cal. Screamin' 3 times in a row. Dan took a video of the beginning of the ride. So fun...



Can't go to Disney without getting a picture with everyone's favorite - Minnie Mouse!




3rd stop - Palm Springs

We arrived in La Quinta after a 2 hr drive from Anaheim. Daniel lives in his Mom's vacation home while searching for a job and we spent the rest of our week with him. He lives in a bit of paradise...his Mom's house being quite luxurious and well appointed. A gated golf course community with a lovely pool in the back yard - it was all you could ask for.
We visited The Living Desert and Joshua Tree National Park


As well as shopping, eating out and enjoying the pool. You can imagine who enjoyed the pool most!! ;o)


Hummingbirds were everywhere - I guess they like 'paradise', too...



We really had a great time - the 2 Dan's got some job applications submitted and an interview in - so there was some business as well as pleasure, for sure.

Our drive to and from could have been arduous but there was no whining from the back seat passenger and the scenery was lovely - citrus groves, grape vines, mountains & greenery - all made it a very pleasurable trip.

We'll have to do it again sometime!

Mastering Marshmallow - Part 2

My 5 ski lessons are complete and yesterday (day 3 of my 12 day pass) Dan & I enjoyed a beautiful day on the mountain. Dan has been 'mentoring' me on the finer points of Intermediate (blue square) slopes and has given me a grand tour of Mt. Bachelor. We considered going to the summit yesterday but decided to save that for next time.
Dan has been great about challenging me to tackle steeper & steeper runs so that when I get back to the easier stuff - like Marshmallow - my confidence and abilities are noticeably improved. Yesterday I kept saying to myself - this is sooo much fun! It didn't hurt that the weather & conditions were near perfect. We hope to get up there again this week as we leave for spring break in CA on Saturday - San Francisco, Disneyland, and La Quinta/Palm Springs.

Dan got some "new" boots from the local resale shops - now I can pick him out more easily as there are lots of red jackets on the slopes.


Here's a video that Dan took - it's just sooo much FUN! Why didn't I do this sooner??
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It is mid-February, and here in the high desert it has been quite mild but spring has not shown up yet. At the suggestion/invitation from neighbor friends, we headed off to the Oregon Coast to do some yurt camping at Sunset Bay State Park .... to find a little bit of spring on the President's Holiday long weekend. So what the heck is a yurt? Well, it is a little round structure with heat, lights, a table, two chairs, a bunk bed, and a futon. Oh, and Nancy is guarding the porch.

Amy and her friend Alanna, whose family was staying in the adjacent yurt, are in the picture below taken inside our yurt.
One of the first things that we did was visit Game Park Safari near Bandon. Amy had fun

holding and petting some of the critters, such as the opossum in the picture above. She did not cuddle with the lions, leopards, or the guy in the photo below.

One of the baboons was particularly entertaining in his ability to demand treats and then to find kernels of corn thrown his way.

After a brief sojourn on the beach, where it happened to be quite windy, we got together with
our neighbors, the Vanderhoevens, for a pot luck camping dinner followed by smores around the campfire. The video below is bad, but the pictures we took were even worse. Anyway, we had a good time telling scary stories. It rained rather hard at night and the campsite was in a perfect

location for a tsunami to do something bad, but when morning dawned it was a beautiful day. (It is probably more than 100 years since a tsunami hit the Oregon coast, but somebody has to worry about it!)

Nancy and I did some exploring of an adjacent state park called Shore Acres and found some wonderful places to enjoy the ocean. We asked someone to take our picture, shown below. I took

a video shot of the wild ocean near this spot and posted it on Facebook so I won't duplicate it here. The photo below shows typical wave action we were seeing.



A little further down the road there was another scenic spot with a lighthouse in the background.

