Richard & Stephanie Sipe

We celebrated Easter yesterday with family and it was wonderful. It was Kayla’s first easter and God provided beautiful weather. We started the day at 6:30am by attending the sunrise service at Brush Prairie Baptist Church. This time of year in the Northwest is usually very very wet but this morning it was 45 degrees and mostly cloudy. The service was great and Kayla sept through service and was super cute. Morning service was followed by a light breakfast which Kayla also slept through

We then went back home, relaxed a bit, then headed back to church for the egg hunt and service. Kayla had fun at the egg hunt but of course didn’t completely grasp the concept. We did get a bunch of great pictures with the weather being so nice and enjoyed some time in the sun. The Easter cantata service was very nice and it made for a very meaningful Easter service.

After service, we had Grandma and Grandpa Sipe and Grandma and Grandpa Harrier over to our house for a late Easter lunch. Our lunch was amazing and it was truly a Northwest menu. We had salmon cooked on the BBQ, a greek salad, pasta salad, green salad, sushi for an apeteizer, a Northwest white wine, and Parmesan French bread. We followed lunch with some games and then we went our separate ways because were all tired from the early morning.

Check out our Family Picture Gallery for all the pictures of Easter.

              

It has been great seeing all of our family again and I am excited they all have gotten to meet Kayla and Steph since they are such a big part of my life. Our trip back to Portland started out well but turned ridiculous. You can view the picture gallery of our trip back to Portland HERE.

Step 1: Return to Charlotte
We again decided to leave early to fit into Kayla’s sleep schedule. The drive home was great. Kayla again did spectacular. We only hit one hiccup when we stumbled upon an accident and what looked like a drug raid on a white SUV with 6 police cars present. Not sure if there was a chase or what but it was quite the site. We stopped in Hickory to eat lunch and met Great Grandpa and Grandma Sipe and Great Great Aunt Virgie at a Cracker Barrel.

We had a great lunch and Great Grandpa had fun feeding Kayla some apple sauce and it was good to get to see them again before we headed home. Kayla also enjoyed rocking in a Cracker Barrel rocking chair outside. Our trip back to Charlotte was uneventful and we got some good sleep at the hotel.

Step 2: Fly to PDX
We woke up bright and early at 5:30 am and had breakfast at the hotel before catching the 7:00 AM shuttle to the airport. We had to wait in a large but not too long of a line before waiting in a really really long security check-in line to get to our terminal. When we arrived at our gate we were not gleeful to see our plane had been delayed for an hour. This was no good because we only had an hour layover in Minneapolis. So …. with the help of a very very nice NW Airlines clerk we were rerouted to a US Airways plane leaving in an hour.

The new flight was not a perfect situation because we were now going to be going through Phoenix which added about two hours to our flight time and would cause us to get into PDX at 4:50PM instead of our original 1:40PM. BUT, we were still going to get home which was the important thing. Stay tuned.

The flight to Phoenix was long but went well. We were all assigned seats in different rows and all in middle seats. This was not ideal with Kayla and we were all stuck in the very very back of the plane. Luckily, a very nice man offered to give up his isle seat to me in-order to help keep our family sitting together. He was 6′4″ and not excited about the middle seat but even more amazingly the guy in the isle in that row offered to switch with him. It all was pretty great to see strangers be so friendly on a plane and it made our flight much more pleasant.

Our layover in Phoenix was pretty long but it gave us a chance to get something to eat. Turns out that Spring Break time is not a great time to fly through Arizona. The crowds were pretty intense. Then things got weird. It started to rain and then hail in Phoenix … yes the middle of the Arizona desert. We thought this was neat and took some pictures but it was deadly to our time-line.

We all boarded the plane and the plane taxied onto the runway. The pilot announced that because of the storm we were 24 in line to take off but we would leave shortly… He lied. We proceeded to sit on the runway for the next 3 and 1/2 hours!! With Kayla! This was not fun. Luckily she slept for a bit and we survived until we finally took off. The flight was a bit bumpy but we survived and landed at around 9:00pm … that is 12AM EST which we were on instead of the 1:45pm we were supposed to get in.

It was a really really long day but we survived. Steph went to work the next day and a couple of days later we were finally able to catch up on sleep.

Thanks again to all our family for the fabulous time and we hope to see you all again soon.

