Who's Your Daddy

On this Father's day, I wanted to pay homage to not only my father but grandfather's and great grandfathers.  I'll have to do this next Mother's day too.  Course I never think of these things in time for a nice, succinct theme.

This is my great grandpa Rasmus Torland as a boy in Norway.  This was his confirmation picture and was taken in about 1904.  Rasmus came alone to America in 1906 at age 16.  It took him 18 days to cross the Atlantic.  Rasmus returned to Norway in 1914 were he met Helena.  After courting for a year, they were married.  WWI made up his mind as to whether or not to return to America with his bride.  He was registered for the draft in both Norway and the United States and liked his odds better of avoiding combat in the U.S.  So, they set sail for America on July 4, 1915.  Rasmus is my Grandpa Art's father.

These are Rasmus' parents - my great great grandparents - Berte Marie and Anders Dalen.  Anders was born on the Torlen farm #1 but changed his last name to Dalen upon moving to the Dalen farm.

This is another great grandfather - Herman Swanson.  Herman was born in Sweden and likewise immigrated to the states as a young man.  Herman ultimately ended up with his wife Anna as a coal miner raising his family in Roslyn, Washington. (See other Roslyn posts).  Herman is my Grandma Millie's father.

In the course of looking through pictures, it turns out I only have a few of my mom's father, Fred Kinney.  I don't know if he was camera shy or if other family members may have more.  This is my grandpa Fred as an infant with his twin sister Freda.  The story has it that Freda was supposed to be on the chair and Fred on the stool.  Apparently Fred not only insisted on taking the chair, he also put his feet up on the stool.
Grandpa Fred was born in Iowa in 1898.  His father ran a threshing crew when he was young and as a result, his family moved around a lot, eventually settling in Enterprise, Kansas.  They moved to Portland in 1918.

The only other picture of Fred I could find was from my parents wedding album.  That is Grandpa Fred on the far left.  According to my Grandma Novia (in her book), Fred was quiet and modest, and always a gentleman.  I never knew Grandpa Fred well as he died in 1979 when I was still a toddler.

This is a picture of my Grandpa Art.  He was born in an old farmhouse in Bowdon, North Dakota (see blog posts from June 2010 for more discussion of Bowdon) in 1917.  Upon moving to Oregon as a young adult, he performed a stint as a chauffer for William Emley Walter, a retired editor of The Saturday Evening Post magazine.  His wife was the daughter of Harvey Scott, founder of The Oregonian newspaper. 

Grandpa Art was also a milk man for Alpenrose Dairy starting in 1935.  This is Art in front of his Alpenrose delivery truck.

And he played the accordian!  Note the Model A in the background.

This is Grandpa Art and my Grandma Millie in front of the Portland Sanitarium in 1946, with my dad in the stroller.  The old Portland Sanitarium was on the corner of SE 60th and Belmont, later to become Portland Adventist Medical Center.  Art was a lab tech there utilizing lab skills he learned in the Army.

Art served in the Army during WWII.  He received IA-O status (conscientiousobjector) and served in the Medical Corps rather than being sent into foreign service with his company.  Art later received word that his entire company was wiped out fighting the Japanese on Guadalcanal.

This is Grandpa Art with Ronnie (my papa).

My papa.  Love the curl.

Isn't this a handsome guy?  Course, he looks somewhat similar to someone I know...especially at that age.

Mom and dad married in 1967.  Here's the honeymooners living it up on the beach.

I'm proud of my lineage of good men.  Add to that mix Luis, one of the best daddies ever, and his dad Jose, Mason has some great men to emulate as he grows.

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On to events of the day.  Apologies for failing to post last week.  We had a busy week but I was too darn tired to blog after knocking out our downstairs cabinets on Saturday and exercising a bunch on Sunday.  Our family room is making a nice transformation.  It will be done tomorrow so I'll post pictures next week.

We went to my folks to celebrate Father's day today.  Papa Ron just finished putting in his veggie garden, including these nice raised beds. 

Caption this picture yourselves.

We picked out a vintage-looking shirt for Papa Ron.

We had creme brulee for dinner.  Turns out Siena LOVES creme brulee.  Who can blame her...it's amazing!

Luis was able to work an earlier shift and join us.  Here he is with the envelope Siena decorated for him.

And...a vintage shirt!

The Silver Lining

After a busy holiday weekend last weekend, we were ready for something a little more low key this weekend.  The kids and I didn't even leave the house yesterday.  It was wonderful.

Sunny summer weather finally decided to make an appearance.  We couldn't completely waste that.  I'd been thinking of taking the kids down to Silver Falls for our weekly Sunday walk and this seemed like just the afternoon to do it.

Despite miles of trails included in this park, Siena was more taken with the benches.

Thanks to some erosion and a little worker assistance, you can walk behind several of the falls at this park.  Here's the kids behind the 177 foot tall South Falls.  It's close enough that we could feel the mist.

Taking advantage of a seat on our hike.

Both kids took a break on this seat.  We'll have to cut them a little slack.  We did walk 2-3 miles and they did amazing.  They had way more energy than I did going up the hills.

Behind Lower South Falls. 

Mason displays one of the tree chimneys, where hot lava engulfed and disintegrated trees many years ago.

The kids must have burned some energy because I didn't even have to urge them to eat dinner.  They inhaled their Shari's pancakes, much like the lava did the trees many years ago at Silver Falls.

As promised, here's a picture of Mason's completed room.  His bed arrived Wednesday night.  Luis and I did our parenting duty, staying up late putting it together.  We finished putting pictures up and Mason's stuff away over the weekend.  No longer a baby room, that's for sure.  The only problem, now he likes his room so well that I can no longer send him there time out...