It looks like a family gathering at a local restaurant. There are handshakes and hugs all around, energetic adults just arriving from the office, a couple of school-aged children entertaining themselves along one side of the table, and plenty of food being passed around. This meeting of the Mount Si Lions Club, it’s ninth since being chartered in May, is a family gathering, in the larger sense of the community.

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Teacher Bill Halstead would normally be at home with his family by late Wednesday afternoon.

But last week, Halstead seized a sign and joined a hundred other Valley educators and parents on the street.

Teachers, administrators, parents and residents, some of whom brought their children, marched through downtown Snoqualmie on November 30, airing opposition to Wash. Gov. Chris Gregoire’s latest supplemental budget cuts in a rare street rally.

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Only paradise could have induced Duncan Wilson to leave his position as North Bend’s city administrator.
“I love this city, I love this area. I love the mayor and the council,” he said Thursday. “There’s nothing about this job I don’t like.”
Then paradise came calling, in the form of an offer from Friday Harbor, and Wilson, after a long struggle, accepted.
“It took over a month for me to go through this…a lot of sleepless nights trying to decide what to do,” he said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to escape to paradise.”

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All six elementary schools in the Snoqualmie Valley School District contributed to the huge piles of hats, socks, instant cocoa, hand sanitizer, and toothpaste that were destined for a care package to a U.S. soldier.
American Legion Auxiliary members Suzy Cassidy and Pam Collingwood spent a recent November afternoon going through it all, with the help of Mount Si High School students Krista Cassidy, Sam O’Malie and Taylor Wiles.

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Always one to push himself, Orion Orellana was ready for any challenge.

That habit drove his mother crazy, especially when he enlisted in the Air Force right out of Mount Si High School, and progressed from one demanding program to another.

It also likely saved his life earlier this month, when he was attacked in Afghanistan while on a patrol with his unit of the Air Force Special Operations Command. Although he was severely injured when a rocket-propelled grenade shot inside his armored vehicle through a gun port and exploded, Orion was able to respond to the situation, call for backup, and direct one of his companions to put a tourniquet on his ravaged left leg.

He decided then that he was going to live, he later told his mom, but in language more forceful than should be reproduced on the page.

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Awesome ‘bot is strutting its stuff on a rainy Monday afternoon in an Opstad Elementary art room.
While student Nicolas Puntillo points to a spot on the floor, the kitten-sized robot rolls forward and back by the same measurements and angles that Puntillo and Murphy McDowell, fellow fifth grader and co-creator, programmed into it for a demonstration.
OK, the robot didn’t perform to exact specifications, but it did accomplish its main goal, to serve as inspiration for the rest of the students in the Otterbots club that North Bend parent Paul Sprouse and Snoqualmie Elementary School teacher Rene Peterson supervise.

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Struggling families in the Upper Valley will have some choices this holiday season. They won’t be the tough ones, like paying the utility bill vs. buying new boots for the kids, either. Instead, they may have to pick between blue or black boots, or decide what kind of holiday treats their families will enjoy.

On Thursday and Friday, Dec. 15 and 16, those families will find everything necessary, not just to put on a real holiday celebration this year, but also to go on with daily life before and after the big days. It’s the One VOICE Holiday Event, a joint venture of nearly 30 Valley groups cooperating to make sure everyone’s needs are met.

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As most families sit down to their traditional Thanksgiving dinners on Thursday, a small group of volunteers will be on their feet, cooking and serving the first community Thanksgiving dinner in the Valley.
The dinner, with noon, 1:30 and 3 p.m. seatings at the Mount Si Senior Center, 411 Main Avenue South, North Bend, is free and all are welcome to attend. It’s the first such community dinner in the Valley, and it’s the brainchild of Snoqualmie Valley Rotary Club service project chairperson Rick Woodruff.

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