Life in Portland Area

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Here is my brother, Mike, watching as the family group pictures are taken.
Mark, Beth's husband, arrived that morning in time for the pictures. He is an environmental engineer for Cummins in Columbus, Indiana (about an hour drive from Bloomington, IN). Here he is shown holding Andrea.
Mark, Ben, and Jon were playing basketball in the driveway in front of the new garages. Here Henry is joining Joen and Ben.
Here is Ben, Beth and Mark's oldest son, playing basketball.
This is a nice picture of Mark as they were playing basketball.
Here is Alex playing with the remnants of a really amazing ferris wheel that David had built and Erik had partially disassembled. There was even a handle that you could use as an actuator to turn the ferris wheel (that is what Alex is turning). In the background on the right here (and on the left below) you can see the wood stove the Vinson and Anne use to mostly heat the house during the winter. They sure are a lot nicer than the old wood stoves they were brought up with in Missouri.
Here David is working on a merry go round with horses that go up and down as it spins. Alex was looking on. It was remarkable to watch David puzzle out how to get the desired function with the available parts (dealing with friction and angles of force). It sure looked like an engineer at work to me.
This picture of the merry go round in progress lets you see the strings David used with the off center wheels to cause the 'horses' to go up and down.
Colleen and Jon were having fun pulling the babies around the yard in this wagon. Of course the babies were cuter than either Colleen or Jon so they got the picture.
Brooks, Haverly, Ava, and Henry had been sleeping in the sun room as it was so hot out, but Wednesday night they were able to camp in the yard. It was Ava's first time to be camping and she was a little nervous to start. However, she and Eva went out together with Haverly and they had a great time. This is the tent in the back yard.
Between Anne's desk in the living room/office area (just to the right of this picture) and the grand piano (to the left of this picture) there was a doll house which Ava, Eva, and Maggie enjoyed. Sometimes they would pull up three children's chairs in front of it and all I could see were their backs as they played. This is Ava playing with the doll house.
Wednesday evening and then Thrusday morning and afternoon people started heading home. I headed back to Portland, OR that afternoon and had an uneventful flight with a plane change in Chicago, IL.