The words behind the photos

"A picture is worth a thousand words," but photos don't always tell the whole story – or sometimes any of it. If you follow me on Instagram, that applies to the last 12 posts over there. (If you don't follow me on Instagram, you can still click on the blue button at right to see the photos).

Synopsis: We all went to College Place, WA Thursday-Sunday for a basketball tournament, then added a temporary pack member on Monday.

Backstory: In the ongoing trials of parenting a typical teenager, none of us knew until Wednesday if any of us would be leaving on Thursday for said tournament. As parents who value education over sports, we require that Brian maintain a B or better in every class to participate in sports, and at the end of his first semester, he had two Cs. But he had outstanding work in both those classes for which he could earn partial credit, provided it was turned in before school on Wednesday. Cue the suspenseful background music; would he or wouldn't he get that work done and would that or wouldn't that improve his grades enough? You know the answer; I'll leave you to imagine the stress and late nights involved to arrive at it. And the stress didn't end there. Rick and I decided to drive our pickup and camper so we could take the dogs and save money on food and lodging. But we missed almost all of Brian's first game Thursday night after spending nearly four hours at a Ford dealership on the way. (On the upside, it was better to discover and solve the problem without horses in tow.)

When life gives you lemons, take pictures...

...and play with fiber!

We enjoyed our time at Walla Walla University, from which my mom graduated (with me in utero).

Brian had fun and was impressed with the school (the goal of hosting these types of events, I'm sure), even though their team didn't do well. 

The dogs got a little stir-crazy with being cooped up in the camper,

even though we took them out for frequent short walks as well as a longer outing Sabbath afternoon at a local park.

We had an uneventful trip home on Sunday, glad to be able to relax in comfortable chairs and sleep in our own beds.

It was nice to have that quiet evening before adding another dog to the dynamics, increasing duties and dirt!

Meet Gatsby, a five-year-old Australian Shepherd. Poor guy; he doesn't understand what's going on.

Gatsby was born and raised in Hawaii, then flew to Oregon to live with his mistress, my friend's daughter, who is attending OSU. Daughter has severe allergies, the worst of which, it turns out, is to dogs. Gatsby stayed with another friend for a few weeks while this was confirmed, and is now living with us while all the legal red tape is cut to get him moved back home to Kauai, probably a four-month process. (Hawaii hasn't ever had a case of rabies, and takes extreme measures to keep it that way.) He's a good boy, just understandably stressed by all the changes and being "abandoned" by his person. No doubt things will get better as we all adjust; he and Jackson are beginning to explore how to play together, Aussie to Aussie. (Dozer just wants to be left alone!)

I tell myself to keep calm, meet the dawn, and knit on.

Oh yeah, I'm knitting again. That's a peculiar pair of short stories for another post!

That's it for now from . . .