Geoff has abandoned us......so I guess I need to pick up the slack?

Oh Hi!
It's been a while and I'm starting to feel guilty that I haven't posted anything on here. With Geoff doing his 365 project he has forgotten about us. He has some great photos and I had one real gem that I felt the need to share with ya'll.

I took this photo so he can't get all huffy about it.....

My little nephew Max turned 1 this week and I can't believe what a little man he is. We went down to Eugene for the night to celebrate in style and got to spend some time with the little man.

Geoff was great with him! I wasn't feeling up to my usual self so trying to keep up with a 1 year old wasn't high on my to do list so Geoff spent a good portion of the evening entertaining him while Lori tried to make Max's birthday cakes.
This picture pretty much sums up how Geoff is with him and Max loves his Uncle Geoff.

Here are some other random photos since I have neglected this for so long :D

Crazy Jordyn

Max's First Pumpkin Outing

The poor kid...haha

Roloff Farms outing

Family photos, part 1

It seemed easy enough, at first.

“Hey, everybody, let’s take a family photo!” I said, standing in the backyard of my parents’ home. We had all gotten together for a going-away party for my brother.

“Yeah!”

“I’ll get the tripod!”

“OH MY GOD, THIS IS THE BEST IDEA OF OUR ENTIRE LIVES!”

That’s what I expected to hear from my family. After all, that’s the reaction we always got from my wife’s family. They are a bunch who are so in love with family photos it’s unseemly. (examples can be found here, here and here), but my family is a bit... different.

The reaction I got from my family was more of the “just pretend you didn’t hear him, maybe he’ll change the subject” variety.

But after pleading for a bit we finally got everyone to put down the potato salad and pose for a family photo.

This family photo, to be specific:



It’s a cute photo, but it's not really a photo that reflects my family. My crazy, strange, “I’ve never made sense a day in my life” family.

So after much teeth pulling and begging I managed to get everyone back in place.

“This’ll be quick. Just one photo,” I said. “A silly one. Something fun.”

It took some persuading, but we did finally get them to agree to it...

...And then we accidentally took a photo before everyone was ready.

It almost ruined everything.

Finally, though, we did get the photo that I wanted:

 

This is the kind of family photo I had hoped for. Something fun. Something that said “We’re a family, and we’re having a good time.”

But, you know what? This photo doesn't really reflect my family, either.

Looking back over the photos from that day I was a bit disappointed. These photos were fine but they weren’t what I wanted.

I wanted a photo that says: “This is who we are. We eat pumpkin pie for breakfast, watch Murder She Wrote on DVD and have a weird infatuation with pigeons, fish, dogs, cats and the public library. We don't like cable television, but we love cable television shows. We live in Troutdale, Oregon and we are Pursingers."

These photos were fun, but they weren’t it.

And then I found this one.

It's the photo that we had taken accidentally. It’s a bit out of focus, and nobody is ready for the shot. Only about half of us are smiling and Katie didn’t even make it into the photo because she was setting up the camera.

But this?

 

This is the photo I want hung on my wall.

Nobody looks quite like they are expecting the photo to be taken and I’m not sure I know what my dad is doing with his arm, but this is exactly what I wanted.

This is my family.

And this is a great family photo.

Looking for Family Photos, Part Two?

Girls just wanna have fun

Katie and I had a wedding this weekend in Washington and to make things easier on ourselves we decided to tag along with Katie's sister and her three daughters to make the hour-or-more car ride more enjoyable.

 Because when you're with Katie's three nieces life 

has a way of being very entertaining for everyone.

Along with a few stops at Multnomah Falls and Bonneville Fish Hatchery the ride was mostly long a quiet. As usual our camera was the one of the most popular things the girls wanted to play with on the journey.

If you've never given a 7-year-old a digital camera before, let me (briefly) give you a lesson on what you can expect when you get it back:

There will be a few photos of rocks.

One...

Or two...

Or six...

(I'll save you from seeing the rest, there are 32 more of these, all of the same rock).

(I'm not kidding)

There will also be photos of dolls.

Photos of their mother.

And several photos that make you say "huh?"

But, being adorable pre-tweens, there will be several photos of themselves posing and being silly.

 

 

If I get off my butt I'll post some other non-little girl photos from the trip, as well as that post I promised about the balloon festival...

