Evergreen Aviation Museum

So I'm sure many of you have wondered what ever happened to the HK-1 flying boat also known as the "Spruce Goose" (a name that irritated Mr. Hughes as it was neither made of spruce nor really a goose it's more of a WHALE -my name for it not his I think he just referred to it as the HK-1, if I'm wrong I'll correct that).
The plane is actually mostly birch because it has better engineering properties. Well after the famous flight on November the 2nd 1947 Howie kept his gray whale hidden away until after his death in 1976! (Mostly because of the ribbing he'd taken on capitol hill about the project THE DAY BEFORE HE FLEW IT!). After than this poor gigantic orphan of American aviation history was bounced around from one foster home to another. Until in the late 90's Evergreen Aviation purchased it with the intent of building a museum to celebrate American Aviation.
The last time we went there Kyle was an infant so he didn't remember but that time we got the full dime tour. See my dad's company is Cadmium plating and other precious metal finishing. The FAA requires that certain steel components on an airframe be Cad (as they call it in the biz) plated as a sacrificial anode (meaning that it corrodes before the steel does so you can improve the life of the steel component and prevent it from rusting by Cad platting it). I bet you didn't think that you'd get an engineering AND history lesson on a blog did you?
This time there were more planes they also have a space museum that they just opened (today) and they had some cool stuff in there -rumor has it that they're going to try and get one of the shuttles when it retires. I may have just made that up -but you'll never know.

So here are a few photos, if you'd like to see more let me know and I'll delete your e-mail and swear you never sent it.


So here are the boys and I up looking into the cockpit of a plane I don't remember which one (sorry I should have taken better notes I know). Anyway that huge gray wing above our heads is the right wing of the spruce goose. That's motors 1 and 2 of 4 on JUST that wing.

Here is one of the tour guides telling some people about some WW-I era bi-plane but in the background is the front of the spruce goose.

There was also a play area for kids to have a little hands on time in the middle of a hands off place.

Over in the space side of the museum there isn't that much stuff yet but they do have some cool stuff. An SR-71 Black bird, fastest plane EVER! -it's top speed is still classified the government will only say it's mach 5+... it's so fast that geeks like me had to redesign missiles because they couldn't be launched from it as the SR-71 was already going faster than the missile could go!


They also had some rockets (obviously) and this quasi-silo with a fairly large rocket that went down into it and then up to the roof of the building.


There was also a V-2 rocket, the first (successful) liquid powered rocket.

As you can see (maybe) in the photo Ryan is taking a picture of Poppie taking a picture of us.

Multnomah Falls

On Tuesday June 3rd, we drove out to see Multnomah Falls. The last time we were there Kyle was a baby. It is a really pretty falls to see and the first drop is over 500 feet. It felt cooler than it was because of all the mist coming off the falls, and being from Phoenix as we currently are it felt VERY cool to us.








We hiked up to that little bridge but it was VERY wet up there. It's funny some of the things you notice after living away from the area you grew up in. Western Oregon IS VERY, and I cannot stress this enough, VERY GREEN!!!! Moss and lichen grow on EVERYTHING! You know that old saying (I don't know if there is much merit to it as it never worked for me as a scout). Anyways the saying about how moss only grows thickly on the North side of a tree. Here is a photo from the trail up to the falls, Multnomah falls is on the south side of the Columbia River Gorge incidentally. So it seems this tree has turned around, or are the rules backwards in Oregon and the North side is the only one WITHOUT moss? The answers are out there...

Zoo

While we were in Portland, we took the boys to the Oregon Zoo. I have to say it was a nice day to go, because it did not rain.

Here they are see how they measure up to bears -because they sure can have a bears temper sometimes.







Here are the boys monkeying around at the monkey house. We almost had to leave them there. The zoo keeper thought that they belonged in there or maybe... it was their Dad.














Would be believe that the Oregon Zoo has a dinosaur exhibit. So of course we had to see it. Alas to our great disappointment and astonishment they were not real, but merely robotic statues with an annoyingly loud sound track. However, the three great dinosaur hunters were not disappointed.

Last day of School

Here is Tylor on the last day of school with his teacher Ms. King. I have to say she was an awesome teacher. Tylor really enjoyed the 5th grade. He has learned so much. I can't believe that he will be in the 6th grade next year! The time has really gone by fast.

This is Kyle's class at their "graduation" from kindergarten. The kids had worked on learning new songs and every child had a part in the program. We enjoyed watching it. Kyle is all excited to be a first grader now. School will start in two months on July 28th. This is Mrs. Hess, Kyle's teacher. We really liked Mrs. Hess. And I hope that he gets another great teacher next year.

