Grace Stoddard likes to recount that on her first date with her future husband, he brought along a butterfly net and caught two white butterflies. “In those days, it was not so cool to chase butterflies on your first date,” she quipped.

Students from The Dalles robotics teams achieved multiple awards and top-five finishes at the VEX Robotics state championship in Salem this month, and The Dalles Middle School’s team, System Overload, beat 57 high school and 12 middle school teams to finish 3rd overall, won the Middle School Excellence Award and qualified for the VEX Robotics World Championship.