23 December: I took up Frankie and Sam for a ski just with their Dad during inclement weather conditions. We had sun, snow, sleet, BUT it was awesome. Well done kids for cruising all around the mountain under such conditions.
Hugo and Amy rolled into the Abuelo's house this evening. Here are the Oz and Colorado-an cousins celebrating a reunion of their initial gathering during October in Salida.
The White Salmon clan was staying over at the Renner's residence, so a full complement of the Romero clan siblings had finally gathered after a decade or so to celebrate the Holidays together. Here's a pic of the siblings...
And one with the folks and their siblings as well...
24 December: Here is Hugo and Coya chilling out the morning after a long road trip from Colorado.
What better way to celebrate the unseasonal warm weather than to wash everyone's cars of winter grime OF COURSE. Here are the Abuelo and Nico washing one of the four cars they churned out this fine morning.
And whilst car washing activities were going on, Sarah was doing a fantastic job corralling kids spilling all over the lawn and sidewalk of the abuelo's house as well as those of the neighbors...
Soraya and Dirk hosted the Christmas Eve get together. Unfortunately Anya was a bit run-down, but she found a good place to take a nap-kip next to the Abuelo on the couch.
Robin and Soraya with the Abuela, what are they doing with their hands, no belly there to hide surely...
Robsie having a moment with Ari...
General chaos during the evening's festivities...
Lots of dancing occurred through the Eve's festivities to a variety of classic tunes. Here's the Abuela showing that she still has the Flamenco moves...
And the Abuela with her two oldest granddaughters.
25 December: Ho, ho, ho and Merry Christmas. Santa was busy filling stockings and placing several presents under the trees for the kids. Here's several pics of all five kids staying at the Abuelos house ripping into those presents.
And some presents were saved to be opened with all nine of the Abuelos grandchildren present at the same time and place. This was a pretty busy activity. All of the adults had a nice glass of champagne that was started off with a short but emotive speech by the Abuela giving thanks for the rarity of getting the whole clan together for this week during the holidays. Well done Abuela for the speech, and well done for everyone making the effort to make it happen!
The Abuelos illustrating some of their personality appropriate gifts...
And then it was time for (drum roll please)... Yep, family portraits, lots of them! First up all the kiddos! My Aunt Judy in Eureka provided these fantastic holiday wares including:
1 - A black-n-white dress with a red sash and glitter top for Reese, Frankie, Luca, Coya (left to right)
2 - A beautiful red dress for Anya and Coya (again left to right)
3 - And stylish black tuxedos for Sam and Ari.
There they are, all nine cousins looking the part for a traditional white Christmas, I think they are just missing a glass of port to round out their wares in this pic!
And here's a pic of the entire clan of 19 in one shot! That took some effort to organize with the self-timer on ye ole camera!
Then a series of family portraits follow. First up the White Salmon, Washington clan (Nico, Sarah, Anya and Ari).
The Salida, Colorado clan (Hugo, Amy, Harley and Coya).
The Bend, Oregon clan (Dirk, Soraya, Ella and Reese).
The North Fremantle, Western Australian clan (Jose, Robin, Sam, Francesca, Luca)... Ooops, no picture... That's right we were last up for family portrait extravaganza and ourkids by this point had enough of family portraits (and fair enough), so no portrait...
A pic of the originators of the clan, the Abuelos!
And to round-off this portrait feast, the Abuelos and all their nine grandchildren!
Eventually it was time for the afternoon Christmas meal that was exquisitely prepared by the Abuela. An afternoon of gorging ensued...
26 December: The next day most of us headed up to the mountain for a bit of skiing. Here's Sam, Ella and Frankie heading up the chair lift to carry out some righteous carves on the way down.
A pic of Frankie in her glamorous ski gear on the chair lift.
Here I am giving Luca some instruction on the finer points of skiing. She was soon on her own whizzing down the slope with a somewhat distraught father trailing and suggesting she slow down...
And the two of us on the lift for yet another run down the slopes.
Here's a pic of Amy giving Harley some instruction on the slopes.
Sam on the chairlift getting ready to carve. Sam picked up skiing rather nicely and could ski most of the groomed runs on the mountain and is developing a very nice paralleling technique.