The Last Day of Preschool

So last Thursday was the last day of preschool for the year for Ryan, ok well technically we could sign him up for some over the break classes but with his brothers not having school and swimming lessons I'd be stressed out and he'd be mad, me stressed with all the running around and him mad because he only likes school if his brothers have it too. Anyways on the last day of preschool for Ryan this year, his class had a little program for the parents. James and I went to see it. Here are the songs that the kids sang. On the left is him showing us the certificate he got for completing "Apples to Zebras" which was the name of the preschool program he was in. His hair was mused on purpose, because and this is all James' fault, he likes to have "spiky" hair every once in a while. But the kids gel that he has (it's Mader -from Cars) doesn't hold his hair up very long, so eventually it just looks like standard bed head, I thought he'd be a teenager before he got into that look and I was kind of hoping that it'd be out of style by then anyways...




So we finally figured out why the other videos from our digital camera were so "out of focus" as it turns out there are several more settings than we know how to use -or even about for that matter. And the video camera has a super compact setting on it that was switched on, so the other videos we've posted were filmed in like 120 pixels -which isn't very many. This one was filmed in a standard 640 resolution, but we had to trim it down from it's 900 MEGS! size to upload it to the blog. Now just be warned this is almost 10 minutes long but with preschoolers singing it'll be very entertaining trust me.

end of soccer season spring 2008

So as some of you may know, Tylor has been playing soccer for the past 8 months or so. Kyle played T-ball but wanted to try soccer in the winter (Jan to March). And then in late March we signed all three boys up for soccer. Here they are in their uniforms. Saturday was the last games for the season (YEA!). Not that we didn't like soccer but it gets busy when you're the coach. That's right Carmen and I were the coaches for Kyle and Ryan's team. Yeah believe it or not but they were on the same team (this was the only season that'll work for like 2 years). It was the 4 and 5 year old team, Ryan turned 4 a month and a half before the spring soccer season started and Kyle didn't turn 6 until after the season was half over. So technically we could have bumped him up to the 6-7 year olds but we chose to have them on the same team. Being the coaches was fun even though we didn't go into it planning to be the coaches, it just happened that the parent who said they'd be the coach pulled their kid out and didn't show up to the required orientation day when all the team parents meet each other. Carmen figured as no one else was volunteering that we could do it. And we did, our team wasn't the fastest, or the most aggressive but we all had fun and learned a little soccer too.


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Tylor's team this season was named the Duckenators because of their yellow uniforms. Every season they get a different color. In the fall Tylor's team was black and the winter they were red. Tylor has played soccer on the same team all year, but has had THREE different colors of jerseys! We're going to take the summer off even though the league offers a summer season. It's just to darn hot in the summer to play soccer (we think anyways). So he will start back up in the fall (middle of October). His coach told him at the end of season party to start running hills so he can be faster next year. Yeah, he's a soccer coach always thinking about improving the abilities of his players even at the end of season party. Carmen and I really liked Ty's coach, he's good with the kids, he pushes them and expects them to play hard and good. So we're going to sign up for him as Ty's coach again next year.

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Here are some photos of Kyle and Ryan practicing before their last game. I don't have any pictures of the them in the games because James and I were the coaches. We had a lot of fun coaching for the 4-5 year olds. This was Ryan's first season playing soccer. It was a lot of fun watching him play because of the size difference between the other players and him and how it did not bother him, he'd go for the ball no matter what. I guess that's what comes from wrestling with his brother Kyle at least once a day. He even said once when this fairly large kid (a little bigger than Kyle -and that's saying something) tripped and knocked Ryan down. Ryan told James that "that big kid pushed me down on my bum, so I'm going to push him down on his bum." James TOLD me that he told Ryan, "OK good, as long as the ref doesn't see it". But he'd BETTER have said, "no we don't push the other kids down it was an accident" RIGHT JAMES.

Kyle has improved his ball handling (or footing?) skills a lot over the past two seasons, and he is now pretty good at keeping the ball inbounds at practice and in the games. He loves to play keep away from his dad, or monkey in the middle but that usually deteriorates into a wrestling match, maybe the other football would be the sport for him...

Kyle and Ryan's team's name was "the tigers" Carmen and I weren't sure if that was the name they'd picked at practice but it was the name that three of them yelled when we did our team yell after the first game what six weeks ago.