But they just put a new season of Top Gear on Netflix, so my night's kinda booked...

My epic weekend part 1: The calm before the storm

I've got a BIG post coming later on this weekend about what I'm currently up to at work.

Here's a hint: It involves me getting up at 3 a.m., nearly getting murdered by bovine and involves 1,800 pounds of nylon fabric.

What is it? The Tigard Festival of Balloons, of course!

What's the balloon fest, you ask? Good question. It's an annual summer festival where they bring in hot air balloons from all over the country to fly. There's also music and pancakes and rides, and I spend all weekend running around like crazy having a good time.

It runs all weekend long but before I give you a link to the details I wanted to show you this:

It's another of those (*cough* award winning *cough*) videos I make for my work, and I totally dig the crap out of it.

The festival is super fun and worth the drive out if you've never seen a hot air balloon before. The catch: They take off at about 6 a.m., so you've got to be up early if you want to see them do their thaang.

Details for this year's festival and more awesome photos can be found HERE. Expect my ACTUAL Balloon Fest post with pictures and videos (and the story of how I was nearly killed by cows and then became an accessory to a crime) later this week.

...I'll let you know when it's up.

Beards, bears and blogposts

Gather 'round, children and let me tell you a tale.

A tale of courage and bravery. A tale of savage beasts and intrepid reporting.

In short, I'd like to tell you the story of:

Warning: This story is only about 10 percent as epic as I just made it out to be.

I don't know if I've ever actually written it down but: I love my job. I love it for the simple reason that every day is completely different. You never know what you'll be doing on any given day. Some days you're stuck covering long meetings about city planning that feel like they're sucking out your soul and other days you're rushing to a field at 8:30 in the morning to track down a wild black bear.

Those of you who follow the Portland happenings in any capacity probably heard about the bear that wandered near Tualatin Elementary School yesterday (if you hadn't heard then, please, read on!)

Normally I cover another city and don't write much about Tualatin, but early on Wednesday morning I got a call from my photographer saying that the Tualatin reporter wouldn't be able to cover the story so I headed out to face THE BEAR. 

The scary as all hell, taller than I am, 200-pound black bear, to be precise.

Whenever the press covers anything even remotely like this they tend to rope us off and make us all stand together in one area "for protection."

That spot was on the other side of where I parked my car, so I had to walk through the police barricade area in order to get there. 

There were dozens of police cars parked along the road. Some were local, some county, some state. A group of about four Oregon State troopers were loading shotguns just in case the bear tried any funny business. One of them pumped his shotgun as I walked past. 

He looked up at me and smiled. 

"Hey," he said.

There was a local TV news helicopter making some considerable noise overhead and the crowd of photographers and reporters (aka "people like me") were lined up near the elementary school. 

Between us and the bear was a soccer field and a waist-high chainlink fence. 

"Totally safe," I told myself.

Police armed with tranquilizer guns (and some impressive automatic rifles) were positioned around the area very near to where we were. Some were on the roof of the school with binoculars, others were in cars ready to chase after it, should it decide to make a run for it.

Our photographer Jaime Valdez was there snapping photos and doing interviews with local radio stations (at the same time. He's that good) as I arrived. 

(Before I forget, I should say that all of these photos are used by permission of photographer Jaime Valdez. Who is awesome in every way.)

 

Kids in the school had their noses pressed against the glass watching everything the bear and the police did. They waved at local TV cameras and craned their necks to spot the helicopter as it circled overhead. 

I made a few quick calls to get the word about what was happening. One of those calls was to the school district superintendent (he's speed dialed in my phone. Yes. I know. I'm awesome) to get the official "the safety of the children is our number one priority" statement.

That's him there, with the binoculars. He's standing on the roof of the school with some police officers, who keep him informed on all things student-bear related.

At one point in the conversation he tells me "Just to let you know, the doors to the building are unlocked should you need to run."

I tell that to Jaime, who laughs (a bit nervously) and the reporters near us joke how we would react should the bear come our way.

"Jaime, are you gonna stay and get the perfect shot?" one of his photographer friends asks him. "Or are you gonna run?" 

"Hey, many, I'll do what you do."

For the record: I would run. I would wet my pants, leave Jaime to fend for himself and run.

