Gilbert Discovery Village

The libraries around here do something really neat. They have what is called a "cultural pass" which you can check out from the library. the pass itself is pretty tacky. It's a VHS case with a flyer of the attraction in it. They have passes to the Pittock Mansion (one of my favorite places), the japanese garden, children's museum, Gilbert discovery village, and a few others. The pass is good for one day and gets you in to the event free.

Anyway, we decided to check out the Gilbert Village. It is a group of three houses built in the late 1800's that have been turned into a children's/science activity place. It is named after A.C. Gilbert, a toy manufacturer from the 20th century. He is mainly known for his invention of the Erector Set.

One of the displays was a bubble room, where you could even make a life-size bubble.

They also had a dinosaur room...



My favorite part was the old houses and just imagining what life was like in them over 100 years ago. I love the enormously high ceilings, the woodwork, the big windows, I'm fascinated by that kind of stuff...

But the kids liked the playground best. It was pretty amazing. They had this huge slide that went around and around and around! In the middle, it got pitch black! There were levels and stairs, and so many hiding places! Luckily the rain stopped for a few hours and we were able to play.



Michael got really excited when he saw the "Thomas." Lately he calls any train or anything related to trains, Thomas.


When Chelsea saw this truck she said "Daddy, get in the back of the truck and be garbage." So, Daddy got in the back of the truck with Michael and they made sad faces to show their hurt feelings from being called garbage.


It was a long drive to get there, but I'm glad we took the trip. It makes me wonder what other fun stuff there is to do in Portland that we haven't discovered yet...

ALLELUJAH!!!!!

So, we've still been having serious computer issues. On top of everything, the work printer died on us. I did not realize what a pain it is to live without a printer...especially with work! I was having to e-mail myself documents and then go to the library to print them off (at 15 cents a sheet too!!!)

Well, one of the perks of a manager, was that I got to pick out a new one. I got an Epson all-in-one machine. It faxes, copies, prints, scans, dices, and blends! Okay, not quite the last two, but so far I've been playing with it and it's SO cool! It's pretty big, but now I can get rid of the bulky old printer and fax machine.

But the best part is....I CAN UPLOAD PICTURES TO MY COMPUTER FROM IT!!! AAHHH! I'm soooo excited. I started screaming, clapping my hands, and jumping up and down when it happened! NO more crazy uploading and downloading from computer to computer! JUST ONE STEP! HELLO....a plethera of pictures will be coming! But now, I need to make dinner and start on my talk for Sunday...but SOON!

Double Trouble

Last Saturday I left the house for about 15 minutes to pick up my crockpot from a friend's house. When I got back, my sweet husband was on the computer, and the house was...well, disturbingly quiet. I asked him where the kids were, and he said "I don't know...probably upstairs...they were here just a second ago." So, we went to go find them, and this is what we found. Somehow, pretend cooking just isn't the same as real cooking. The flour was EVERY where.

Not only that, but their room was a disaster. Our apartment is getting so cramped that if I don't keep it picked up, I feel like I'm going crazy. So, now the flour is on their blankets, inside their beds, on their clothes, toys, slippers, EVERY where. To my suprise, it wasn't that bad to clean it up, thanks to a machine called a vacuum. This just confirms the saying that says something about silence only brings trouble, especially when there's a Chelsea and Michael involved.

My brother rocks...and other stuff

You may not care to read this, but I feel I need to explain my lack of blogging. There are two computers in our apartment. Our dinosaur mac in our room which we mainly use to put pictures on. (Don't worry, we have made hard copies of the pictures from time to time...although it's probably time again) Then there's the work one in the kitchen which is connected to the internet. You'll have top excuse my lack of technical terms, but hopefully you'll get the idea of what I'm talking about. We don't have one of those cable things to connect our camera to the work computer, so the only way to put pictures on the computer is to take out the memory card, insert it in our old kodak easy share camera, which is basically broken and only works to transfer pictures to the computer from the easy share dock, and upload them to the dinosaur mac. From there, we take the pictures off of i-photo and put them on a flashdrive stick thingy and then take that downstairs to the work computer to upload them temporarily to get them on the blog.