And a pic of Dirk and Ella on the chair lift (clearly by now you have reasoned that most pic opportunities were on the chair lift).
27 December: Today the Aussie and Salida Colorado clans had a morning outing to the High Desert Museum several miles to the south of Bend on the slopes of Newberry Volcanic National Monument. Newberry volcano is one of two largest volcanoes by volume in the Cascade range (the other being Medicine Mountain in northern California to the east of Mount Shasta). Both of these are shield volcanoes (such as those in the Hawaiian Islands) and are not as spectacular nor with peaks as high in elevation as the typical strato-volcanoes (such as the Sisters, Bachelor, Hood, Shasta, Rainier), but are enormous in girth. Here's a pic of the kids listening to ye ole ranger explaining the life history of a live porcupine on display.
The kids simulating the behavior of large raptor chicks (e.g. bald eagle) in a simulated high nest...
The Abuelos, Sam and Frankie, and Hugo and Coya getting a sense of what it would be like to be locked up in a jail of the Wild West of Bend in yester-year...
Sam with a bald eagle in the background...
And Frankie with a Golden Eagle (largest raptor in the world) perched on the rock pinnacle in the background...
And all of us attendees chilling out in the large reception room of the Museum...
Soraya organized a dinner for all of the middle-aged folks on this fine evening in downtown Bend at a great sushi restaurant/night club. Unfortunately, the Aussie kids contracted an illness so Robin had to pull out at the last moment to play nurse, she was sorely missed. Here's Dirk starting off the evening with a Scotch sampler...
And Amy starting off with a Saki sampler... By now you may start to get the gist of the evening's unofficial goal...
Here are the Romero siblings well onto their way of attaining this unofficial goal... A big night! Lots of good sushi, lots of good drinks, ended up in a pub late in the night, and then a rather rambling ramble in the suburbs of Bend in below freezing temperatures, good fun!
28 December: There is always a price to pay for such antics as those during the previous night. I think this pic aptly depicts our state, namely people just hanging out in the front driveway next to the road, randomly sitting on chairs, lying on the verge with kids doing whatever they wanted to do. Gold! The White Salmon clan departed soon after this picture bringing to a close an amazing experience with all of the Romero clan together for a great week! Sad to see them go, but we made a plan to rendezvous with them at their abode for a couple of nights before our flight out of Portland in several weeks time.
Later in the evening Coya and Reese had a nice meal together at the Abuelos.
Frankie and Ella showing off their rapidly diminishing tooth count in their mouths...
And Frankie instructing Coya on the finer points of brushing teeth.
Hugo, Amy, Harley and Coya took off the next morning (29 December), it was great hanging out with them for another week in Bend Oregon after our Colorado-Utah visit in October. Great effort to come out, and see ya again in a couple of years.
31 December: On the last day of 2013, the Oz contingent decided that heading up to the mountain and skiing was an apt activity along with Soraya. Unfortunately, Ella and Reese acquired the Oz kid's illness (as did most of the cousins at some point, they were infected for much of the holiday week), so those two were out of action for the day. Here's me and Luca on the way up to get in our first run of the last day of the calendar year.
And a pic by Soraya of the remaining Oz contingent on their way up the slopes. It was great having Soraya around as she had a good day of skiing with Sam while Robsie focused on Frankie, and I on Luca. Thanks sis.
1 January: And to celebrate the first day of the New Year, we decided what better way to celebrate than SKIING on the mountain. Here we are at the mid-mountain Pine Marten Lodge where we just had a 'long' lunch at 'The Cirque' café, which is purported to be the highest restaurant in Oregon at ca. 8,000 feet, with the Sisters in the background.
And yet another lift picture, this time on New Years Day. By the way the cinder cone in the background requires hiking to the top with good steepness for a descent. Unfortunately, we didn't have a shot at it during our visits as snow conditions were not appropriate.
Another pic on the piste of Soraya, Dirk, Sam, Ella, Frankie and moi...
2 January: This evening the girl's went over to the cousin's house for a sleep-over. Rumors purport that the girls were up to the wee hours of the morning, and judging by their behavior the next day (e.g. sensitivity and general crankiness), anecdotal evidence suggests this was the case. The girls had a great time staying the night with their cousins, aunt and uncle.
