We managed to get away to the beach for a few days. We are in our motorhome at Cape Disappoinment State Park near Long Beach, WA. We've had rain off and on but went for a long walk on the beach in between rain showers. This is one of Washington's best state parks--full hookups along with the roar of the ocean in our ears. It's hard to get away during football season, so we'll be back home Friday afternoon in time for Dave's varisty football game.

This has been a month of unexpected expenditures. We had to get new rear air brakes for the motorhome installed yesterday and while they were installing the brakes they noticed that one of our rear tires had some chunks missing from it. We got a new tire this morning at Les Schwab before leaving for our beach trip. This was our first time using this repair place for our motorhome. It's Lemon Aid in Camas, and we are pleased with their work and grateful to them that they told us about the tire problem. It turns out that we've probably had the tire problem since our last trip to Sacramento in late December for Dave's brother's memorial service. God has truly protected us during all these months.

I enjoyed the Renewing Your Mind conference this weekend. It was very uplifting, with much food for thought. I enjoyed the Hyatt Regency Hotel which was a wonderful place to attend a conference. We were within a block or two of many fine restaurants and shops, even a second floor IMAX theater and bowling alley, all accessible by sky bridges. I enjoyed the company of the Harwoods, especially since Dave had to stay home to work some football games. We ate at P.F. Chang's one evening which was the first time I had been there.

The only problem with the trip is that on the way home I got off I-5 to stop at an outlet RV sales place near Chehalis. On the way back to the freeway, I looked at an RV park. I had to back into a driveway going downhill in order to turn the car around. While manuevering, I hit a post that was there. At first I thought the damage to the passenger side of the car was minimal, but now we see that the car will need some major body work. We haven't gotten estimates yet, but it will probably cost well over $1,000, especially if they have to paint the car. Ouch! That makes it a very expensive conference!

Friday and Saturday I will be attending an R.C. Sproul conference in Seattle. It will be held at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency. Dave can't go because he has football games all weekend. Also speaking will be Alistair Begg (Truth for Life) and Michael Horton (White Horse Inn). The overall topics will be related to "Is There Life After Death?" I'm trying to think what to take with me since we usually stay in the RV, not fancy hotels.

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day." -- 2 Corinthians 4:16

Today was Dave's birthday. Happy 61, Dave! In honor of Dave's birthday, both of his NFL teams (the Raiders and the 49ers) won their games today. We celebrated with the Harwoods by going to dinner at Rib City before meeting at our house for home church. As usual, we had a rousing discussion about Reformed theology. I'm reading a very interesting and well-written book called "Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists" by Collin Hansen.


Last night we celebrated with Tim and Kiersten. It's always good to get together with them. We tried to go to TGI Friday's but they were out of business. These days we never know what will be closed next.


Our son, Tim, got a new job at The New Group in Portland. He's going to be doing IT and system architecture. He's been working there as a consultant at the same time he was still working at his old job, Innovative Asset Group in Wilsonville. The old company did intellectual property rights work and the new company does digital advertising for all kinds of clients, two of whom are Jenny Craig and Adidas.

I've lost 41 pounds since mid-April. It seems slow, but I keep plugging away at it!

The tree trimmers are here today. Lots of big equipment has arrived. I am going to escape by going out for a bike ride and then grocery shopping.

Here's a cute license plate surround that I saw: Eternity--smoking or non-smoking?

Today was a fun day. Dave had to go to Tigard, OR, to help Tim and Kiersten install molding in their master bedroom. So I decided to go for a bike ride. I put the Dahon fold-up bike in the car and first drove to Sports Authority to buy new biking gloves and some new biking shorts. Then I drove to Gresham, OR, and rode east on the Springwater Corridor Bike Trail. I rode for about 45 minutes. After the bike ride, when I got near the I-84 West and I-205 North interchange, I saw a sign that there was an accident on I-205 near the airport. So I changed lanes and stayed on I-84 through Portland and took the I-5 home. I decided to stop and ride the Vancouver waterfront bike path along the Columbia River. I rode that path for another 45 minutes. Now I'm home again and Dave has still not returned from Tigard.

