Eastern Oregon (Yes, again!)

Okay. I realize that by this point it probably looks like we are just refusing to snip the apron strings with our beloved Pacific Northwest, but trust me friends, this is not the case. The fact of the matter is that this horrible monster named Logistics keeps rearing it's ugly head. 

I willingly admit that one of the roadblocks was Seattle's playing in the Super Bowl. Really, you can't leave Washington right before your team plays in their second consecutive Super Bowl, especially when they got there the way they did. So, we stuck around for the Super Bowl and no, I don't want to talk about it. 

After the Worst Call in Super Bowl History, Logistics dictated another trip to Eastern Oregon, so we loaded up in the car at about eleven o'clock Tuesday morning expecting to make it to Athena in the normal four hours. 

We settled the kids into bed at midnight.

It was such a long day! 

We pulled into the parking lot of Camping World in Troutdale (just outside Portland) to find that there was a gigantic screw in the tire. Luckily, we were positioned well and it was lunch time, so we just slid out the camper and ate lunch and the big kids helped John change the tire while I read to the little girls and put them down for nap/quiet time. It really wasn't a catastrophe, and we were certainly prepared for something like a flat tire, but it threw off the rest of our drive and there were several other small stops that kept extending our travel time. Needless to say, we were all so pleased to see Pambrun Road at the end of the day. 

Reading while John and I decide what we're going to do with the flat .

We knew we were in town for at least a week for a few doctors appointments, but we didn't have a lot on our agenda, so we took an afternoon to go out to the old McBean homestead where John's grandpa lived as a kid. John talked his cousin Jason into bringing his metal detector and John's dad came along to add the commentary. Rogue and Sayer didn't hold out as long as I would have liked, but it was a beautiful day and, overall, an afternoon well spent. 

One of the first things we noticed when we got there was the volume of ladybugs there were. Did you know that in the winter ladybugs gather in huge numbers and live in the ground and under the bark of trees? I had no idea. Luckily, John's dad did, so he played science teacher while I took pictures of the (not exaggerating) thousands of ladybugs that are clearly ready for spring.

It's sort of cool and terrifying at the same time. At one point Rogue was so overwhelmed that she insisted I carry her for the remainder of our time there. This is when the little girls and I excused ourselves to the car for lunch and a show. 

John, Jason, and the kids got down a pretty good system of scanning, digging, sifting, and locating. They were somewhat limited on time and it started to rain, so there were no major discoveries, but they did find the top of an old wash basin, the buckle from a horse saddle, and lots of nails. 

Because we haven't been too busy, and because it's Athena and it's nearly impossible to be busy, there has been a lot of Lego play going on. 

When we were in Boise at the DaVinci Exhibition I thought it would be cool to expound on that by doing a Science unit on simple machines, so I ordered The Lego Technic Book of Things to Build on simple machines. It's proven to be an excellent purchase that keeps us all busy and challenged, and the kids have had so much fun with it that they hardly realize they are doing school.

(There's also been nap time with this sweaty, but still cute, little girl...)

And, we finally worked in a field trip to Tamastslikt Cultural Institute (super shout out to Cassandra Franklin for setting us up with an awesome visit!). 

Tamastslikt is the Native American museum owned, designed, and operated by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. It's home to the story of the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla tribes, and as such, is pretty essential to growing up McBean.

There's no photography allowed inside the museum. While I completely respect this rule, I wish that I could have captured some images of what is held within the museum walls, because I know that most of you will never make it here. 

While Tamastslikt is on not a huge museum, it is impressively done and it is apparent how much care has been taken to preserve and tell the story of the people who first occupied this land. The museum is laid out chronologically, beginning with Before There Was a Trail from the East. As we walked around these exhibits reading stories and talking about the way people lived when all they had was each other and the land it became quite clear how well their form of self governance worked, which quickly brings to mind how catastrophically bureaucratic government is failing. But, we can talk about that another time.

The remainder of the museum walks you from Westward Expansion to the present.

One of the most interesting things for me was the information provided on the Whitman Massacre. Being able to spend as time as we have exploring the PNW and it's early history has really allowed us to give the Fire Team lessons in history from multiple perspectives, and the Whitman Massacre is the perfect example. At the Whitman Mission in Walla Walla, Washington (about an hour north of here) it gives little information about the decision to attack the mission, rather focusing on the story that the Native Americans didn't say much after the massacre and eventually a few men (whose guilt is questionable) were hanged for the murders. At Tamastslikt, however, the tribe maintains that a council was held and a decision was made to attack the mission, because that was the action that made the most sense to the tribe at the time. Our kids had lots of hard questions about this, and several other displays in the museum. One of them was this photo blown up to fill an entire wall...

What a stark reminder that our country has a long standing tradition of indoctrination, huh? 

There were countless stories of battle, and defeat, and oppression and I found myself having a difficult time articulating answers to questions about these ugly chapters in our nations history. So, we turned to the Gospel. Specifically, we turned to the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus is asked a vital question...

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:36-39 ESV)

And who is our neighbor? Are all men not our neighbor? 

And so, that's what we told our boy (and his sisters) when he asked tough questions about who was right and who was wrong and how it was decided. We talked about the depravity of man and how things like demoralization and oppression are what happens when we do not love our neighbor as we love ourselves. 

And on that note we went for lunch. :)

When we arrived Cassandra armed the kids with folders full of great resources for applying what they learned from the exhibits, so we pulled those out at lunch and the kids had a great time doing the mazes, matching animal tracks, and retelling the stories they heard in the museum. We also read from the books that told about the role that both John and William McBean played in running Fort Walla Walla (a Hudson Bay Trading Co. post) and in the gathering of information in the Whitman Massacre.

Needless to say, this is a museum that we will visit again and again. Not only because of its proximity, but because of it's impact. Tamastslikt doesn't just teach you. It moves you. For our little family, it was a wonderful reminder that in all circumstances, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

On a lighter note, we are finally wrapping up Logistics and are heading south Thursday. Bend, Oregon, Crater Lake, and Crescent City, California are our next three stops. Please let us know if you know of a must-see or must-do in these places or along the way!