That afternoon, we came back to the Park along with Amy and the Vanderhoevens. Here is a photo of Rosie V at the top of one of the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

A little further down the path there was a spot to get closer to where big waves were smashing against the rocks. I couldn't resist getting a little closer; the spot I am standing on is perhaps 50 feet above the beach, but some of the waves "exploded" up to that height. Amy and I were

tempted to get closer but thought better of it. The video below captures the action a little

better than a photo. The fenced in area above Nancy's head has a view point. By estimating that one of the people standing there was 6 feet tall, I calculated that the viewpoint was 75 feet above the ocean. Some of the waves splashed considerably higher than the viewpoint so my best guess




is that some waves were at least 100 feet tall. In a less rambunctious place, Amy and Alanna along with Alanna's brother Isaac found a good place to give me the creeps by standing on an overhang. Fortunately, they did not fall in.



In the beginning of this post I mentioned spring. Shore Acres State Park, where all these pictures are from, had an estate built near the edge of these cliffs maybe a hundred years ago. While the original house on the site burned down, the gardens remain. The daffodils were blooming!


While there was lots of green grass, most of the other flowers were not yet blooming. However, Nancy and Rosie found a magnolia that was beginning to get some flowers.


It turns out that there are lots of rhododendrons growing wild along the coast, but we only saw one in bloom as we began to drive home the next day. I suspect that in a few weeks there

will be lots of flowers blooming on the coast. The reputation of the coast is that it rains all the time, but maybe we were fortunate in that we had no rain during the days we were there other than the one night. Also, the temperatures each day were around 60 degrees so it was a nice departure from winter.

Mastering Marshmallow

As noted in the post below, Nancy had a really good time and showed rapid progress after one ski lesson at Mt Bachelor. It turns out that the first lesson was on a nice day and, of course, we forgot the camera so no pictures.

On Monday the forecast was for a nice day, a little break from all the cloudy stuff blowing up from California. With a good forecast, we headed off for Round 2 of skiing. But there was one little disquieting thing as we headed off that morning - we couldn't see the mountains. Twenty miles later, when we pulled into the parking lot at Mt Bachelor it was snowing.

Our original plan was to ski together on the bunny hill before Nancy's lesson, but the bunny hill lift was not running. Nancy encouraged me to get in some runs myself so I took off. By the time I returned, which was after her lesson, I learned that Miz Nancy had blown past the bunny hill and had now mastered "Marshmallow" after her second lesson.

Camera in hand, we decided to take a few runs together. I took this shot of Nancy at the top of Marshmallow, which starts off just below the lift to the summit. It is a little hard to read the sign on the summit lift, but it lists an elevation of a little over 7000 feet.


A little further down the slope, I shot a video of her zooming down Marshmallow. A disclaimer: I was holding my poles and gloves in one hand and the camera in my other hand so as usual my photography was pretty "shaky".


In spite of the snow, we had a really good time and are looking forward to Round 3, probably on Friday (weather permitting).

So, I conquered my fear of skiing today!

Ever since moving here to Bend, which boasts a major ski resort just 20 miles from our doorstep, I have felt the nudge to join Dan on the slopes. Amy learned to snowboard our 1st winter here with the local homeschool coop and so now I was the lone holdout. Dan, being retired, with all sorts of free time on his hands (HA!) would go up during the week - smaller lift lines - and I would sit in the lodge - warm & cozy - and read. Perfect! Only one problem - I would look up from my book & out the windows at the glorious vista with smiling happy people (ages 5-80) enjoying themselves immensely. What was holding me back??

There were a few 'good' reasons to procrastinate:

-fear of falling and breaking a leg, arm, head etc.
-fear of humiliation (falling/causing others to fall because of my fall)
-$$$$$$$
-I don't like to be cold & wet

(just to name a few)

At the beginning of this year Mt. Bachelor came out with a ski package that I just could not say no to - 5 lessons with rentals included, a 12 day pass after completing the 5th lesson and 50% off a pass for the 2010/11 season - all for $199.
The bargain shopper in me could not resist!

