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So, in the United States, and I am sure in many countries throughout the world, when a young family starts growing, there is always the discussion for the ages…..what will the family car be, minivan or SUV? Some families will hold out, staying with the car they had when they married, figuring as long as…

In honor of Veterans Day, I thought I would share some photos and stories of some of the veterans in my family. We don’t really have many vets through the years. My cousin Steve had a career in the Air Force and cousin John was a JAG in the Army. Of course, everyone served in…

We have been blessed with the opportunity to visit Vietnam three times over the past four years or so. Each time we have spent time in Hoi An, an historic trading port since the 1500s just a short distance from Da Nang that has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a major tourist attraction….

So we made it back to Bali after a two week trip that seemed more like a month. It may have been a bout of separation anxiety as this was my first extended time away from Gracie and her first time in the kennel. We missed Nana too but she was much more worldly at…

So there we were, sitting in the house, listening to the rain and waiting for the full force of the typhoon to hit some time after sunset. I kept mentioning all day that it just seemed like another rainstorm to me. Growing up in Oregon and then living in Singapore where we always had a…

Way back in October, 1962 when I was but a wee child of eighteen months, the worst windstorm of the 20th Century hit the Pacific Northwest. For years growing up, I would hear stories about the Columbus Day Storm and how winds came through Portland, Oregon over 100 miles per hour. Throughout Washington, Oregon and…

The wind is picking up and the rain has started, twenty four hours before Typhoon Hagibis is expected to start it’s way up the coast of Japan. Walking around outside, it feels like a normal Friday with the kids heading to and from school and the salarymen heading to work. As I type this at…

So my beautiful daughter Sara and her husband Josh have started to call some of the things I do “Jiji moments” in honor of the knuckleheadedness I tend to display in my day to day navigation of life. As luck would have it, I had another Jiji moment as I was writing Japan Report 1….

It’s good to be back on the road again. One of the things I have not perfected is writing while I am on the road. Meaning, I have not written at all while traveling. So I made a goal of providing updates every couple of days during our two week trip to Japan. Two days…

In the beginning of August I told the story of how some puppies came into our lives (Of Puppies and Bali Culture). At that point we were seventeen days into the care and feeding of Gracie and Nanachan. Here is an update on life at the Murdock Menagerie. Warning: This post is filled with many…