Here's my blog, centered on life in Ashland, OR, and all the wonderful things it has to offer: 

 

February 17th, 2008:

Today was a lovely, warm, sunny spring day.  After a relaxing morning reading the paper, Elise and I went out for a bike ride.  It was good to be back on my bike again after a few winter months off.  We went to Garfield Park to play, and then came home to work in the garden.  I have one of our two raised veggie beds ready to plant lettuce and such at the end of the month.  It's hard for me to get used to being able to see snow, and go skiing, yet live in town where there is spring...

 

I've also been lending on Prosper lately.  It is a pretty cool peer-to-peer lending site.  Individuals ask to borrow money, and you may choose to fund part of their loan.  It will be interesting to see how this works - I'm happy with it so far!  If you are interested, click my link below to check it out!

 

 

 

February 16th, 2008

Today we skiing at Mt. Shasta, in California.  Wow, it was a gorgeous day!  We left town early and stopped for donuts.  The sun was just rising over Grizzly peak as we left:

 

 

We drove south (it is about a 90 minute drive from Ashland), and the mountains along the way were lovely.  Living in the East, I never realized how big the Klamath mountains are.  Here is just one of the wonderful views we had along the way:

 

 

What was even more breathtaking was the views of Mt. Shasta.  It is a 14,179 foot dormant volcano, and it literally towers above plain it sits on.  Here is the best view of the mountain we saw (this is from maybe 40 miles away?):

 

 

We went to Mt. Shasta ski park (www.skipark.com), rather than Mt. Ashland (www.mtashland.com) (which is only 35 minutes from our door) for Elise.  She is just learning to ski this year for the first time, and this was her first day skiing with us, rather than in the kids learn to ski program at Mt. Ashland.  Everyone says that Shasta has wonderful, long, wide easy runs that are perfect for the learner.  After skiing there, I agree!  It was a perfect ski day, warm (Marya skiied without a jacket, and some insane folks skiied in just a t-shirt), sunny day.  The snow was soft, but good for skiing and very well groomed.  We spent most of the day skiing with Elise on the easiest runs, and she did so well!  We were quite impressed with how well she skiied, being her first time out of class.  By the end of the day she was pushing us to go faster, could navigate around the other skiiers, and make it all the way down long runs in complete control.  Pretty impressive for only her fourth time on skis.  Marya and I each took 1 1/2 hours in the afternoon (alternating) to ski on our own.  We got off the easier slopes onto the harder ones, and it was wonderful.  The snow was great, the views wonderful, and I finally felt like I was getting back into the skiing form I had 15 years ago...

 

I'll finish with two views from the ski park.  First is Mt. Whitney, another volcano, off in the distance:

 

 

Lastly, here is 14,179 foot Mt. Shasta from about 6,000 feet elevation at the ski area:

 

 

January 5th, 2008:

We have a crazy cat.  Here name is Sara.  She sleeps with her tounge sticking out.  Maybe she is channeling Michael Jordan?

 

 

December 31st, 2007:

Today was new year's eve, of course.  We had our first new year's eve out as a couple since Elise was born.  She got to spend the night at the YMCA, swimming, watching movies, and staying up late with other kids.  We got to go out to dinner.  We had a lovely dinner at Monet (www.restaurantmonet.com), a French restaurant in town.  We found this because our friends Jim & Deb gave us a gift certificate.  Dinner was excellent, and it was neat because the chef comes from the town of Tain-la-Hermitage, in France.  What's special about that is that we have been to that town.  They have a lovely chocolate factory, Valhrona (www.valhrona.com), where we toured and ate all the free samples, and a world-famous wine area - the hill of Hermitage itself.  Here is a picture of the lovely chapel at the top of the Hermitage hill:

 

 

December 28th, 2007:

Today was Jen's birthday.  It has been a long time since we were all together for that!  It was nice to celebrate with her.  It snowed again today, as it did every day, and things were lovely, clean, quiet, and white.  Marya and I went cross-country skiing again, as we did nearly every day we were in Wisconsin.  It is so lovely to be out in the woods in complete silence...

December 25th:

We had a lovely Christmas with the family.  It has snowed every day so far, and today was no exception.  It was a truly white Christmas!  We opened presents for what seemed like hours (we go one person, one present at a time...).  Lili was full of cheer, and very excited about her new German Shepard Webkin (Carl) that she got from her Auntie Ute in Germany. 

We relaxed all day, other than a nice session of cross-country skiing, and finished the day off with a lovely ham dinner. 

December 24th:

We headed Here is a picture of the entire Gruber side of the family on Christmas Eve:

December 22nd:

We woke up to snow, and it was beautiful.  There was already a foot on the ground when we arrived, and we had three more inches today.  Thankfully it wasn't more, as my sister Jennifer flew in from South Dakota today.  Although there were delays, she made it without too many headaches.  So now we are all here, and it can snow all it wants - the more the better!

