checking in...

Hi everyone!
It's been just about a year already since our last post on the blog. We're wondering if anyone is even still checking on it. If you are, stay tuned because we're thinking of starting to post on here again!

We're looking forward to it.

-Nelson

Another "down"

...sad news to start my new week. I just found out that my friend and fellow model boat racer Troy McIntire passed away this morning. Troy had surgery to repair a ruptured achilles tendon on Thursday, and after complications was back in the hospital today. He had a blood clot that moved into his lungs, and he had a machine helping him breath. His heart stopped several times and despite their drastic measures, doctors were unable to save him. Wow. Bummer...two deaths in two days.

Nelson

Hi everyone...
It was one of those weeks this week. There were lots of ups and lots of downs, the biggest of which was the passing of my Grandma Holmberg yesterday. Maude Ellen Holmberg was my last remaining grandparent, and when she passed away Saturday afternoon, she was 91 years old...so we were all very lucky to have her for so long. My Grandpa Holmberg passed away in 1990, so Grandma lived for a long time by herself. Thankfully, she had my dad and my Aunt Betsy living in the Seattle area so she'd have someone around her a lot. Anyway, since getting the call from my dad yesterday, my mood has been kind of up and down. I can't decide if I should go to Seattle just to be around the family, even though there's really nothing I can do at this point, except be around family. But I have that here, too...

Earlier in the week, though, we had some fun stuff. Dawn and I signed all the papers on Estacada Video, and it's now officially ours! Dawn has been working so hard this week, doing training, getting all the appropriate paperwork finished up, and just getting started. I'll learn the things I need to know (how to check out/in movies, make coffee drinks, etc.) later, but she's really the day-to-day operator of the business. My role is to work on marketing/PR and maintenance.

So those are the two highlights/lowlights of the week.

Other stuff includes my two long dentist appointments. I really only had one tooth that was bothering me, but my new dentist (who bought the practice of my former dentist, who retired), found some fillings that he thought needed to be done. It hit me on Friday (after the second of two appointments), that my former dentist used to say there were some places that looked like they could use fillings, but didn't NEED fillings. I think the new guy decided to do them even if they didn't NEED to be done. The teeth weren't bothering me, and it didn't seem as if the supposed cavities were getting any worse, so I am a little irritated that maybe he's trying to quickly pay off the loan he got to buy the practice in the first place. At work, I got some publicity for a couple of clients, which is my job...but it always feels good to succeed. Until one of the clients complains that it wasn't enough – even though I got a story printed with a pretty un-newsworthy story idea. Oh well. It's still fun and I really like my job.

Lastly, I've had a chance to work on my new boat a little this month, and yesterday I got the decks put on. That's a milestone that marks the end of hull construction. I still have to build the cowlings and do all the paint, and hardware installation. There are a few pictures below.

This is my new boat. It'll eventually be the 1978 Miss Madison. There's a picture of the real boat below.


This is a picture of the real 1978 Miss Madison. What mine will look like when it's done.


This is Mick's new electric boat. He's going to try out the electric club a little bit next year to see if he likes it more than the nitro club. He's been working hard to get the "Little Bud" (1968 or 1972 version) ready for some testing.

Dawn

Tomorrow is the big day. I sign the papers on my new little coffee/video store in Estacada. I'm looking very forward to redecorating it into more of a coffee shop than a video store. I have lots of fun ideas. I think I want the coffee shop part to have some kind of a"movie" theme. I've been trying to think of names and I want your help. Either vote for one of the ones I've thought of or come up with some new ideas for me...Joan, if you still read this, I know you can come up with some good ones. Here's what we like so far...Casablanca Coffee and video house... Take five...Scenes n' Beans...Buckstars (could we get away with that?)...The Mug shot...I would love a big old time black and white movie mural covering one wall and I love "Gone with the Wind", but can't think of any good names for that..."Scarlett's"coffeehouse... "Frankly my Dear"coffee and movie house...The Plantation...Tara...??? Coffee Break...Perk Up... Mugs...Mugsey's...Estacada Station..."Coming Attractions" coffee and Movie house..."Take a break"..."Come On In"..."Spotlight". Ok, so you see what I've been doing with my time lately. So please give me your input. If you come up with the one I chose you get a free chocolate covered espresso bean, lol. Let me know! Thanks.

This is the mural that is painted on the side of my new little shop. Estacada is so cute. There are murals like this all over Broadway.

My beautiful grandpug, Bubs. He's an elf for Halloween. He's so cute! I love him.

One year anniversary

Hi everyone!
I just felt it was appropriate that we recognize that today is the one-year anniversary of our blog's beginning! Through the blog, over the last year, we've been lucky to share with you guys some of the really fun things we did on our big adventure to the southwest U.S. last winter, and to share our lives with you.

We've also been fortunate to get comments from you guys, sharing your thoughts about what we've done and what's new with you guys.

Happy October 29. It's kind of weird to think that one year ago, we were only two weeks from taking off on our big trip.

Here are the top three modern finishers in the Cascade Cup/APBA National Championship. Nigel Steere (l) second place; Mike Campbell (center) first place; and moi (r) third place.

Here's my Cougar Racing Team teammates' boats, Rick Lentz's U-95 (l) and Ron Hartley's Miss Vernors (r) dueling each other in the modern consolation.

This is my Red Man. As you can see, it's going so fast the camera can't focus on it. ;)

Racing action. This is the start of one heat of vintage racing.

I thought this picture, taken by one of the racers (Nigel Steere) at the National Championship race I put on was a cool pic. My boat is the second one in...it's red and green with an exposed engine.