The only bummer was that I found out that I missed a CASA wraparound meeting this morning. Of course, I didn't know about the meeting, so I couldn't have gone to it. Luckily someone called me afterwards to tell me what happened at the meeting. Not being informed about meetings happends oftener than you would think. Like I said, it's a bummer.

New washer working well. I'm glad we bought it!

Our new Maytag Centennial washing machine is home and installed and is busy doing its first load. After almost one week without a washer, our laundry has really piled up. Home Depot couldn't get us a washer until at least a week from today, so I went to our local Best Buy store and found one and had to drive to the Clackamas store to pick it up. The repair man came this morning and said that it would be $330 to fix the old one, so we decided to get a new one instead of fixing the old one. We didn't have to pay for the service call, yay. We saved the sales tax because of picking it up in Oregon. Thank you, Dave, for removing the old machine and installing the new machine. Now I am back in the laundry business!

I just can't resist sharing some of the good quotes from the website "Of First Importance.":

Ah! believer, it is safer always for you to be led of the Spirit into gospel liberty than to wear legal fetters. Judge yourself at what Christ is rather than what you are. Satan will try to mar your peace by reminding you of your sinfulness and imperfections: you can only meet his accusations by faithfully adhering to the Gospel and refusing to wear the yoke of bondage.”
- Charles Spurgeon, Morning & Evening, September 6

Tomorrow morning we head back home to Vancouver. Yesterday it rained a lot, so we took a drive to Silverton, Mt. Angel, and then to the Wilsonville Camping World. We were looking for a regular-sized fold-up bicycle that also had some gears. They had a retro-style one speed fold-up bicycle which we didn't buy. After that Dave put some air in the tires of our small-sized fold-up bike and we took turns riding around the RV park. We did that again this morning and then our friends, the Harwoods, came to visit us for the afternoon. We went out for dinner with them at The Original Roadhouse Grill on Lancaster Road. We always enjoy our visits with the Harwoods! We had a mini home church meeting with them and listened to a (podcast) sermon on prayer by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. We had a good discussion afterwards.

This weekend we planned to take a motorhome trip to Salem, OR. Rain was forecast and when we woke up this morning, it was raining hard. We almost cancelled the trip, but decided to go anyway. We didn't bring our bikes because it was raining too hard to load them. We have one fold-up bicycle which we did bring.

We got to the Salem RV park (Hee Hee Illahee) around 2 pm, which was later than we intended to arrive. We had a massive amount of traffic when we transitioned from the I-205 to I-5 south. After the Woodburn exit, the traffic abated. Evidently everyone in Portland was headed to the Woodburn Company Stores for some fall shopping.

Yesterday Dave worked at Green Mountain Golf as a golf marshal and then had to referee an evening varsity football game in White Salmon. He had a very busy day yesterday and didn't get home from the football game until after midnight. So, after arriving in Salem this afternoon he wanted to take a nap. I napped, too, and we didn't wake up until almost 6 pm.

Then, because it wasn't raining, we decided to go to the Oregon State Fair, even though we got a much later start than we intended. We liked the fair, and even though we were only there for 3 1/2 hours, we saw everything that we wanted to see. David Cook was performing tonight, and when we rode the Fair View sky cages, we could hear some of his music and the very enthusiastic audience. Our fair tickets cost $10 each because we bought them at the gate instead of ahead of time, and there was no charge for parking. The sky ride tickets were $5 each for a round trip, and we thought the ride was well worth that price, especially since we waited until dark so that we could enjoy seeing all the lights of the fair.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain again and be windy, but we'll go for a ride in the car, or stay inside the RV, or take a walk if it stops raining. We really enjoy all of our motorhome trips!

Please pray for a miracle for our friend, Jeff Kasten! There may be some good news on the way because the doctors are "confounded" now that his brain surgery is over. Here is a tribute to Jeff that a friend of the Kasten's put together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI2EyUNROaY