Thanksgiving 2007:

What a wonderful day!  We had a Thanksgiving ala Jansen-Gruber.  This means inviting some good friends over (in this case Clea, Dylan and Marya's mother Michael) and having an all-day feed.  It was a lovely late fall day, and we started the festivities around noon with a bubbly themed heavy appetizer course.  Yes, we plan this part of the meal around Champagne and other sparklers, and have food to go with it.  It's indulgent, but hey, it's Thanksgiving!  After four bottles of bubble, a few fake tattoos (courtesy of Dylan) and some lovely munchies, we went for a long walk in Lithia park.  Marya and her mother watched Lili climb a tower:

Clea and Dylan arranged poetry on a car hood (yes, that's the kind of town Ashland is...):

We played some active frisbee, which was great fun, and then Elise climed on the rocks in the lovely Japanese garden:

After our walk we came home and relaxed, playing Scrabble, sitting by the fire, and cooking up a storm.  We had a lovely, many course dinner of Turkey with all the fixins, a cheese course extrordiare, and the traditional pecan pie for dessert (along with a lovely pumpkin dessert courtesy of Clea).  We also broke out the wine, tasting many different options.  I was proud to say the my own 2007 Walnut Grove Pinot Gris was a hit, and the first bottle empty, even though it was up against some stiff competition.  Ahh, a lovely day!

November 4th, 2007:

Another beautiful day.  With the time change we were all up early.  I walked up to get a Sunday paper while there was still frost on the ground.  I sat and read the paper for a few hours and had some wonderful coffee.  Elise wanted to go out and do something, so I took her to the local Science Museum, ScienceWorks (www.scienceworksmuseum.org). We are so lucky to have an outstanding children's hands-on science museum just minutes from our house.  We had a great 2 hours there.  Elise says the bubbles were the best part, followed closely by launching soda bottles to the roof.  I went for the longest bike ride I've taken in about 20 years after that.  This town is wondeful for bikers, with trails and bike lanes on nearly every major road.  It would be easy enough not to have a car at all here...  We topped it all off with a lovely dinner.  Oh, and while I'm not a huge football fan, I enjoy a good game every now and then.  Being a native Minnesotan, it was fun to watch the Vikings win a game for a change!  I didn't watch too much of the game, but what I did see was truly entertaining.

November 3rd, 2007:

What a beautiful weekend!  We had the gorgeous weather that is such a big part of why we moved to Ashland.  Beautifully clear blue skies, warm days and crisp nights.  Perfect fall days, in my opinion.  It was one of those weekends we couldn't really stay inside.  Saturday was a wonderful day.  We started out early and went to the Ski Swap.  Marya and I got full sets of ski equipment, including helmets.  (Yes, kids, everyone skis in helmets these days...)  We rediscovered skiing a few years ago.  Both of us skiied extensively while growing up, but had not been on the slopes for about 10 years.  We went for a trip three years ago in West Virginia, then to Maine last year.  Both were wonderful, and we are so exicted to be just a few minutes from Mount Ashland. Having a ski mountain in your own backyard is such a wonderful idea!  (Check it out at www.mtashland.com)  After the ski swap, Elise and I went out to get some lunch.  We walked the dogs down to one of the many local bakeries, LaBaguette, and got some of the most wonderful bread I've ever eaten.  Their sandwich loaf (a lot like a baguette) is fabulous.  Elise and I had some with cheese, including a lovely local goat cheese from a local dairy - Siskiyou Crest.  That is one of the great things about this area - wonderful local food and wine.  Next might have been the best part - we went wine touring in the Applegate Valley with Dylan (he was our real estate agent, now friend).  We started off with a wonderful tasting at Jacksonville Vineyards (www.jacksonvillevineyards.com).  Pam, one of the owners, poured four lovely wines.  My favorite was the 2006 Sangiovese, which was stylistically very similar to a nice Chianti.  Marya preferred the Zinfandel, which they paired with dark chocolate.  Elise was a big fan on the Chocolate too!  We went for a short walk in the vineyards and tasted the grapes they had picked that day.

View from Jacksonville Vineyards

We then went on to Wooldridge Creek Winery (www.wcwinery.com) for a second tasting.  The setting was truly stunning.

The wines more than matched the setting, and were certainly the best Oregon wine I've had to date.  They were truly world-class wines, and we were lucky enough to taste 5 wines.  They were all fabulous, but the soon-to-be-released Syrah was truly wonderful.  To make it even better, Greg the winemaker was there and we got to discuss wine, winemaking, France (he went to Montpelier), grape growing and more.  It was very educational for me (given that my next career will likely be in wine somehow).  I even got a tour of the tanks of fermenting grapes and the barrel room.  We got two bottles of wine to round out out Thanksgiving wine list.  We'll have Wooldridge wines served next to three of my own whites from Virginia.  (Yes, I grew the grapes and made the wine myself!)

The tasting was wonderful, but we didn't want the experience to end, so we got a cold bottle of Warrick White (50% Chardonnay, 40% Vigonier, 10% Pinot Noir) and sat on the patio and had a drink.  More wonderful conversation, gorgeous views, and terriffic wine.  What better?  Elise had great fun jumping on the trampoline and playing with the vineyard dog, Vino. 

Finally it was time to go home.  We were hungry and too tired to cook, so Dylan recommended a great pizza place.  It is sort of hidden away along Ashland Creek, but well worth the search.  Creekside Pizza Bistro, it was called.  Elise voted their Pepperoni Pizza the best she'd ever eaten, and she should know!

What a loverly day!

Halloween, 2007:

We live in Ashland, Oregon.  Halloween is a big deal here for adults and kids alike.  The festivities started with a parade at school, and were closely followed with a parade through town.  I think the entire town turned out to particpate or watch.  Pretty cool.  I think it was as much an excuse for the adults to dress up as it was a parade for the kids.  

I went as the sherriff.

Marya went as the madame.

Elise went as a vampire.

The best costume went to Zoltar, complete with his booth.  (He was on a Segway under there).  Very cool!

Elvis was in the house!

We all had a great time!

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