Yeah, it's basically a BIG pain, but since I love you all so much and I know how much you want to see my family each and every day, I do it. :)

So, here's the excuse: Our flashdrive suddenly died. So, I got a new one, but just a small memory capacity one, because we'd only use it to transfer our pictures. When I went to put it in the mac, the mac said "NOt enough power to use this USB drive." What?! I put it in a few other drives, but the same thing happened. So what do I do? I call up my computer genius brother, Nate, and ask him for help. For some reason, the flashdrive was full...even though I had never used it before...so we erased it, and it now works. Kinda. I had a few issues with it still tonight as I discovered the USB port in the keyboard doesn't work...which makes another part of the story which I shall skip.

True, I could have blogged without pictures...but we all know what you are really interested in. And let's just be honest...my writing is not exactly entertaining. If I could write like my friend Janette, I would never have the need to post a picture again. She cracks me up with EVERY entry. (Thanks Janette)

Anyway, there are pictures coming. But of course, I can't post them all now! I have to keep you in suspense in case something more drastic happens and I can't post any more pictures until we get a new camera or computer (which lets face it...won't be happening any time soon).

What a guy!

It's a good thing Dan is so awesome. Michael is constantly breaking things but nothing Dan hasn't been able to fix so far. MOst often, it's the DVD player. Michael likes to think he knows how it works and constantly gets movies, DVD's and all sorts of things jammed inside. I tried to get the camera before Dan had it all put together again, but he's just to speedy.

I also had to post this picture. Dan is so good with our kids and although mom gives the better baths, Dad is way more fun to play with. They wrestle, play chase, make forts, and somehow, he can get them to snuggle with him. It's a secret I haven't learned yet. They seem to enjoy kicking me in the gut more than they like to snuggle with me. Even when they were babies Dan could always get them to sleep, just by snuggling. Can't blame them...it works for me too!

Our trip to Spokane

***WARNING: This is an insanely, pointless, record long post for me and may get boring, so read at your own risk.***

Well, we finally made it over the Snoqualmie pass to what we hope is our future city, Spokane. Chelsea and Michael were more than happy to spend a few days with Grandma, Grandpa, and Melissa, although I personally missed them a little. However, it was really nice to have a break and just get some time with Dan, all to myself!


Dan did all of the driving while I drifted in and out of sleep. We had a nice trip, and for our purpose of going, a succesful trip. We checked in to our hotel about 3:00PM and then left to start scoping out the area. Our first stop, Liberty Lake. To me, it was perfect. Even though this sounds dumb, I almost started crying. There was a beautiful golf course, great looking neighborhoods, lots of trees, small mountains, and in the center of it, an LDS church. :) Just look for yourself!



Everyone refers to it as "up and coming", and you can tell that it is true. The place is relatively small now, but you can tell it's growing quickly.

After cruising the town for a while, we continued heading East about 5 minutes to the Idaho border where we of course had to stop here:


Then we headed back into Spokane to watch the new movie 10,000 B.C. Just walking into the theatre, we were quite impressed. The youth actually looked well groomed! There were only TWO R rated movies playing! DING! Another point for Spokane!



We headed back to what I consider to be one heck of an awesome motel. We missed the complimentary milk and cookies for the night, but got to soak in the hot tub for a while. The complimentary breakfast in the morning was incredible! Maybe it's just been that long since I've stayed at a hotel to realize how much they have evolved from just cold cereal, but I'd rather just believe that it was our awesome hotel. I had scrambled eggs, sausage, orange juice, a belgian waffle with strawberries, and a bagel. What a SELECTION!

We met up with a dental broker at Starbucks, whom I was really impressed by. She talked with Dan about what he was looking for in a dental practice and really gave us some great advice about what to look for. IF we decide to go that route, I feel really good about having her work for us. OKay, I know, this is getting really boring. So then we drove up to Deer Park, because we have some contacts up there, but decided it was much too far from Spokane then we would like, so we came back to downtown Portland to hang out.

