More Than You EVER Wanted to Know About Us!

         

(Shane and I in NYC for the first time a couple of years ago--on our way to see A Bronx Tale--awesome show, BTW! Photo courtesy of some random stranger.)

By way of introduction, I am Ronda, and this is my husband, Shane. Shane and I started discussing the possibility of starting a blog to help us document some of the things that we do, places we go, and experiences we have, so we decided the time is now. When we're old and gray (okay, minus my hair dye, we're already pretty gray, but we refuse to admit to being old), we want to be able to look back and remember the wonderful life we have had.

We feel lucky to live in one of the most diverse and beautiful states in the United States--Oregon. We don't live in the Oregon that most folks think of when they think of Oregon, however. We live in northeastern Oregon, which is high desert, making it dry and mountainous, with much more extreme weather than the western side of the state. We also live in the rural side of Oregon. Our demographics couldn't be more different than the more urban western side of Oregon. The county we live in has a population of about 16,000--yes, I said the COUNTY! The largest town in the county is Baker City with a whopping population of about 10,000--trust us, it is the one of the most beautiful little towns in the US, and definitely worth a visit. We are surrounded by the Elkhorn Mountains on one side and the Eagle Caps on the other. Our location is ideal for outdoor enthusiasts and part-time hermits, so it is perfect for us! We both grew up in this area and loved it, so we have been thrilled to be able to make a livelihood here so that we could stay, raise our children here, and continue to enjoy nature's bounty all around us on a regular basis.

                                                (Echo Lake in the Wallowa Mountains--photo courtesy of Shane)

We have two amazing grown children, who we are enjoying as much in adulthood as we did when they were small. Unfortunately, I think we were just too tired to really appreciate every moment when they were little, so we're hoping to do a better job of enjoying our grandchild, and possible future grandchildren, in their younger years. Our son, Trent, is married to a wonderful woman named Tricia. They live and work close to us (Trent works for our Department of Transportation and Tricia is an occupational therapist) and just blessed us with an amazing little boy so we can start enjoying being those grandparents! Our daughter, Sam, is carrying on the family tradition as a teacher in Idaho.  We just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary in June, and, yes, we were high school sweethearts (met in 3rd grade), and were children when we wed all those years ago! :)

We do have jobs that we love, but don't get us wrong, we are looking forward to RETIREMENT! Shane is a nursing supervisor (currently titled, Clinical Coordinator) in a small rural hospital, and I am an Assistant Professor of Education at a regional university. Our jobs keep us ridiculously busy most of the time, but when we do have down time, we do our best to take advantage!

We love to enjoy the great outdoors, travel, and EAT! We have pretty strong opinions about restaurants, lodging, and other travel experiences, so those are likely to surface as we share our adventures in travel, as well as our everyday outings around our local area.  We do our best to be healthy and active, but it is a constant struggle because we tend to overlike food, and sometimes get lazy with our fitness journeys, so we may go off on some tangents about that as well!

To sum it all up, we're a pretty ordinary couple who do some pretty ordinary things most of the time, but every once in a while, we do some interesting things that we want to remember--and we thought others might actually enjoy some of our adventures, too! On social media, we often post pictures of the things we do and people get the idea that we are always off doing something. That is because we don't post the mundane on social media--that's not fun, and no one cares if Shane walked 42 miles in the hospital caring for patients, or I spent 12 hours grading papers. Trust us, MOST of the time we're just working and going about our day-to-day, but when we do something good, or have something important to say, we'll try to share, so stay tuned!