What a week

MONDAY

As Tuesday was Tylors birthday, but because he had his band concert, we went out for his birthday dinner Monday night. He's really into shrimp right now it seems to be his focus any time we go out, which is understandable I (James) like shrimp a lot too. The only problem is it's not always on the kid menu -hello expensive dinners.

TUESDAY

On Tuesday night, Tylor had his second band concert of the year. They sounded considerably better than they did six months ago (and I mean that in the best possible way). Tylors band teacher had told the kids that they'd need a really, and he meant really good excuse to miss the concert. We (and by that of course I mean Carmen) teased him a little about it being his birthday and seeing if his teacher would let him be a little late. But true to form he didn't bring it up (to my knowledge) with his teacher.


We'll try to post a video of him playing his trumpet soon.

WEDNESDAY

It was Kyle's and James' birthday on Wednesday, but as we had soccer practice for Kyle and Ryan's team and James and Tylor had Scouts that night it is the busiest night of the week even without being anybodies birthday. Carmen did ask Kyle what he wanted for his birthday dinner, at first he said he wanted chuck-e-cheese (you know $50 for a pile of tokens and frozen pizza). We told him that, that was too much like a party and he'd already had his party (last Saturday). What a mistake that was, he then decided that he'd changed his mind and that he wanted to have his party ON his birthday. So poor Carmen had to be the bad cop (lucky me I was at work) and explain that he wasn't even going to get to pick what we were having for dinner on his birthday because we'd have exactly 25 minutes to eat so we'd be having left overs...
Anyway, short story long, Carmen worded the question different and asked what he wanted to eat as opposed to where he wanted to go for his birthday dinner. He then says (and this as close to a quote as either she or I can remember), "I want hamburgers... and fries... oh and tatortots... and deviled eggs... and (then he paused because he was thinking) two different drinks, pink and "normal" lemonade... AND I want that stuff we had that one time when Jon and Annie (friends of ours) came over it was in a bowl with a spoon (at this point I'm laughing so hard I'm crying) and it had eggs on top... I asked "potato salad?" he replies "YES! that too." So like all good parents we double checked the menu the next morning just to make sure it hadn't changed over night (or actually hoping that it may have changed -just a little). It hadn't we had nearly the same exact conversation with him.

THURSDAY

So the only things we had to do on Thursday was Kyles (starch heavy) birthday dinner, and then the "art walk" at their school. The art walk is similar to an open house but the classrooms are all closed and you just walk around and look at all the art the kids have done in the past ??? week, month, year I don't know. Anyway here's some "haught couture" art for the connoisseur of fine master pieces.

And another masterpiece...

FRIDAY

Friday, Friday what did we do on Friday. Oh yeah I remember, nothing at all and it was everything I thought it could be...

SATURDAY

So today started out early, we were up showered dressed and ready to go before 7:30 this morning. Kyle and Ryan had an 8am soccer game -they had fun Ryan really, really likes to play soccer. He's got no fear I guess that's what comes from wrestling a brother as much bigger and heavier than him that Kyle is...
Tylor had a game also but not til 11am. At 8am he had a merit badge roundup. Yeah as scary as the truth is Tylor is now old enough for regular scouts and he earned his first merit badge today -First Aid. As I'm the 11 year old scout leader I was also invited to attend so I took him there and after it was over he and I ran over (just in time) to his soccer game where he had a few good plays got an assist on goal and some other good stops and passes, he's getting a lot better, better than he thought too.
When we got home we went and picked up our "bountiful basket" it's a produce co-op we've joined (this was our first week). Here's what we got for our $20 "investment" -by the way the apples were quite good thank you.

After we put the food away -well most of it went in the fridge the oranges, apples, tomatoes, bananas, avocados and bell peppers are in bowls on the counter because frankly there wasn't room for it all in the fridge. Anyway after we got it all put away we were pretty much ready for Tylor's birthday party. Luckily for Carmen and I our boys are low demand on the whole party thing. Kyle wanted kick-ball, soccer and various other games at the park (about as close to free as it gets). Tylor wanted a pool party which is free when we use the complex's pool, again pretty much free. He chose a "Madagascar" themed cake, here's a photo of it.

And of course no birthday would be complete without the singing...

(Tylor's friend Shames told him to try and fan the candles out, that's why it looks like he's shooing a fly away).

Sorry about the quality of the video, I'm not sure I'm getting the camera to focus right before it takes video.

And here's a photo of Ryan because... well because I figured there were face shots of Tylor and Kyle up there with their art so why not a shot of Ryan.