A good reason to reduce, reuse and recycle

Obviously, this area is ripe with timber industry land. It's really shocking when you come upon a recent clear-cut, which is quite often if you get out around here. This one was on the way to the coast from our house. Save the trees, people!

Luna's Best Friend

I know - I write too much about the dog. Just wait until we have kids! But we dog-sat at the beginning of March for our neighbor's dog. His name is Cooper, which is funny because that was the name of our family's much loved and much missed yellow lab. Anyway, Luna and Cooper spent most of their time either chasing each other or playing tug-of-war. It was hilarious.

Exploring

For a little over a month, we've had days where it will be almost 60 degrees and beautiful, only to give way to cold rain. But a while ago on one of those days we went hiking in the nearby state forest. Luna loves to hike - for some reason she really likes jumping and perching on fallen trees. She also saw her first herd of cows on this hike. She wanted to herd them... go figure.

Where I Work

A lot of people don't really get what I do... when we moved to Oregon, I switched careers back to nonprofit environmental work. I'm the environmental education coordinator for a small, local environmental education center. A donor recently funded a short "movie" about the center:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LsTC6KgNV0

It's kind of neat to be able to show everyone where I work. I essentially help organize the programs that you'll see in the video, and do a lot of outreach and coordination with the community and educators. I don't do the teaching - that's left to the experts!

My Niece

Here is my favorite picture so far of my beautiful new niece. I'm so sad to live so far away, but now I'm so happy for blogs, flicker, and all the other "crap" I thought was kind of lame! Chris and I were lucky enough to go visit her, my brother, and sister-in-law a couple weeks after she was born. She's now a month old!

Happy New Year!

We had a great New Year's holiday. We spent a few days in Central Oregon with friends and had a chance to ski and snowshoe. We learned just how much Luna loved the DEEP snow - she kept lurching herself from the groomed trail into the 2-3 feet of powder. You'd think she'd be tuckered out after a few miles of that, but she was full of energy when we got to our hotel that night.

Finally getting around to an update! We moved just before Thanksgiving and just got internet today. We also had a week I heard called the "Snowpocalypse." It started with just two inches of snow shutting everything down, and then it turned into about 10 at our house. So the world stopped. Streets don't get plowed, salting does NOT happen... it was crazy. But we had a nice White Christmas!