Once again we slid into the New Year and right through most of the first quarter without much ado. The Crab Festival was in February and we once again enjoyed going to that with our friend, Louise. We also had our Super Bowl party with a cast of 8 or 10 and good food, good conversation and a good football game. We actually watched most of it including the half time show as we no longer do our White Elephant exchange. All good things come to an end and we got kind of burned out trying to figure out fun things for that.

A fair amount of spare time is taken up with volunteering for the Egyptian Theatre Preservation Association as we raise money to restore and reopen the grand old theatre. It keeps her mostly out of trouble. Janet has been active organizing the office and putting up decorations in the storefront window to make the place more inviting.

Also in March, June turned the golden "62" and happily applied for her Social Security. It will start in May - yippee! June's birthday falls on the anniversary of the Japanses Tsunami. This year things were quiet on the 11th, but on the 13th we woke up to almost 6 inches of heavy, wet snow. Locals say it is the most snow that has fallen in one event since 1969. Because it was so wet, it caused a lot of tree damage and some areas were without electricity for almost a week. We were lucky and suffered no damage. it doesn't even look like that much snow in the two photos we took.

We stayed home that day until the afternoon when most of the snow had melted. We actually do have one plow in the city and we could see where snow was thrown to the side on the major arterials through town. School was cancelled - too many hills, not enough removal and sanding equipment and too many folks not familiar with driving in snow. The kids had snowball fights and built some clever snowmen that were gone all too soon.

The following weekend we took off on our first RV Women outing of the year. We went up to Lincoln City again, but to a different park than last year. Our hosts were our Utah gals and boy, did they put on a s spread for St. Patrick's Day. Lots of green was in evidence and, much to Janet's delight, some gals brought ukuleles and songbooks. She has been itching for a sing-a-long for quite some time and this was it. She got out her guitar and joined them and she was truly in her glory.

The gals sang along in with their best Irish voices and, as they say, a good time was had by all. We also played lots of games, had lots to eat and generally enjoyed the weekend - as usual.

On Sunday, we drove into Portland to see Wicked for the 4th time. We just love that show! We had great seats - center of the Orchestra about 1/2 way back - really couldn't have been better. You'd think we'd be tired of it now, but if it comes to Eugene again, we'll probably go again.

After the show, we met our good friend Karen for dinner and then, after she pointed us to a place where we could get back on I-5, we headed back to the RV Park.

Monday morning, after coffee, we were getting ready to leave and discovered that our one year old electric jack was stuck. We had trouble with it hooking up at home and raising the trailer when we got to the park so it really wasn't a total surprise but what to do? We finally got a hold of a mobile RV mechanic and he brought along a jack to lift the trailer higher so he could remove our jack. Then he lowered the trailer onto the hitch and we were soon on our way. Since then we have had the jack replaced. RVing is not a cheap hobby as no repair is inexpensive, but we do have a wonderful time with our RVW friends.

For our April RV event we went to Heceta Beach RV Park just outside of Florence. The weekend started with Janet's birthday. I was able to surprise her with a birthday cake and her favorite snack, Tsamurai Peanuts, because our RVW friends helped by shopping for me. Janet was really quite surprised and pleased.

That weekend was also Earth Day on Sunday. Janet found out there was a world wide "Singout" with groups all over the world singing "This Land is Your Land" in the key of D. Each time zone had a start time that meant the would be singing at the same time all over the world. Our start time in the Pacific Time Zone was noon. We videotaped it and I posted it on You Tube. There is supposed to be a composite video being made of all the groups from all over. We're waiting to hear about that and looking forward to seeing how it turned out.

As usual, the rest of the weekend was filled with food, games and general good times. For May we went to Foster Lake which is east of Sweet Home. The lake reminded me of an Adirondack Lake, but there was a lot of wood debris in it. There were boaters and some of them going way too fast for the conditions. I suspect there are also alot of nice fish in that lake.

After the solar eclipse, we found out about Venus transitting the sun on June 5th or 6th (can't remember which day it was. Janet had by now ordered special glasses so we could look at the sun for a minute or so and not wreck our eyes. We did see a little spot make it's way from about 1:00 position to 5:00 position on the sun, but it was too small to take any kind of photo. It will never happen again in our lifetime - neat to be able to see it.

The next big weekend for us was our RVW weekend in Winchester Bay. Janet scheduled it last year as part of her Site Committee work so that we could go to the Reedsport Chainsaw Carving Competition. We signed up to be hosts - our first time. It was also the biggest rally we have been part of with 39 attending. We had some games planned, I asked local merchants and RV parks for gift certificates and we had a successful competition and prizes. Everyone enjoyed the chainsaw festival and some even bought pieces of chainsaw art. A good time was had by all. For more on the Chainsaw Festival click here.

The summer slid on by with more RV Women weekends including Seaside, Crater Lake, Charleston and finally the Mt. Hood Fairgrounds for their gourd festival. Every weekend was fun with many laughs, great games times and lots of cameraderie. We're looking forward to March to resume activities with our friends here.

In September we left on a three week adventure in our RV. We went first to Glacier National Park, then Yellowstone and finally the Grand Tetons. We also stopped at Craters of the Moon on the way home. We had a great time and really cannot share all of the wonderful sites we saw on one page, but we will try - on a separate page that you can access by clicking here.

At the end of October we had an unexpected event. Janet was taken to the ER by ambulance and the next day was transferred to Sacred Heart in Eugene where she eventually got a pacemaker. She has had trouble for years with her heart rate and this episode finally enabled us to get it taken care of once and for all. She may very well be the happiest person to ever be told she needed a pacemaker. She is feeling much better now, and her pulse never goes below 60. That's a big improvement as before it would range between the low 40s sometimes and the upper 150's other. She has medication to slow her heart down and the pacemaker to make sure it doesn't get too slow. She's feeling tons better and wishes she had looked into this about 25 years ago.

Thanksgiving this year was uneventful, but we had a lovely Christmas with Janet's brother, Jim, his wife, Sherry, and their dog Sandy visiting us for the holiday. We weren't sure how things would go with all the dogs, but Buddy was pretty good, confining himself to a lot of barking. When it got too bad we put him in the truck for a time out - more for us than him. This happened a number of times the first two days and we think Buddy had a little talk with himself because Christmas day he was an angel. We didn't know he could be that good! The next day he was slipping again, but it was sure nice to have one day of peace in the household.