Update

I'm sorry to say that Stephanie has officially moved out of the house. We left early Saturday morning, braved the blazing hot wastelands of Eastern Oregon and Western Idaho, and delivered a beat up, stained, nasty looking, used box springs and mattress set to her apartment in Boise. It's only Tuesday, and even though she wasn't home very much (and stayed in her room when she WAS home) I already miss her. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, it gets tougher to deal with every time one of you heads out to conquer the world. For Laurie, Jeff, Tom, and now Steph, we miss all of you (I'm speaking for your mom here too, since it'll probably be months before she looks at our blog). I'm looking forward to our semi- family reunion in a couple of weeks...I really hope everyone will be able to make it.

The trip to Boise was pretty uneventful. Your mom slept most of the way there and most of the way back...I think all of you got the picture I took while she was peacefully sleeping. The most exciting thing was stopping on the way back to harass a giant man eating rattlesnake that was crossing the road just north of Abert Lake. I think I'm losing my killer instinct...I tossed enough little rocks on him to make him rattle, but decided he was in a remote enough area that he didn't warrant dying and let him slither off into the brush. He wasn't hurting anything and he really was big, so it would have been pointless to kill him. He was pretty close to 3 feet long and was one of the prettiest rattlesnakes I've ever seen. I should have killed him.

Donald's days of playing horseshoes, swimming, and driving around looking for deer and elk while ODF pays him have come to a screeching halt. There have been over 6400 lightning strikes in Oregon in the last couple of days, and we've been told that there have been 100s of small fires started as a result. Donald says the ODF expects some fires to smolder for a couple of days while it's cool and calm, and then when the temperature heats up and the winds pick up they anticipate some major fire activity. We have thunderstorms forecast through Sunday, and with the heat and lack of rain things could get pretty nasty.

Doug finally finished scraping the Stewart's fence, and plans on starting the actual painting tomorrow. I'll be amazed if he finishes it before Christmas. I think his football practices start next week, and when that happens he won't be doing any painting. Maybe we can paint the Stewart's fence as a family activity when Tom brings Janna to visit. (Just kidding!!!)

Congratulations are due to Jeff for bailing out Matt Stewart with the KFC inspections. Hopefully Matt will figure out that he needs to actually WORK if he expects his stores to stay open.

That's about it for my update. Feel free to contribute news of your own.