Coming home from vacation is always rough, especially when it’s a really good vacation as the past week was for us. It helped that for our four hour flight from Portland last night we had the emergency aisle too ourselves (leg room!). So we stretched out, read our books, snacked on fresh Oregon blueberries and raspberries and leftover dark chocolate and had some wine courtesy of our Southwest points. Not bad.

There were a bunch of highlights from the week in Oregon, some which I’ll mention later. Here are two:

• My 3 nights at the hostel were great. Thanks for the advice. While in Oregon I visited Powell’s Books three times. That wasn’t quite enough, but it sufficed. I’m dipping into two of the used books I purchased already: Let Justice Roll Down and a summary of Eberhard Arnold’s life and writings. Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for a hard cover copy of Jacques Ellul’s The Meaning of the City.
• The family reunion went really well. The 24 (or so) of us fit nicely into a spacious home overlooking the Pacific in Lincoln City. The days and nights were windy and a bit chilly but generally beautiful. My grandma (photo above) and I spent a couple of hours charting out the family tree. Apparently I have German, French, Swedish and English ancestry from this side of the family. Also, a number of the men on this side were bakers… something I may need to look into.

Now it’s back to work preparing for my first sermon at NC3 this Sunday.