Bend Adventures

We are well settled into the end of our second week here in Bend already, soaking in the joys of the Austin place - horses and chickens galore. Yesterday we went out and got 4 little chicks of our own. We'll raise them here this spring (under Grandma Fran's keen eye), then bring them home to Seattle with us. We've each taken "ownership" of one of the chicks: Matt's is "Tembo" - elephant in Swahili, the blondest of the bunch; Andy's is "Rosie", the brownish-reddish one; Chrissie's is "Shirley" the smaller of the two blacks ones; and mine, the other black one, has yet to be officially named. We're considering "Kuku" - Swahili for chicken - but we're taking suggestions. The big yellow one is still just Chicken.

We hit the slopes at Mt. Bachelor this past week, although I got to play Lodge-Dad support team. Since I'm now 43 years old, I've decided to regularly throw my back out so I don't have to hurt myself more actively in activities such as snow boarding.

Other things.... Andy and Matt are both connected to spring soccer teams here in town, and loving it, and we continue to live it up with the cousins with fierce card games, trampolines and climbing on lava. And we're also keeping up on our chores.