Meanwhile, we took Sam out to dinner in the Old Mill District where he was re-acquainted with being an 'only' child, albeit for only one night. Here is a nice shot of tongue meeting blue candy!
And then we met the Abuelos at the cinema to watch the 2nd installment of the Hobbit trilogy (The Desolation of Smaug) in an IMAX theatre in 3D! Here's a pic of them with their stylish 3D glasses on!
4-5 January: Last weekend of skiing for the Oz contingent at Mount Bachelor. Here's me and Luca heading up the lift on Saturday (4th) with Broken Top in the background.
Reese (3 yrs old) had her first 'real go' at skiing on Sunday (5th). Here's her getting used to her skis...
And riding up the lift with Dirk. She did a great job for her first day out.
The Abuelos came up at lunch on both weekend days to whisk off the girls (Frankie, Ella, Luca and Reese) so that it was the four middle-aged folks and Sam that ran some of the more challenging runs in the afternoon. On Sunday afternoon it was pretty much just Dirk, Sam and me getting in a string of runs. The kids had their last several days of school on the 6th and 7th, so on the 6th Robsie and I put Luca into daycare and had a great morning ski to bon voyage the mountain.
8 January: Well the 7th was pretty much dedicated to packing up our considerable accumulation of stuff during our several month stay in Bend. This included an all-nighter by moi to pack up 7 freight boxes and 1 ski box to send via ship back to Perth during the wee hours of the 6th into the 7th for a early morning pick-up on the 7th. Well we got it all done and on the morning of the 8th the Abuelos headed south back to Eureka, California and we headed north to White Salmon, Washington. Here's a pic, fortunately we were all concerned about a large storm system heading in that was forecasted to blanket the Cascades with several feet of snow that was to begin in the afternoon, so 'see ya laters' were thankfully short with all travelers singular aim of hitting the road and beating the storm. Here's a pic of the remaining crew at departure time in front of the Abuelo's house (note Dirk at work and Ella in school).
We got over the pass at Mount Hood and dropped into Hood River, Oregon just as the storm was arriving, probably about half an hour to spare before full snow flurries set in... Rolled into Nico and Sarah's place in White Salmon and hunkered down as the storm's fury set in over the region. Here's the kids playing with their cousins Anya and Ari in the downstairs room.
9 January: After breakfast in the morning we headed out to the Catherine Creek trail system on a bluff directly to the south of the Columbia River and about 10 miles or so to the east of White Salmon, great spot and easy paved hiking for the kids. Here's some pics of this spot and the very nice amble through this shire (aka Hobbit) like landscape.
During the afternoon Sarah got back from work early, and along with Robin looked after the kids while Nico and I did a loop drive up the White Salmon River and then across to the Klickitat River drainage and went back down to the confluence with the Columbia River. Nico is a fisheries scientist for the Klickitat tribe and I was keen to see the turf where he does his research on anadramous fish, and the associated project sites and scientific gear he uses. It was very interesting and I am now better educated to contribute to the occasional discussions with Nico on his research.
Well on the morning of January 10th we were up at 3:30 am, and on the road at 4:15 am to make the 1+ hour drive from White Salmon, Washington to Portland Airport in Oregon for our 7:09 am flight to San Francisco. I think we managed not to wake anyone in the household except for Nico, who was our back-up in the event we overslept. Thanks for seeing us off Nico!
And that brought to an end our wonderful 3+ months in the good ole US of A! We had a smashing time in Oregon and Washington. The kids, Robin and I really enjoyed catching up with the cousins, aunts, uncles and abuelos; and our experiences are indelibly etched in our minds for the rest of our lives. Many thanks to Dirk for lending us his four-wheel drive Toyota Tundra truck for all of our ski excursions to the mountain. The Abuelo's for accommodation, food and use of their Dodge Grand Caravan family mover to get our clan around. Soraya for organizing almost everything we did. Nico and Sara for putting up with us when we arrived into the region, and then seeing us off. Everyone was super-generous and accommodating, but hey there suppose to be! their family! Until next time in a couple of years, asta luego familia y muchos gracias para todo!
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