After some crummy weather earlier this month and illness which took 8 days to clear up, we finally got to my 1st lesson this morning. I had a private lesson with Ben from Wisconsin and he said I did really well. The first hour was grueling learning the basics - hardest part being getting back up the very slight slope after 10 seconds of sliding down. What a workout! But then the second hour I graduated to the chair lift and that was where it got really FUN! I even skied with Dan when the lesson was over.

It was a glorious day up there and I'm so glad I finally 'gave in'.

What took me so long??


Going again on Monday - we'll try to take some pictures(for proof) ;o)

Happy Birthday, Dan!

Dan is another year older today but as Amy's b'day card to him stated, "Being one day older only matters if you're a banana."
He has had a good year - still searching for the answer to "What retirement is really all about??" - but other than that...

Here is his year in pictures with his beloved 'Dj Tiesto' playing in the back ground.

(click on pictures to go to slide.com and view in a larger format - you may lose the music but that may be OK for some of you.)

A few highlights that were not reflected in photos:

* Winner of 2 Innocentive.com Challenges!
* He was "chased" by a headhunter to work in S. Korea, which would have been great fun, but fortunately (for practical reasons) it didn't work out.
* Celebrated 20 years of wedded bliss on June 24, 2009!
* His garden provided us with strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini, thyme, rosemary & dill. (the experiment with leeks did not fare too well)
* He planted 6 raspberry bushes, as well as peach, cherry, and apple trees.
* He met with 2 U of O alumni who updated him on current University news and invited him to tour the new Science Center, which we hope to do this year.
* He took a class at Kilns College this fall - 'The Book of Matthew'
* He has worked on 2 Habitat for Humanity projects here in Bend and hopes to do more of that in 2010.
* He was (and is) our primary chef, providing delicious dinners and freshly baked bread.

Amy, Dan & I are blessed to have him as a father & husband!

Let's see - what have we been up to lately??

I know, I know, it has been a while since you have heard from us - what can I say? Life is busy - as it is for everyone... so, no real good excuse.

I'll try to tell some of what's been going on in pictures. So here goes...



We had a significant snowfall this past weekend - just in time for the annual Nutcracker performance that Amy takes part in. It was messy, yet beautiful and the show went on with just a few delays.



As usual, it was a lovely performance and Amy enjoyed herself tremendously. She was a flower in the 2nd act "Waltz of the Flowers" for the 2nd year in a row - the only difference was she and her class performed on pointe - which for them was a great accomplishment.


Our niece, Nancy, and her boyfriend, Will, came from Portland to see Amy's performance.

We also brought 4 of Amy's school friends with us for the Saturday night performance.


Last Thursday night was a BIG night in the Olson household and for the whole state of Oregon, for that matter. It was the night of the 'Civil War'. The Oregon State Beavers vs the Ducks of the University of Oregon! It was a well fought game on both sides but, as Dan would say, the 'good guys' prevailed and the Ducks will be going to the Rose Bowl on New Years Day! YEAH!! GO DUCKS!!


Believe it or not - we spent Thanksgiving (or I should say, the week before Thanksgiving) in Las Vegas. The actual day of Thanksgiving was spent in airports and jets. We had a week of timeshare that had to be used before the end of the year - use it or lose it - and the 'best' location available was Lost Vegas. The 2 redeeming features of the location were 1, Dan was able to drive over from CA to spend a few days with us and, 2, we all totally enjoyed our day together at Red Rock Canyon. It was only about 20 miles from the strip and while all the glitz of Las Vegas is fun for a while but it was so good to get out and climb on rocks. FUN and Beautiful!






Amy was Tinkerbell - with a twist - for Halloween this year.




In late September, Dan had an old college buddy - from U of O days - come for a visit. Dick Field is a recently retired chemistry prof from the U of Montana and was doing a lecture circuit thru WA and OR. Dan took the bus over to Eugene where he and Dick attended a game at Autzen Stadium. Oregon beat Cal decisively - it was a great day for them!

Dick stayed with us for a few days and they had a chance to climb some rocks at Smith Rock State Park. Dick was a climbing partner with Dan during their U of O days, so this was great fun!


OK, that's it for now! Enough already!