A New Year

It's been a while since our last post, so there is a lot of catch-up to play! Perhaps the biggest change to our office is the addition of Amanda May as our new office manager. Amanda and her husband are natives of Union County and love the community! They bought their first home from Shawna in 2009, and since then have been busy finishing school and settling into life together. They had their daughter Eilie in 2011 and are expecting baby #2 this coming June. She joined our team in November and has been hard at work ever since!

We had an especially busy holiday season this year. We put on our annual Tree of Giving to benefit displaced youth in Union County and it was a smashing success! We had clients and community members sponsor individual students this year and everyone really stepped up to make a difference for the kids. From bikes to books and everywhere in between, we were able to fulfill many wishes and bless the youth in our community. It was amazing to take part in such an incredible outpouring. Thank you again for your support in that event!

We had some fun getting into the Christmas spirit with our Christmas Light Contest. Being our first year, we didn't have quite the participation we had hoped, but we still had entries worthy of the great prizes we offered. Congratulations again to the Schwehrs from North Powder for your first place entry! We hope you enjoyed your $100 visa gift card!

The end of the 2012 and beginning of 2013 were jam-packed with year-end office work and our agents were hard at work to close sales before year's end. It paid off! We had our biggest year in sales since we opened in 2002! Congratulations to our wonderful agents for such a prosperous year.

This past Friday, we had our annual office party. Our team enjoyed a delicious dinner catered by Joe and Sugars, gifts, prizes, and great company. Thank you to Wayla Chadwick: the prime rib was especially tasty!

We have a lot of fun coming up: look for news about our upcoming spaghetti feed and other fun community events!

The Celtic Festival and Highland Games Re-cap

Did you attend the Celtic Festival and Highland Games last weekend? Randy and Shawna did and they had tons of fun. It was extremely well organized and the turn out was great! They liked sitting in the grass enjoying the weather and listening to the outstanding music. They were also super impressed by all the games. They were so fun to watch and took a lot of strength- it was no bean bag toss! Shawna's favorite game to watch featured competitors throwing large, heavy logs as far as they could. The food was also very good, Shawna enjoyed the hummus plate- her favorite food! If you didn't get a chance to make it out, you must plan to attend next year!

 

Fair Fun!

This year for the fair we set up a pinterest-like booth with all kinds of flyers on how to do many projects on your own! Also, each agent in the office did their own project so we could have some projects on display.

Patty's project was How To Make Painter's Drop Cloth Curtains.

This is what the final product looked like after we made a few minor adjustments to the booth!

While Shawna was manning the booth on Wednesday night Randy went over to the main stage and watched the Wasteland Kings perform!

We hope everyone had as much fun at the Union County Fair as we did!

Bragging Rights...

Haley ran her first half marathon this weekend! She ran in the Catherine Creek Classic. The finish line was at Union high school where she caught the shuttle bus to the starting line 13.1 miles away. The race course followed Catherine Creek along Medical Springs Highway back to Union. Haley finished in under 2 hours- which is an awesome time! We are pretty proud of her around the office, she definitely gets bragging rights!

Riding the bus to the starting line.

Pre Race

Post Race

While Haley was running, Bob was fishing! Bob went on a fishing trip toYellowstone for his son's 40th birthday. He has never been fly fishing before, but he caught the most and the biggest fish out of his group! He also has bragging rights here in the office!

Bob's son- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

A huge thank you to all who stopped by our fair booth this weekend- it was a success! Pictures of the Union County Fair will be up soon!

Hurricane Creek

This past weekend, Monica and her husband Barry hiked along Hurricane Creek in the Eagle Cap Wilderness. This is a perfect hike for beginners or someone who can't commit to an overnight trip and the views were phenomenal!  To get to the Hurricane Creek Trailhead from Enterprise you just turn on Hurricane Creek Road off of Main Street and follow it out to the trailhead, about 7.5 miles. If you are in Joseph you can head West on Airport Road for 1.5 miles, turn left on Hurricane Creek Road and follow it out to the trailhead. You have the option to camp near the trailhead or just park and make a day trip out of it. Either way the cost is $5 per day, so don't forget your cash!

Monica and Barry just hiked to Slick Rock which is about 6 miles there and back. After about .5 miles on the trail there is a side trip to the right that leads to a lovely waterfall and it's worth the extra steps! After that you can head back to the trail and move on to Slick Rock. Along the way there are some amazing views of Hurricane Creek, Joseph Mountain, the face of Sacajawea Peak and many waterfalls. At one point you do have to cross Falls Creek- but there is a sturdy log across it right now that even a beginner could use as a bridge. At around 3 miles the trail does three switchbacks and at the top you can see the gorge below and it was so pretty Monica and Barry almost stopped here for lunch but if you go just a little further you arrive at Slick Rock where you can view the gorge below and a waterfall above you and this makes a great lunch spot! You can continue on from there to Echo Lake, climb to the top of Slick Rock Falls, or call it a day and head back.

Afterwards, Barry and Monica went on to Wallowa Lake and rented a boat, road bikes, swam, did some more hiking, and spent 2 nights camping. We are so lucky to have so many activities so close to us here in Union County!

A Weekend Wall

The sun is shining and the temperature is warming up...this could only mean one thing: yard work. Monica and her husband, Barry tackled a little front yard fix up this past weekend. Armed with no experience, basic tools- some of which they had to  borrow from the neighbor, some garage sale blocks, and YouTube on their iPhones they set out to build  a small retaining wall to contain the little hill that was their front yard. It's true what they say, leveling the first layer of blocks is the most important step- the level became their BFF.

Before

During

After

After

They plan to lay sod in front of the wall and do the same thing on the other side of the yard! Here are some resources they found helpful:

http://www.dannylipford.com/how-to-build-a-stackable-block-retaining-wall/

Yee-Haw!

 

Last weekend Haley carried flags at the Eastern Oregon Livestock Show and had a great time! Haley said she learned a lot about a new kind of riding that she had never done before! Hope everyone is out and about enjoying this great weather this weekend!