Spring Break

It looks like I haven't posted here in a while. I guess I've been a slacker in lots of ways lately. Last week was Spring Break and the week before was finals week. I'm feeling guilty for taking the chance to goof off quite a bit, after finishing up my classes from last quarter. Here are some photos of highlights:

While Jessica and Celia enjoyed an alpine lesson at Timberline Lodge, Ferguson, Monique and I went nordic skiiing at Trillium Lake. Monique and Celia had lots of fun during Monique's visit. The fun of taking Monique to the airport on the MAX for her trip home made the parting a little less sad.



















After Monique went back to Chicago and her work as an acupuncturist and Chinese herbologist, the Wheeler-Parises took a trip through the Willamette Valley and across the Cascades. The children really liked all the animals. One our our first stops was for a family of goats. The highlight of Peterson's Rock Garden near Redmond were all of the peacocks that strutted around like they owned the place.




Next, we stopped at Silver Falls State Park. This is an amazing little park in the foothills of the Cascades. It has something like ten different waterfalls that flow over basalt cliffs, some of which you can actually walk behind. Here I am with Ferguson behind South Falls inside the park.






















We spent the next two nights in a rustic cabin on Suttle Lake, just over Santiam Pass on the other side of the Cascades. I really liked the ponderosa pine forests and we all enjoyed the dry sunny weather afforded by the Cascades' rain shadow. The middle photo above is Ferguson and Jessica walking to the headwaters of the Metolius River, near Sisters. This river suddenly erupts from the hillside in a cold water spring. On our second morning at Suttle Lake, we awoke to several inches of new snow. We took the hint and went tubing at Hoodoo Butte on our trip home. Celia really liked it but Ferguson preferred the warming hut to blasting down the mountain in an inner tube through the blowing snow.

Last but not least was the Enchanted Forest, Celia's favorite part of our trip. This little amusement park near Salem has lots of fairy tale scenes for the whole family to enjoy. Here is Celia with Miss Moffett.







***

So now it's back to school. The quarter started yesterday. I'll be taking two classes again, a second statistics course and an MSW class on relationship-based interventions with youth. It's good to get back to school. My time is now halfway over here. I feel like I really need to buckle down this quarter and make some good progress on the research projects I've started.

I'm also hoping that my recent existential funk will soon pass. I'm not sure where it came from, but I've spent a lot of time brooding on my future recently. Maybe I'm empthasizing with all of these college students too much. Maybe I'm reliving my own college days when I spent so much time wondering what I would do with the rest of my life. Or maybe this full immersion in an academic setting has got me confused about my role in society. I don't know, but I'm hoping that throwing myself back into school will allay some of this self-questioning. It's frankly just a bore to worry about the future. I much prefer distracting myself with the present.

Portland is beautiful this time of year. The cherry trees have all announced that spring is indeed here with their explosions of pink and white blossoms. And every time I see a forsythia I can't help but wonder if it was the burning bush that Moses saw.