We ate lunch at Olive Garden (yum, yum yum!) and while we were waiting to be seated there just happened to be a running store next door. WOO HOO! Dan let me splurge on a new pair of shoes, which I really hope will help fix my knee problems. They didn't have a pair in my size (gotta love Hadfield feet), so they will be shipping my shoes to me.


Then we caught another movie inside the large shopping mall downtown. It was so cool! (I'm easily pleased) If you look inside the windows of the picture, you can see several escalators. At the top of the mall part, you purchased your ticket to the movie, then went up an "exclusive to ticket holders" escalator to the concession stand, and then yet up another escalator to your theatre. The theatre rooms were quite small, but I didnt' care! I was in the attic of a mall! Ya gotta try it! :)

Back at our stellar hotel, we worked out at the gym, went swimming, and made it for milk and cookies.

We think we will be very happy in Spokane...so now, what are you waiting for? Here's a few more pictures to entice you to come join us. The only thing lacking in Spokane, is family. (Insert puppy dog face here....)


Isn't it perfect?!

Book Tag

Yea! I've been tagged!

The Rules...


Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).
Turn to page 123
Find the 5th sentence
Post the 5th sentence on your blog
Tag 5 people

So, the closest book to me right now, is the FHE manual on the kitchen table due to me trying to prepare sharing time for Sunday. I flipped to page 123 and.....it's a picture. So, let's go get the NEXT closest book. Ah, here it is. It's Dan's ultramathon book called "Running through the Wall" by Neal Jaminson

The fifth sentence on page 123 reads:
The alarm woke me up, and I felt suprisingly refreshed and aler from my 45-minute nap.

(Um, Ultramarathoners are very admirable, but also psycho! "refreshed" after 45 minutes? I don't think so....)

I tag: Melinda S. (YUP! better get that blog up and running) Melissa P, Tawna S, Tami S, Emily P.

Stubborn...but I still win!

Michael is usually pretty good about taking his naps. Some days he just doesn't want to lay down, even though Mom knows he is exhausted. Today I had to keep putting him back in his bed, or yelling from downstairs (oh yes, I yell. Some may find that hard to believe...but I'm really quite good at it...) to get back in bed. When the creaking of the ceiling finally ceased (one of the benefits of an apartment), I went upstairs to close the bedroom door so I could start practicing the piano. When I got to the top of the stairs, this is what I found. The pillow and blanket make it obvious that this was intentional. He was NOT going to sleep in his bed, but at least he fell asleep. I picked him up and stuck him in his bed and he didn't even budge. I told you mom knows all. :)

A visit from Family

Last weekend, my brother Nate and his family came to visit us in Portland. We had such a great time and they were real troopers to stay with us in our little apartment with only ONE bathroom. :) Even though she didn't feel well, Molly still went to all the fun places with us. It was really fun to see Cannon again and to be able to have him all to ourselves. He is such a cute kid! When I first told Michael that his cousin Cannon was coming to visit, he kept thinking I was saying "Candy" and would get really excited. Although Cannon is not quite candy, I don't think Michael was dissapointed to play with such a fun friend. Nate took us out to eat at Red Robin (YUM!) and Cannon spilled a drink all over, so they took off his pants. I just thought this was such a cute picture. He didn't care that he was pantless, he was just thrilled to have a balloon. The weather was actually pretty decent for their visit, so we went to the Oregon zoo. Unfortunately, it was a pretty quick visit since we had to get Chelsea back for Preschool. We still saw a lot of neat things. The polar bears were really putting on a show, which was really fun since they are usually sleeping. My favorite part are the bats. I just find them so fascinating. Cannon and Michael liked petting the goats, and Chelsea loved all the free rides on Uncle Nate-Nate's shoulders. We also went swimming at a really fun indoor pool. It has a great play structure for the little kids and a twisty slide that both Chelsea and Michael LOVED. Michael would get so mad at me when I tried to take him down because he wanted to do it by himself. He'd push me and say "Myco DO IT!" The lifeguards wouldn't let him go by himself, so he let Daddy take him down. Daddy's are always more fun. We had a great time with them and really appreciate them coming up to see us. We're hoping to finally make it down to Utah this summer when I am free from Managing. (OH man, I can't wait! Especially after a morning like this morning, but that's for another post....)