Brandon and the Skunk

Later, Brandon's family lived in this home. It is located in Oakland which is just a few miles northeast of Sutherlin.

I know it's kind of hard to see, but take notice of the garage in the far left side of the photo below. We'll come back to it, later.

This is Tolly's, the restaraunt just a few blocks down the street from the house above.

Brandon worked here as a bus boy when he was in high school.

It was one night after work that it happened.

Brandon rode his bike home and do you see that garage below? That is the garage that I pointed out above, belonging to the house in which Brandon and his family lived. It was when Brandon was right about here on that dark evening that a black and white shape ran right in front of his bike. He heard, "SSSSSSSS," and was imediately overpowered by a lethal reek. He'd been skunked!

He ran into the house and changed his clothes, eager to get to the party he was going to with his friends. But the stench lingered, and when his friends came to pick him up they would barely let him into the car, he smelled so bad. To his everlasting embarrasment, the smell followed him to the party. It wasn't hard to trace the offensive odor to Brandon, and he was kicked out of the party and went home in shame. And even after many washings, all the clothes he was wearing when he was sprayed had to be thrown away, including the shoes.

I don't know why, but the boys love hearing Brandon tell this story. They just laugh and laugh and laugh.

Waiting for the School Bus

Before we left Sutherlin Brandon took us around and showed us a few things.

Here is the Sutherlin High Bulldog, standing painted and proud.

Here is Cooper Creek Reservoir, where they used to go swimming.

This is a Madrone tree; Brandon is trying to figure out a way to get one of these in our yard.

Here is one of the homes that Brandon's family lived in.

One of the boys' favorite stories (and mine) of Brandon's youth occurred while he was living in this house.

It happened like this: Brandon came home from basketball practice one evening, crashed on his bed and went to sleep. When he awakened he looked at his clock and it said 6:20. He had slept all night in his clothes! He got up to get ready for school and thought it strange that his dad was already up--he didn't usually get up until later. It was also strange that all of his siblings were up and seemed to be hanging around, but he didn't worry about it too much and got in the shower to get ready for school. He got dressed and went into the kitchen to get breakfast. As he got his bowl of cereal one of his siblings said, "Hey, you can't have cereal!" (At their house, cereal is only to be eaten for breakfast.) Brandon said, "Shut up and leave me alone!" The sibling was about to say more when their dad motioned for them to be quiet and just watch. Brandon finished breakfast, got his backpack and headed out for the bus stop.

As he walked down to the bus stop he thought it was strange that no one else was out there. He wasn't usually the first one.

He stood there waiting for a while.

Then he noticed something. The sun was on the wrong side of the sky. He had woken up at 6:20 pm, not 6:20 am.

As he sheepishly walked back to the house, he could see the faces of his parents and siblings looking out of these windows, laughing really hard. They laughed for a good long while.

But hey, at least he got to have cereal for dinner.

Africa

After we left Devin and his family, we drove to Portland, hopped on a plane and flew to Africa. (With a few stop-overs, of course.) It was the first time on a plane for the boys and they thought it was awesome. At least for the first hour or two. After that the rest of the long trip was torture and everyone around us hated us.

We were so glad to finally get there and it was well worth the trip. It was absolutely amazing. We had a tour guide take us through the savannah, and I couldn't believe how many animals we saw!

I've always wanted to see a wildebeast in real life.

Aren't these zebras beautiful?

You know, it may look like you are seeing a fence in the background, but you're really not. It's just some strange growth creating an optical illusion. Of course there aren't fences on the wild savannah of Africa!

Well, okay, that does look like a fence. These rhinos must have just gotten really close to someone's property.

Oh, all right! We didn't really go to Africa! But Heather did take us to the the Wildlife Safari and it was pretty cool, too.

It was just down the road from Devin and Heather, in Winston. You can check it out, here:
http://www.wildlifesafari.net/

They not only had animals from Africa, but many different continents.

This was the best shot I could get of the elephants.

"He went that way!"

"No, he went that way!"

We drove slowly through the park in our van with the windows rolled down, but we were not allowed to open the doors. Many of the animals were roaming in large fields with fences to keep them from leaving the park, but no fences between them and us. The carnivors did have fences on all sides, though.

This was an unusual species that we saw that was not fenced in so I assumed he was not too dangerous.

This guy wasn't fenced in, either, and we barely escaped with our lives!

Life in Umpqua

After the wedding we travelled to Sutherlin, Oregon where Brandon grew up--(wait, has that happened yet?) or rather, where he lived during his youth. Here we spent several days with Brandon's good friend, Devin, his wife, Heather, and their children(from left to right, Timmy, Aspyn, Trevyn, Taylor, and Austin.) It had been six years since our last visit so we were glad to finally see them again.

The kids all got along so well--they had a great time together.

Junior and Trevyn became fast friends immediately after meeting each other and spent nearly every waking hour together.

Yesterday Junior told me that Trevyn is his best friend. Too bad we don't live closer to each other! (Sniff, sniff.)

The other kids spent as much time as they could swimming in the pool.

Devin and Heather have a beautiful six acre spread which is just up the hill from the Umpqua River. I love the word "Umpqua". I also love the river--it is so beautiful. We walked down to the river,

said hi to the horses,

and went exploring.

Brandon and Devin's friend, Craig also came to visit with his wife, Sheri and son, Colby.

The guys all used to be on the high school basketball team together so of course they did this.

We had a wonderful time visiting and we hope we'll make it back again soon.