              

On Tuesday morning at 5am we left for Lawrenceburg, Indiana where my Mom’s family lives. We left super early so we could keep Kayla on her schedule and sleeping in the car. We made great time and stopped for Breakfast at a Cracker Barrel in Tennessee I think. Kayla enjoyed the break and as always made friends with everybody at the restaurant. We then drove for another couple of hours and stopped at a Truck Stop when Kayla needed to eat again. After that it was straight to Indiana. We made such good time that Steph got the reputation of a speed machine, even though she only drove for 3 hours

After we arrived in Indiana, we checked into our hotel and went over to visit with Uncle Art and Aunt Sue and then with Aunt Wilma at her apartment. We ate dinner at Wiskey’s Family Restaurant and it was really good.

Wednesday was our big day. We went over to Aunt Cheryl’s in the morning and had lunch with her and Angela. We then visited Grandma Folke at her place. That night we had a large family get together at Aunt Sue’s. It was awesome to see all the family again. Pretty much everybody was able to make it and it was great to have everybody meet Kayla and see family I had not seen in 15 years. We are going to try and make it not such a long time before we see them again.

You can now view the picture gallery of our Indiana trip HERE.

              

We had an amazing time at my Grandfather’s 80th birthday party. It was held at the Mt. Zion Lutheran church in Conover, NC and about 200 people attended. Grandpa, who is my namesake Richard Sipe Sr., is well loved by the entire community and state of North Carolina. He helped to build the church and fellowship hall, a couple of fire stations, many houses around North Carolina when he was a stone mason and is really involved in the community and the church. He received an award from the governor of NC this weekend and it was very special.

Tomorrow we will be driving the 500 miles to Lawrenceburg, Indiana to visit my mom’s family. I had not been back to Conover, NC in about 12 years and it has been more like 17 since I have been to Indiana to visit my mom’s family. This will be the first time they will be meeting Steph and Kayla so we are really excited to see everybody. Maybe not so excited to drive the distance with an infant but ti will be worth it.

You can view the pictures of the 80th birthday party and the rest of our trip at our picture gallery. It was such a great trip and we took so many photos that I had to spread them out over galleries so make sure you check multiple pages.

              

We are currently at a my Grandfather Richard Sipe’s 80th birthday celebration. The party is on Saturday and we are looking forward to a fun time. Kayla was just awesome on the long plane ride from Portland, OR and the short drive from Charlotte to Conover, NC. We have people coming in from many states for this and I will be seeing the family for the first time in 12 years! The extended family will be meeting Kayla for the first time and we are excited they get to love her too.

After the celebration in North Carolina, we will be driving 400 miles north to Lawrenceburg, Indiana to visit my mom’s family. We will have a bit of a reunion and dinner there on Tuesday then drive back 400 miles to Charlotte on Wednesday and fly back home on Thursday.

We will post tons of pictures and maybe some video once we return home. If you were at either of these shin-digs and have pictures we would love to have copies of them. Just email me and we will get you our address.

              

Thanks to the release of WordPress 2.1 I was able to redesign the Home Page of RichAndStephSipe.com to make it more user friendly. I blog about a variety of topics including technology topics, my log furniture business, and miscellaneous other topics and it was confusing to most people to see all the posts grouped together. This new look sports a bunch of really cool features and will continue to get better as I have time to update it.

Some new features include:
1) Links to my Blog topics on the right hand navigation bar. This way you can easily find topics without having to wade through posts about things you don’t understand or care about.
2) Links to all posts from the previous 9 months on the right hand navigation bar. If you somehow actually read my blog and remember when I posted something you can find it this way.
3) Probably my favorite feature, 9 randomly selected pictures from our picture gallery. Each time you view this page the code randomly selects a gallery and then a picture from it. Frequently, I will refresh this page many times just to see all the pictures I have forgotten about and take a walk down memory lane. If you would like to post pictures in our gallery let me know because I can easily set that up. Carmen even posted pictures from New Zealand at an Internet Cafe!
4) My second favorite feature is the 5 most recent pictures from the 4 most recent galleries. Now with a quick glance you can see if new galleries have been posted! I still need to work on this feature but even in its current state it is awesome.
5) The posts in the body of the home page are now the most recent ones from the Sipe Family News category which includes information and news from our family.

If there is something I have missed here, let me know and I will try to build it into future versions. As always, check back often to see what new is going on out here in Washington State.

