Impatient

Hey everyone! I thought I would post here instead of do my work. We had an awesome Saturday at Honeyman State Park near Florence, OR. I remember Dad saying that they took me there a lot when I was little and we lived in Eugene. It was very pretty. I don't have any pictures ready to go, but there is basically a lot of huge sand dunes that terminate in a freshwater lake about mile inland from the sea. We were there with Uncle Richard's family minus Paul and Kelly and Kerianne. They rented sand boards to ride down the dunes. It was pretty fun! Joseph swam in the Lake. I thought he would have a seizure he was so excited! He was shivering from cold and excitement, but I couldn't keep him out of the water.

Before the visit, Mark had told me that they were all really interested in crabbing, so I found a place to rent rings and buy bait near their campsite. Once we got out to the bait shop, it came out that no one in their family likes crab, and none of them wanted to spend the $9.00 on an out-of-state shellfish licesnce. So, I rented one ring, and went out to the end of the pier with about 20 Idaho Kartchners following me and asking questions. Let me tell you that 15 minutes is a LOOOONG time to wait in between pulls for 5-8 year old kids. I was asked "Can we pull it up now?" at least once during each of those 15 minutes. There were some more experienced crabbers on lawn chairs out there with about 6 rings down and a few cages. They had to keep moving the 20 Kartchners around the pier so that they could have room to pull up and check their stuff. They were also peppered with questions like, "What are you doing?" "Why are you doing that?" "Can you keep any of those crabs?" "Why not?" "Are you afraid you'll get pinched?" "What's your name?" All in all, I think it was a little bit less peaceful than crabbing usually is, but it was fun.

I didn't get any keepers, but I was impressed that Winchester Bay had 0 redrock crabs. Every pull brought in 5 or 6 Dungeness that were the wrong gender or too small. The pier was crowded too, and it wasn't only because of Labor Day Weekend. Every year, a bunch of the local bait shops get together and put tags on about 100 crabs and release them into the bay. If you catch one of the tagged crabs, you can turn the tag in to one of the stores, and they give you $1000.00. It's sort of like a lottery for the crabbers, and for the bait shops it's a way to get a bunch of people buying and renting rings, traps, and boats. That's why Rob, the guy the Kartchners were pestering, was out there. He'd been out for 5 hours and only had 2 keepers, neither of which had a tag. He seemed to be answering some of the Kartchners' questions about how many he'd caught and how long he'd been out through gritted teeth.

After crabbing, we watched the sun sink into the Pacific from the top of a cool dune. Joseph had a great time, and Jo and I were exhausted. So we have more cool places we can take family when they come visit. Another fun place to swim that the Kartchners discovered for us is at Triangle Lake. It is only 37 miles from Corvallis and has a natural rock waterslide in one of the inlets to the lake. The report was that it was a blast.

Monday, I tried my hand at pressure canning some beans from our garden. I got one out of 7 jars to seal. I was very frustrated. On the other had, we also bought a 7 cubic foot chest freezer for the garage on Monday too, so I guess I can just freeze the beans that didn't seal now. I was amazed at how much stuff had been in our little freezer. It will be nice to have the extra space. There's actually room for our ice maker to work again!

I still have an interview scheduled for a job in Eugene and am waiting to hear back from an application I put in for a job in Portland. Right now I would prefer the Portland job because it is close to the temple and Robin and Briton. There's also a bigger support network for the churches adoption agency there than in Eugene. Also, it's close to the airport, and flights in and out of PDX tend to be cheaper than into Eugene or Salem.

That's the news from Corvallis.