Football in Corvallis, Oregon

vs  

       On Saturday, Dad and Joseph went to an college football game in Corvallis, Oregon; the Oregon State Beavers against the Washington Huskies. Corvallis is a small college town in the middle of the state, a four hour drive from our home in Bellevue. The town was pretty crowded, especially since the game was in driving distance for both teams' fans (Univ. of Washington is in Seattle).

       The game was pretty exciting, it nearly came down to the end. The Beavs were the underdog, they haven't been as good this year as in past years. The Huskies have been having a pretty good season so far, they had a 6-4 record  to start the game. Both teams scored early, and after the first half it was 17 to 14, with Oregon State on top. After a scoreless third quarter, both teams got a touchdown in the beginning of the fourth. With the Huskies down by 10, the Beavers intercepted the ball, and began a drive which eventually scored another touchdown, making the score 38 to 21, the final. Amazingly, the Beavers won, after only having two victories beforehand.

       Another interesting college football game on Saturday was Virginia against Florida State. We listened to this on the radio during the drive home, and it was a lot more exciting. With only a few minutes left, the Virginia Cavaliers were down by 6. In only 37 seconds, they ran down the field in a series of plays for a touchdown, giving them the lead 14-13. With time running out, Florida St. missed a field goal kick with seconds remaining, giving Virginia a victory over a ranked opponent. After that game, Virginia rose to 22nd in the country, and will play their rival Virginia Tech next week to determine who plays Clemson in the conference final.

                                                                         -Written by Joseph

Some pictures involving the trip:
  Entering Oregon via a bridge over the Columbia River

Henry Lost His First Front Tooth!!

To viewers,
I have lost my first front tooth. The tooth fairy gave me $3. The other front tooth is still loose but it will probably fall off soon!!

Here"s a picture:

by Henry Rodgers

Dad's Trip to Asia

John went to Beijing and Tokyo for work for 11 days in October. He left Monday, October 10 (and with the time difference, arrived Tuesday night!) and spent a week in Beijing, then spent four days in Tokyo before returning Friday Oct 21. Thanks to some great local hosts (natives and American ex-pats), he was able to sample some great food and see some amazing sites. The highlights were staying at a farmer's hostel about 2 hours outside of Beijing and hiking the Great Wall the next day, as well as seeing the main tourist attractions in both Beijing and Tokyo. Click here to see some photos. (Once you click through this link - you can click on "Options" on the top left to always show the title and description if they aren't showing; you can also adjust the speed from the "Options" tab. Also, for some odd reason this always starts at the third photo in the series. If the first photo shown is of a wall rather than a red wall with a picture of Mao, you might want to click the "Prev" button twice on the top of the screen. If not, there's enough other pictures you won't miss much!)

Pictures From Late Summer, 2011

Several blog posts below have highlights from our adventures over the past few months. An album with our "top 31" photos from the summer are at this link: click here

Dungeness Crab Festival

Every October, Port Angeles Washington hosts a festival to celebrate the height of crabbing season – specifically, the local Dungeness Crab, which is a very popular culinary delicacy in the Northwest. Jack is a huge fan of eating crab, and for his Father-Son-Solo outing, we went to the Crab Festival. The highlight of the festival was getting a chance to catch (and then eat!) some crabs! They have two ‘pools’ (about 4-feet deep, and maybe six feet-by-three feet around), each one filled with about 100 live crabs. For $5, you get a pole with some loops on the end (like weed-wacker plastic twine), and you can catch as many crabs as you can in ten minutes, and then buy them (unless you catch one of the 5 in each tank that are marked as free). Jack went twice, and caught two crabs each time – one of which was the free one each time! Dad and Jack had two crabs (one each) for lunch, and then we brought the other two home for the whole family to enjoy as dinner. Here is some video of Jack catching his first crab!