eventful weekend

well, if we've been quiet here, it's because we were preparing for what happened sunday night...but more about that soon.

let's start with friday. fall colors. fall temperatures (highs in the 60s, eek). we started with a cupcake in the park while nickel ran in circles around us like a crazydog.

saturday morning we headed to the hood river county fruit loop. the "cereal" daniel likes to call it (fruit loop...) essentially it's just like a 36 or so mile stretch of road at the base of mt. hood. the valley has extremely fertile soil, and so tons of fruit trees and bushes and the like grow there and so it's become an attraction of sorts—berries of all types early in the summer, cherries in late summer, and apples and pears all fall!

the views of the mountain were gorgeous. it's by far the closest we've ever been to it and while not much snow remains on parts of it that we can see usually, i'm pretty sure that huge chunk of snow right there is actually the year-round glacier on the mountain, which is pretty stinkin cool.

and we got plenty of apples (just for a pie and eating this time...don't worry, we did the apple butter and sauce last year and still have some leftover, so we'll wait on that until next year) and a couple of delicious pears.


and look what else we saw!!!! farm animals!!!


and alpacas!!! these things are amazing. they're like a sheep/llama mix. and apparently these alpaca farmers make a ton of money doing this, so we're considering it for retirement in 70 or so years...

we ate some oregon bbq and were home in plenty of time for a victorious football game

and then sunday.

our first youth group event!!!

so yes. our first ever CRCC youth group event sunday night. it went SO WELL. we had 50+ high school and middle schoolers, which is huge!!! the excitement was super high, the place packed and daniel wore a blue leisure suit. we did donut olympics (which at this point i need to apologize to all NGHS students and former students. we miss you guys!)

we've heard great feedback since, and since i'm a third party and think you all should know...everyone has been really, really impressed by daniel and how it all went. so yay! huge success...now we just have to keep momentum up and excitement high and keep kids interested. but we're REALLY, really excited, really encouraged not only by everything that's happening, but by everyone here, and really can't believe it went so well. did i mention it went well?

okay, we're off to a high school volleyball game (we're now experts on high school volleyball, by the way, in case anyone's interested...)

ps. you can see more of these pictures, as always, at our flickr page