hangin' with the houston crowd

I had a great visit this week with my friends, Ryan & Sonya (Hautala) Lee. I was in their wedding seven years ago (where does time go?). They live in Houston now and chose a Northwest vacation this year. After spending time in Seattle and Victoria, Canada, they came to Portland/Vancouver to visit with me and to meet Phil. Yeah for us!!! We so much fun being together again. I have fond memories from Tennesee Temple of Sonya and I going to this quaint little coffee shop called Rembrandts; it's near the art museum, obviously. We'd get the regular ol' coffee with free refills - hey, we were college students on a small budget - a baguette, and strawberry jam, then we'd sit there for a couple hours and chat. Such good memories!!! It's been six years since Sonya and I have been able to be together and I was so excited to have more company :)

They came on Thursday and we headed out to Multnomah Falls. I hate to bore you readers with pictures of something you've just recently seen, but it's so pretty, I don't think you'll mind. We had quite a bit of rain the two days before they came, so the water was really thundering down and we were getting wet from all the mist.

Then we came back on the old historic highway and stopped at a couple of the other falls. Here's one you haven't seen of Horsetail Falls.

Later after Phil was off work, we went up to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. We were hoping the clouds would clear off enough so we could actually see the top of the mountain, and they did. Isn't it just beautiful? It was almost like it was glistening from the way the sun was shining on it. At this point, I think we were 4,000 ft. up, so this is just the top part of the mountain.

The next day, the weather was absolutely beautiful, hardly a cloud in the sky, a perfect day to head to Mt. St. Helens. So Dad, this is what you and Mom missed when you were there on that dark, cloudy day in July. Do you see the little plumes of steam rising up out of the dome?

Sonya and I were sitting on a bench with this big huge mountain in front of us and I was thinking of the verse Romans 1:20 and how people just need to take a look at what God has created and know there is a God - But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse.

When you look at the before and after pictures that are in the interpretive centers, you are also reminded that physical changes on the earth don't need to take millions and millions of years to occur. The very next day after St. Helens erupted, helicopter pilots surveying the damage from the sky couldn't even line up where they were with maps that were created before the eruption. In a few hours, everything was different. The mountain blew out its side, trees were toppled over, hot rock and steam shredded the foothills around it, and mudflows completely changed the landscape. Imagine these hills covered with forest. Now, they're bare. This is part of the national monument, where the goverment has decided to let nature rebuild itself. You can see some shreds of downed trees and stumps. That's Mt. Adams peeking out over the top. And there were some climbers up there the day St. Helens blew and saw the whole thing happening. Even the sky getting completely black from the ash. How'd you like to climb down a mountain in the pitch dark?

So thanks, Ryan and Sonya, for coming to visit us! Hopefully we won't have to wait another six years for it to happen again.

It's back to school for me tomorrow. This week is just inservice, we start for real September 3rd. My days of freedom have come to a close. Man, I hate it when that happens.