Okay, that was cheese-filled….
…but more importantly, Clarence and Annie decided that of all places they wanted to visit, they wanted to come see US in Oregon! Yippeee!!!! We planned every moment of each day and it whether or not we did all of those things, which mostly we did, it all worked out perfectly and (I think) everyone had a grand ol’ time!
Clarence played tennis with Dad Barker, we’ll let him tell you that story though. Annie & I went to the gym and I worked her hard. We drove 3 hours to Clear Lake to our rustic cabin to stay overnight. For being a rustic cabin, it was pretty darn cool! We had to walk a hundred paces to the bathroom, but who cares!? It had electricity and heat, much more than I had expected.

We shared, more like took over, the group firepit, made a stinkin’ awesome fire (mostly thanks to the boys, although we did help by letting them do all the work really) and enjoyed our tin foil dinners that we brought with us.



In the morning, we rented a rowboat and set out to catch some fish. We were the only ones out in the water at 7am in the drizzle, but in the end it was worth it. We had periods of rain & sun, mostly decent weather. Clarence soon found himself at the oars, and he loved working the boat (I think he more enjoyed being in control). For his first time at real fishing, he caught 3 fish! Annie caught 1 and Steve also caught 1. I had a nibble or two, but in the end I sacrificed so everyone could get their enjoyment of catching fish. Um, for some reason we never got copies of the fishing experience from Clarence & Annie so I have no pictures to share with you, but here’s one of the fish being cooked after the fact.

And this is of Steve, reluctant to eat while Clarence documents the entire trip…and I do mean the entire trip, almost to a fault of being labeled as a Japanese tourist.


This is where Clarence & Steve played a few rounds of horseshoes

This is Clarence taking an awfully long time to play his turn in the longest game of Hearts known to mankind.

Clarence made me pose over and over again at the Japanese Gardens. He will not be happy to see that I chose this photo instead of the other ones where my arm is so perfectly parallel to the tree limb behind me…haha!

Annie loved being able to plant-talk with Steve I think. Clarence and I just don’t have the same ability to have plant-talk


and this photo represents Clarence trying to be creative in his photo-taking like Dad.
We also let Clarence tour the dental school at OHSU while we went to the antique stores in Sellwood. When Clarence was done, he took the new tram down the hill to the South Waterfront area where we picked him up. That’s something that none of us have even ever done yet! Come to think of it, he’s never talked about that experience except that he didn’t take very good photo. Well, we took our Michigan friends to see a movie and have dinner at the Mcmenamin’s Kennedy School. It was a pretty decent movie judging that by the fact that no one fell asleep and we were all comfy on the couch so I think it was a success.
Thanks for coming! See, doesn’t everyone else want to come and visit us too now?