Summer in Bend

Yeah, summer finally came our way. It's been up in the 90ies and sometimes the termomether climbed past 100 F. It almost caught me off guard since I got so used to picking up a sweater or a jacket every time we left the house. But now I feel it: the hot dry summer of Central Oregon. It hasn't rained for at least a month and every bit of moisture is gone from the air leaving us with some sort of mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide for breathing. While I can escape the heat at work in our air conditioned office Erik has to start earlier which means getting up at sunrise.

The tourists seemed to come with the heat too. They are rafting, hiking, camping, mountain biking, canoeing and just hanging around. Kayaks, boats and rafts seem to be standard equipment for every vehicle that's passing by me on my way to work. The way to work also seems to take longer since most of Californians seem not to know that you actually don't have to stop but yield at a roundabout. Oh well, a little honk and off we go to the next one;)

So what have we been up to this hot month of July? Well of course first comes the Independence Day. It was fun helping our friends Anthony and Heather move into a new apartment and then going to float the river together. Of course my little floatie happened to lose air and sooner than later I was fully in the water desperately trying to get the attention of my husband to save me from drowning. I got his inner tube and he had to battle the river on his own. The fireworks weren't much different from what I saw in Ukraine, probably that's why most of people were more excited to watch the Pilot Butte (where they were shooting from) catch on fire and burn for a good half an hour. The fire truck slowly made it's way up there and the flames were finally extinguished. The pictures were in the paper the next day.

Ahhh... and our rafting trip! For quite a while I've been wanting to go white water rafting, so I finally got this deal where I could go with a group and an experienced guide for only half price. I proudly told Erik about it and was preparing to ask half day off on Tuesday. The next thing you know my husband rents two rafts for a Sunday and we make about 50 phone calls to get a group together. Who's our guide? Hmmmm... We are!!! To my surprise we had enough crazy people ready to go down class 3 rapids on the Upper Deschutes River. So off we were right after the church service. While our "guides" were surveying the rapids I couldn't help humming "I'll fly away, O Glory, I'll fly away" and trying to remember what Tom was saying about "If you fall out of the raft"thing. Scary.

And then we were going down the river right into the swirling and foaming water. We hit the first set of rapids. The raft went straight down, then up then the waves seemed to be coming from everywhere shaking and throwing it all over the place. I was almost out in the river when a kind soul behind me (who later turned to be our friend Robin) grabbed me by the life jacket and pulled me back in. We were all supposed to be still paddling. Yeah, right!!! I was holding on for my life. Only later I found out that our steering guide (my husband) fell out of the raft as well as our main paddler, both of them got back in later and our team safely made it past the rapids. We were still watching the second raft behind us struggling it thru. Everyone was safe! And but for a few big bruises on my hands and knees I was all right too. How fun!!!

A few people decided to go again and I was among those. In one word we had a lot of adrenalin in our blood that day. At least I did. The classic scene came when Erik was putting the raft back on top of our van and roping it to the front of the car. He pulled, then tightened... and the front of the vehicle flew off and was now hanging on the rope. Ha! That's why he doesn't drive my car.

So those were our adventures. Apart from all the fun there's the routine of working and making a living. We enjoy the fellowship we have at church and esp in our home group. I feel like the Lord is growing us together as a family and is changing our perspective on some things. Our anniversary as well as Erik's Birthday are coming up in August and we are very thankful for each other and all the blessings God's been giving us. So I guess that's it!!!