Hello American Pie

The weather in Portland has been a bit gruesome for a while. That definitely makes things a bit tougher with the kids as we have to find more indoor activities to do with them, especially over the weekend when there is no preschool.  Still, at least yesterday it was only drizzling – the rain wasn’t too bad – so we managed to do some stuff. 

Since I’d been reading last week about the cool event taking place at Baker & Spice in the Hillsdale neighborhood of Portland, I decided yesterday that we should brave the weather.  On both Saturday and Sunday, the store was celebrating its annual Pie Day, marking the store’s birthday!  How cool is that!  Each year they have Pie Day during which over the weekend, people can come along and eat as much pie as they want (or can!).  This year apparently the store is turning 7-years-old (so I had Jayden saying the whole time “but I want to be 7 too,” which kinda makes sense as the way he counts now he omits 5 and 6, so given that he’s 4, his next birthday – in his logic – would be 7. Still I digress.

I ordered a slice of Mocha Almond and Super Duper (mega-chocolatey) and by then, truly I was done.  Daniel of course has a way sterner stomach than me so he managed a slice of: Pink Cake, Black and White and Vanilla Dream.  And Jayden shared a slice of the store’s Birthday Cake with Ethan which they both really loved by the look of their faces when the plate was clean.  Since Jayden made my birthday cake with Daniel a few weeks ago, he’s talked about nothing else.

Anyway it was a fun afternoon and what made me feel a bit better about my gorging was learning that the store will be donating a quarter of its pie sales to Neighborhood House’s emergency food box program – an organization that “helps neighbors help themselves.” I thereafter explained the charitable organization to Jayden, and he was so cute, he asked if he could give them half of his cake too!  What an adorable child.  I love him so much.

Weekend Kids Fun

There were a bunch of family-kid oriented events going on in our neighborhood over the weekend.  I think there was some “family” theme going on.  On Friday night there was a classical concert that Daniel and I were going to go to but then we decided we’d rather spend the evening snuggling by the fireplace having put the kids to bed early.  So on Saturday, we decided to do something as a family, rather than staying under the covers and reading the weekend papers which I always find so tempting.  We went to Westmoreland Park playground where they had a Kidical Mass Ride which Jayden enjoyed a lot.  There was a guided tour too which was fun; we ended up at Oaks Park Roller Rink and I actually skated for the first time in about 25 years!  Ethan thought that was pretty amusing!  I wasn’t that bad, but, truthfully, I wasn’t that good either.

Saturday night we got a babysitter and Daniel and I went to the Hawthorne Hophouse to listen to Bitter Root which was a band I’ve never heard that combines funk, blues, rock and soul.  Not quite my thing but it was fun being out with Daniel without the kids who of course absolutely loved rocking out to the music.

So, that was our weekend.  It was nice.  I had a good time.  It was the perfect balance of resting, being with kids and reconnecting with the hubby.  What could be better? Now there’s just the laundry to get through.

 

Not Happy with No Power

It was nuts yesterday.  We suddenly had the craziest power outage. Well I guess it wasn’t really all that sudden as the weather had been indicative of something like this happening.  And, I shouldn’t be all that surprised as I am used to our crazy weathers.  Still, I don’t remember having such a long-lived power outage. Thankfully our house is very well-insulated so the crazy storm that was raging outside didn’t impact us in terms of being cold, or windows shaking.  But it did affect the power.  Daniel told me today that we weren’t alone; apparently around 30,000 homes throughout Oregon also lost power.  He’d read about it on a statement from Portland General Electric.

What happened was, first there was snow (in the early evening Jayden really wanted to go play in it but I figured it would just be a slippery mess rather than something fun for him to actually play with so I said no).  That very quickly turned into rain as the snow melted and there was just a mess of slush (as I’d predicted).  Anyway, things are pretty much back to normal now but it reminded me that we have to go and get those emergency light thingies so that our house can at least have some light if – or I should say when – this happens again.

At least now it’s back I can get back onto Facebook.  Because, as Daniel says, that is my main priority!  Have a great Thursday!

Portlandia Again

 

So you remember I started watching this show ‘Portlandia?’ It’s all about an idyll world, everything easy in which people are free to do whatever they want.  So I’m not sure I explained it well: this guy comes to LA and says he was just in Portland, and while he was living there, it was “the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland” and you could just do whatever you wanted.  “Portland is almost like an alternative universe,” he said. The environment is friendly; people ride bikes, no cars, everything is peaceful and good.

But then, within a few minutes, one of the characters spirals with all his gadgets and gizmos and feels the need to text, watch all his movies, go crazy on the Internet, iPad, YouTube, etc.  He’s miserable and overwhelmed.  He needs to free his mind from all this stuff and go back to basics.  Ironically it shows how over-the-top going back to basics can be, which misses the point. 

It’s very interesting.  It’s about a bunch of totally weird people doing totally weird things and men wearing skirts locking innocent people in their stores; all which seem to be accepted in Portland!  Well now you know how much I love my city but I sure hope it won’t become an acceptable behavior to lock people in stores against their will!  As Daniel says, I must remember it’s just a TV show.

Taking Ethan “Swimming”

Since we took Jayden to a friend’s hydrotherapy pool when he was 5-months-old for swim classes (well, actually it was really more like water-appreciation classes), we felt bad we hadn’t done the same for Ethan.  He’s already 15-months and it’s always been a priority for Daniel and me to not treat him like “second best” being a second child.  Problem was however, her pool closed a couple of years back and it is a bit tougher to get to the Children of the Sea Swim School.  Which shouldn’t really be surprising since the friend’s hydrotherapy pool was on our block.

I was certainly glad Daniel did finally make reservations for the class however, since Ethan had such a great time at his first class last night.  We signed up for an initial four classes.  Daniel said it was pretty similar to what Jayden had done – dunking the kids under water; singing with them; putting them on plastic horses, etc.  At first Ethan – perhaps not surprisingly – was a little cautious.  I mean, it’s not as if we could explain to him as we were putting swim diapers on him where he was going or that he was about to be submerged under water for around 5 seconds four times in 20 minutes.  Still, Daniel said that after a while he really got into it.  Since I wasn’t able to go (I did some stuff with Jayden) we didn’t get a photo this time but hopefully at some point we’ll both take both the boys (to actually teach Jayden to swim; right now he thinks he can swim which is the worst scenario) and then we’ll make it a fun family activity.

Anyway the staff at Children of the Sea is really excellent – professional, child-loving, caring and enthusiastic about what they are doing – so we think it’s going to be a great fit for both our boys.