Good-Bye Boat Trip with Julie

This Friday, our dear buddy, Julie, heads off on a mission adventure with "Surfing the Nations". She begins in Oahu, journeys to Maui, back to Oahu, then Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Crazy, huh? She is beyond excited, and I know she'd covet any prayers anyone would be willing to send her direction. What a joy it is anytime you find someone serve within a ministry that it seems was "designed" just for who they were created by God to be. This seems to be the case with Julie and "Surfing the Nations". It will be a delight to follow her experiences over the next 3 and a half months, but we will all miss her tremendously!

Julie has been working VERY HARD all summer in Cannon Beach, so we consider it an honor that she would take today and tomorrow to hang out with us Rileys before venturing off to Hawaii. And, what better way to spend it than to take her and Travis (Steph has been prohibited from boat rides until her back fully heals....boooooo!) out on the boat. It's crazy that we haven't been to Cottage Grove Lake since June. When we first arrived, we were a little let down by our "ol' standby" with its total choppiness. But, after Julie took her first turn on the wakeboard, miraculously, the waters cleared up and smoothed out to nearly glass.

We were quite delighted that both kids wanted to give it a try again as well - Brayden, doing one of his "groove with the music" moves.....

Reunited at long last.....big smiles as Mikayla (aka "Koala") gets to crawl all over Julie again (aka (her) "Branch")

The hat she's sporting is Travis'.

These jump pics of Travis get kind of old after awhile. He needs to come up with something more impressive (ha ha!!!)

Ah, there we go, something a little more original - and with a smile! =)

Mikayla hasn't tried out the wakeboard since she "got up" momentarily last summer. We were thrilled she wanted to try again today - numerous times. She was uber-successful, she stayed up for quite a while!


I'm so glad Julie didn't completely wear herself out on that first run through the "ocean waters" - and saved some energy to play around in the "glassiness". It's so fun to watch her pull out her surfing talent out on the wakeboard.

Julie handled the camera while I was doing my run. She snapped oodles of pics, but I gave her NOTHING to work with, between my lack-of-smile expressions and "August indulging"......well, let's just say it's beyond time to get back into the gym again and rid the pantry of all of those camping treats.... (but I did have a lot of fun playing around on the lake!)


Now, this one had us puzzled - I'm pretty sure it was a group of guys doing their own version of the "Sasquatch vs. Jack Links Jerkey" commercial. If we'd had time to sit around and watch, I'm sure it would have been very entertaining.

A final parking lot shot of Brayden and Daddy - proving John was indeed there.