Anyway. We stood in the rain for awhile as the bear put on a bit of a show. The Fish and Wildlife biologists had to shoot it with a tranquilizer dart but couldn't sneak close enough to it in the open field to get a clear shot.

Every so often he'd hop the chain-link fence onto the school's property and then get scared back by police.

When the bear did finally make a break for it after about an hour and a half, he darted right past all the reporters, giving all of us the perfect shots we needed for our various newspapers/nightly news/websites.

He was, maybe, 50 yards away from us.

Jaime was able to shoot this:

While I was able to capture some it on the iPhone and use it in a small video on our website.

They did eventually tranquilize the bear when it ran up a tree and my exciting day was over. I spent most of the afternoon waiting for them to bring the bear down, then talked to some neighbors, the fish and wildlife biologists who captured it, and kids from the school who had probably the most memorable school day of their entire lives.

They released the bear back into the wild sometime today out in the woods near the beach.

When I got back to the office at about 3 p.m. we had to come up with some good bear-related puns for our new lead story and I had to start writing.

If you want to read my story (and if you've made it this far into this exceedingly long post then YOU DO) just click on the big pretty newspaper page.

Thanks for reading the blog and being awesome!

11/52 Son of a beach.

As you read the other day, Katie and I went to the beach last week, for some saltwater taffy goodness. It was a fun day, and Katie and I took turns taking slightly embarrassing photos of each other. 

And, because I'm a cruel person, I'm sharing them with the world.

I actually dig this week's 52 Weeks submission. It's different, it's quirky, it makes us look like crazy people....

I like it.

Today is Geoff's birthday.

So here are some very old and slightly embarrassing photos of him that his family found a little while ago.

Mwahahaha.

10/52 On pencilfish, mollies and pearl gouramis

 

 In case you couldn't tell by the picture, we bought a fish tank.

There's something about fish that I find incredibly calming.

Fish tanks and Pursingers just sort of go together. Growing up, having a fish tank (or two) were as common in a room as a TV (in fact, I had a fish tank in my room loooong before I ever had my own television.)

As such I have an impressive amount of information about zebra danios, neon tetras and tiger barbs swimming around in my brain.

(20 points if you recognized any of those names without clicking the links.)

I haven't had any fish since Katie and I got married, until a few months ago.

For Christmas this year my sister bought me a fish tank for my office. It was tiny, only a few gallons, but it was the perfect size for work.

It even had a little castle!

The small little fish I had were a nice quiet edition to my crazy workplace. Fish don't have problems, they don't have bad days. They just swim, and enjoy themselves, and thank you when you pour a few flakes in the bowl.

But when I came to work last week they did had a problem. A fairly major one:

All the water had drained from their fish tank.

Cleaning crews had discovered over the weekend that my tank had a leak in it, and that water was pouring all over my desk. We managed to save the fish before the entire tank was dry, and I carried them home on my lap in a bucket with no place to put them.

But after a quick conversation with The Misses we were off to buy a new tank.

And voilà:

But we had a problem. I had myself a big-boy 10 gallon aquarium. But I still had my teeny-tiny little castle and teeny-tiny little fish.

There was only one thing to do. 

TO THE FISH STORE!!!

Now our tank is home to a smattering of little swimmers.

    There's B.A. Baracus

 Cory Feldman        

    Bert

 Ernie

The Fantastic Four (yes, there are only three here)

And, my personal favorite...

Bobby Brown.

They seem pretty happy. Their tank is bigger, cleaner and not leaking. All are improvements over their previous home, and their new roommates seem to be adjusting. 

B.A. has taken the "Katie's favorite fish" award. Impressive, considering she doesn't like fish and wasn't too crazy when I said "oh hey, honey, want to go run an errand with me?"

BAM! Fish store.

9/52 "Paper or Plastic?"

See, here's the thing. This is our ninth photo in our 52 Weeks project.

But if we had taken a photo a week like we were supposed to, we'd be on photo #14.

...Actually, that's not nearly as bad as I was expecting.

Good for us!

Today was a boring "get stuff done" kind of day. We cleaned house, we did the laundry,

we went to the store...

Our blog: the home of really exciting stuff.

What could next week's picture hold? Perhaps we'll do something crazy, like watch paint dry or make a sandwich.

Find out on the next exciting episode of....