              

I have been a fan of micro brews ever since I moved to the Northwest about 9 years ago. Before I moved out to Washington state I had an experience with a home brew in North Carolina when a friend attempted his first brew, and it was terrible. About two years ago I brewed beer with a friend in Hillsboro, Oregon at his house and it was great. He made a Corona clone and it came out excellent. He had setup a pressurized CO2 system in a fridge with a pony keg. It was such a fun experience with a great result that I decided I wanted to brew my own beer sometime.

Turns out that our neighbor here in Battle Ground is a chemist and has been brewing beer for 10 years. I went over to their place for a brew day a while back and he made a great beer. I also had more of his home brews at their yearly Oktoberfest and they were equally great.

This past Christmas we decided to split a batch. We brewed a batch of Nut Brown Ale at our place. It was a rainy day but we were able to have a pretty good time under one of our covered patios. We had one little issue when we didn’t have enough light malt so we had to add some dark. We bottled the beer around the 21st of December. Of course we tried some when we were racking it and, although it wasn’t carbonated yet, it was really good.

I gave my mom and sister a 6 pack of our home brewed nut brown ale and it was a big hit. The taste, color, and quality came out amazing. I made a label to put on the beer (see the image that starts this post) and called it Sunshine Brewing.

Overall the process was a ton of fun and I can see why people get so into the process. I am looking forward to when we brew our next batch. Stay tuned to see what we come up with.

              

Well, its been a long time coming but I have finally redesigned our website. I had never completely finished the first design and I was over the purple so I figured now was a great time for a new look.  I created this new site on WordPress which is a Content Management Tool and Blogging Open Source solution.  WordPress is database driven and allows me to manage the content on this website through an administrator interface.

I am still working on getting all the old content moved over but I have managed to rewrite The Rich & Steph Picture Gallery to work with WordPress and substantially jazzed it up. Now when you click on an image a nifty animation appears. You can use the Next and Previous links on the pages to move between the different pictures (they are in the upper right or left, just move your mouse and they will appear if you don’t see them).

I also have actually posted current news to the Sipe Family News section! I will try to keep this more up to date than before (almost two years behind!) and WordPress makes it easier for me to add new information. Even better, it allows you to comment on any of our posts. We would love to hear from all our family and friends about any of our news or other items.

The website now contains all of my geek Technology Posts in one place with subsections.  My technology posts are reviews or solutions to problems or information on a large range of topics I run across in my daily work as a software engineer and my technology fumbling in my spare time.

As always, our Eagle Crest Vacation Rental is still going on strong.  We would love to have you stay at our chalet at the Eagle Crest Resort, just contact us and we will get you set up. Also, I am still working hard on my Log Furniture Business, Modern Rustics Log Furniture. I have delivered log beds to as far away as Tennessee and as close as Tacoma this past year. All of my log furniture customers have been extremely happy with their furniture.

              

Tough times at the Sipe family household as a nasty cold strain has gotten all of us. After our great Thanksgiving trip to South Beach, OR Stephanie and Kayla came down with a cold. It started with a sore throat and quickly went to an icky, stuffy head, body sore cold. Poor Kayla has been coughing and sneezing and her little nose has been running. Its tough for us to see her sick but even worse she isn’t sleeping well now so we are up all the time. With Steph sick that left Rich who just also came down with the ick. Hopefully we will all be better here soon and can better enjoy the great Christmas season.

              

We spent an amazing Thanksgiving week RV’ing at the South Beach State Park campground. South Beach State Park is just south of Newport Oregon on the Oregon Coast about 150 miles from where we live in Battle Ground, WA.

The Harriers (Stephen, Claudia, Aaron, Sarah, and Tristan) and the Sipes (Richard Jr., Constance, Carmen, Richard III, Stephanie, and Kayla) took their RV’s down and had a great time. Even the poring rain, howling wind, and cold temperatures couldn’t ruin our fun…Well it might have helped that we had an amazing Yurt to spend our time in.

We brought down a larger burner, pot, and a bunch of peanut oil and boiled our turkey. We had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner complete with all of the fixings. On Saturday we toured the Oregon Coast Aquarium and then stopped by the Rogue Brewery to take a brewery tour. We played lots of games, took a couple of walks on the beach, and tried to stay dry and warm.

Check out the picture gallery for a movie and all the pictures from our Thanksgiving trip.

Family at the Oregon Coast Aquarium