Wow!! Almost one year since we started this

Hi everyone! I was just looking back on the history of our blog tonight, and enjoying all the great memories of our trip from last winter, and I realized that next Sunday, we'll be commemorating one year since the start of this blog! Wow...we can't believe how quickly time has gone by.

Speaking of which, I can hardly believe it's been a month already since the last time I posted to the blog. That's easily explained, actually. I spent the second half of September and the first two weeks of October planning and executing a national championship race for my model hydroplane racing club. If I may say so myself, it was a huge success, and I think everyone really had a great time.

We finally had to bring ourselves to cancel our reservations at Crazy Horse Campgrounds in Lake Havasu. Before we left Havasu last year, we made reservations for a couple of different nice spaces in the great campground we stayed in last February. That was when we were still thinking we'd be doing the RV thing on at least a mostly full-time basis. Even when we decided to stay home, get jobs, buy a business and sell the RV, we still dragged our feet about cancelling the reservations at Havasu, because we liked it there so much -- and thought there might be a chance that we'd change our minds again and go back to Lake Havasu for the entire winter, starting in November. But alas, we decided to stay home, and not go back to Havasu. It was an easier decision than we thought it would be.

We've done some good stuff by staying home. Of course, there's my job at Koopman Ostbo, which I love, we've gone to two Cougar football games together this year, and several weekend trips for my boat racing stuff...and then there's the new business we've bought. Dawn's going to run the little video/coffee place in Estacada that we were looking at a couple of months ago, and decided against. Well, it's still been on our minds ever since, and after looking at other options, we decided this was the best opportunity. The financing is done, and the paperwork is in progress, as well as all the licensing, permitting, etc. I'll let Dawn tell you guys all about everything she's got planned for it, but it's pretty exciting, really.

Last weekend, our friend Mick and I went over to Pullman (my second trip over there in three days) to see the Cougars play Oregon, which was ranked #16 in the nation at the time. Long story short, the Cougs crushed the Ducks, and now we're just one win from becoming eligible for a bowl game, for the first time since 2003. It was a fun trip, and we came home to a gorgeous day, and I was able to get a lot of stuff done around here, especially outside, that had really needed to get done for a long time.

This week has been crazy busy at work, but it's all good because its fun.

That's about it for now. I'm going to go look at my recent pictures now and see if there's anything worthy of posting.

Well, lets see... What's new in our lives? Nelson has been working really hard to put on the "National Championship" boat race in Woodland this weekend. He has gotten lots of sponsors and quite a bit of media attention. He loves that kind of stuff. He really should be an event planner. He thrives in that environment, and his events always turn out perfect.
Ron and Cheryl are in town for the race and staying with us for the weekend. That's always fun. Brooke and Steph and I went to Harvey's comedy club last night. We had a fun "Girls night out". Oh, the main thing going on around here is Nelson's ongoing,( frustrating to him,) (hilarious to me), WAR WITH THE MOLE IN THE FRONT YARD!!! Oh my gosh, Brooke and I were watching him flood the holes, put dog poop in the holes everything he had heard to do to get rid of this mole. We were laughing saying the mole and his friends were probably sitting on the sidelines laughing at him saying"ha, ha" look at that joker, thinking he's got us....well Nelson was pretty proud of himself and just knew he had finally won the war. Today, when I got home from work, I saw new mole holes. I sadly had to laugh...The mole is, so far, winning the war, and Nelson is not a happy camper. I'll keep you posted.
My mish mosh wierdness has now backed out of the coffee shop deal on Belmont (lots of reasons) and have re-offered on the Estacada video/ coffee shop. It is a lot more low key, a lot less successful, and to me sounds a lot more of how I'd like to spend my time than the Belmont shop. I'm lookin gforward to redecorating it and turning it more into a coffee shop than a video store, although that part sounds fun too. So, with my track record I'll be off on something else by the next time I blog. Brooke and Luka had a wonderful time in France for the week. Nothing much new with Steph. She's the carefree happy person she always is. My friend Lou, from work is dating Ed Whalen, that's some pretty good gossip. That's all that's new. Feel free to comment about what's going on in your lives. See ya.

Dawn

We went to a nice party at "Esther Short Park" a couple of weeks ago. It was given for the J. D. White company. Nelson and I ended up laughing because we were stealing all of the candy off of the tables.

The REAL Nelson.

At the J.D. White party...what was that old guys name, something Guggenheimer???

On our way to Chelan, we love to spend a little time in Leavenworth. I hope that all of you have been there, because it is an adorable little town. We love the Christmas store there.

Leavenworth.

On our way to Chelan, we went to the "Aplets and Cotlets" factory. We saw how everything was made. I know, it sounds like fun for an Aarps member...and it was!!!

We went to Lake Chelan last week for our annual 3 days there. We love it there. We have so many friend s that we meet up with at the boat race. It's always lots of fun.

We went to the Washington State game last weekend in Corvallis against Oregon State. Nelson got his picture taken with "Butch" the mascot, at the pre-game function. He was star-stuck...lol.

The "Coug" game. The weather was perfect. We had a great time.

After they win, the team comes over to our section ( it was an away game, so the cougar section was a very small part of the entire stadium) and we all sing the "fight song" together. We were really close. We liked our seats. They were on the end zone, but when the action was on our side they were great seats. I guess Mick and Lagaya had these seats before and didn't like them at all, but we did.

This is my friend Bonnie from work. She bent over the shredder to pick up a piece of paper and her blazer started to get eaten by the shredder. She started screaming for help. We all had customers. She said it was so strong and pulling her in. It was scary and hilarious at the same time. I guess she wanted an excuse to go home early so she thought she'd get eaten by the shredder.