Wednesday, April 28, 2010

baking cookies, testing Flickr

Jack and I recently made a batch of cookies to send to Nonnie. Since Alex showed me what a great tool Flickr was with the Japanese Garden photos, I thought I'd try my hand at using it. Here goes nothing....

Click here for the photos!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Japanese Garden

Jack and I went to Portland's Japanese Garden in Washington Park. Washington Park is awesome! It has the Japanese Garden, Chinese Garden, Arboretum, Zoo, Childrens' Museum, Forestry Center and I'm probably leaving out somethings. I figured it would be best to simply use Flickr to organize the 52 photos we took there.

Here is our Photostream.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Daffodil Walk!

On Sunday, Jack and I went with Chris, Daphne and Cyprus for a 5k walk in farm country. It was all for the Daffodil Festival over in Amity.

We walked. Then we walked some more. We strolled. We piggybacked. We backwards-walked. We shoulder-carried! We lent the stroller to Daphne for a little while, but I was really impressed that she walked about 4k on her own!

Of course, there was plenty of nature to look at, and even a few farm animals! Jack filled a diaper when we were almost done walking, and (of course) I hadn't brought any diapers or wipes! We made do with some helpful grass and just packed him back into his pants sans diaper. By this time I was giggling.

We made it up the last hill and over to the porti-potty. I was just looking at him wondering "What am I going to do now?" when a spot of wet appeared on his pants. This quickly became a flood that soaked his pants, socks, AND shoes! "Oh my!" I was stricken with belly laughs now!

There was nothing left to do but throw his wet clothes into the stroller and take him, wrapped pretty much only in my jacket, into the daffodil fields! After all, there were flowers to be picked! I plunked Jack next to a big clump of daffodils, since he really didn't like the feel of muddy ground on his feet. He spent the time decapitating daffodils, throwing the heads in a neat ring around where he sat, and sending me into fits of hysterics every time he farted and made me think another accident was impending!

Well, we got a nice big bouquet, and no more accidents after all. A short bus ride back to the car (how could it take five minutes to return us to the beginning of a 4-hour walk?) and we were back in diaper country!

It was all very adventurous, and totally worth it! After all, I got a bouquet of free daffodils out of the bargain! :)

school for Jack!

While I worked part-time at Delphian recently, Jack got to go to "school" in the nursery for staff/faculty kids. Well, my gig ended, so I had to take him out of that group. However, he had been having such a good time doing mornings at school, and learning SO much (he can count to six! sometimes all the way to ten!).... we decided we had to find another daycare for him to play at.

Enter Little Learners, a totally cute preschool facility about 10 minutes away from us. When we went for a visit, he jumped right into "Circle Time," which is when they sit in a group and read books, talk about toys, and other stuff like that. He didn't even care whether I was in the room!

Yesterday was his first day. They did a ton of activities, and (no surprise, considering how busy he had been) he fell right asleep at nap time. He had such a good time that on the way home he told me, "had fun. Had fun! Had fun," for almost five straight minutes!

So, with Jack in school three mornings per week, I am going to be working part-time (to pay for the daycare, essentially) at TTR with Alex! This is definitely a new phase of life for us all. It's proving to be very hectic, but very rewarding!

Thursday, April 8, 2010

blustery morning

Jack and I just had a great walk around 3rd Street. We visited the Red Fox, a great local bakery, and bought a croissant with chocolate drizzle on top. We snacked on it while walking around. Of course, Jack ate the drizzle and left the rest to me.... little did he know there was a chocolate center too!

Then we walked all the way down to the end of 3rd Street to find the library was closed.... all the way back up with a stop at Cornerstone Coffee to thaw out while admiring their coffee-roasting machine in the back.... stopped to holler about the sheer awesomeness of a big bronze statue of a cougar, had a couple of sips from a water fountain (which had an oval on the side, much to Jack's excitement!) and then it started to rain in earnest so we had to head for the car and come home.

We froze our buns off, but it was totally worth it. What a fun morning! :)