Sunriver

Hello all-

Anna, Ella and I finished our MI trip with a relaxing day with Jan and Don. Janice and Anna got their hair done at the local salon where they heard the latest local gossip. Don and a couple of his buddies and I hit baseballs in the local park, which was an awesome trip down memory lane for me.

After MI, Anna and I spent a week in Sunriver with the Dowling Clan. If you can imagine how much energy I have, imagine 13 Dowlings in one place... it was controlled chaos for 7 days. Sunriver is an awesome place... it has just about everything one could ever need in a vacation. We hiked, fished, golfed, rode bikes, swam, rode horses and ate and drank enough food and liquor for a small army. It was a great family vacation. We also celebrated my dad's 70th birthday (a couple months early). The family, with Michael as executive producer and director, put together a book of "Bobisms" which is a collection of the wisdom and teachings my dad has shared with us over the years. We truly owe this fabulous week to Juanita's hard work organizing the vacation and dad's b-day dinner... thanks mommo! :)

Again, in our infinite wisdom, Anna and I planned on going from Bend to Olympic National Park... A- "how long will it take us to get there Matt?" M- "Oh about 7 hours..." yeah right. We planned on leaving Bend at 6:00AM, but left a tad bit later (11:00), and rolled into Portland around 3:00. Our plan was to stop for food and then keep rolling on to ONP. However, it was one of those magical Portland days, there was a festival in a local park and the weather was great (Anna's quote of the day... "why are we leaving this town?!") Also, when I called the lodge in ONP they told us we had another 5 hours to go... so we ended up staying in Portland for another night... thanks to Eric and Laura for letting us crash in their pad. Sorry to our local PDX pals... Anna and I were just too exhausted from Sunriver to do anything social so we ended up laying low... Jim, it was great running into you at Ristretto. Eric and Laura - we put the house back the way we found it so you'll never even know we were there.

We're now at Darren's in Seattle where we'll spend the next few days relaxing and making final preps for our trip up north... we officially leave for AK on July 24th when we board the ferry for Ketchikan...

More to come...

Matt, Anna and Ella

PS - I was officially offered a job at the Anchorage VA... I will be the OEF/OIF Program Manager... it's a pretty awesome job ;)

Ella and Nona

Ella and Anna kicking it on the porch

Devan flying thru the air

The dudes about to go fishing

After a great day of fishing

The kids at Baba's b-day

Joby reading Baba's Bobism... Diane enjoying

Gia....

Book of Bobisms