October 23rd weekend

This weekend I spent coordinating a variety of sleepovers.  At least it seems like that's all I did...

Oregon Fall is finally here.  It rained at various speeds through the weekend, so there was little desire to be outdoors.  That's a perfect weather to catch up of long ago started projects.  I finally completed two of the three collages and hung them up in the hallway.  Not perfect, but I really like them!  I also had to compromise on one of the sets.  There wasn't a long enough frame to fit all the images, and I certainly wasn't going to special-order a frame for what is meant to be a low budget project. Taking out one photo did the trick!

On Saturday we had insulation guys come in and redo insulation in the crawl space.  I can already feel like the house is warmer.  Or, maybe, someone cranked the heat up...  Not sure yet...

Afterwards, Jon and I stopped by the Home Depot to pick up a new air filter.  Turns out Home Depot sells pumpkins!  Score!  One less stop to make.

For some odd reason, Jon really likes pushing a shopping cart...

Tim found out that Fred Meyers store now sells Jelly Belly's in bulk.  Must be new, there was no price posted anywhere.  He couldn't decide which flavor to get, so he was about to just randomly try them all...  nah!  Just kidding!

 

On Sunday I volunteered at the Pass It On kids' consignment event on behalf of our kids' school.  I spend four hours keeping kids' clothing in order, then sorting it out at the end.  I think it will be some time before I have a desire to clean out MY kids' closets...

October 16th weekend

I just realized that I didn't post any updates for the last weekend.  Could be because it was a pretty ,slow and quiet weekend.  Not much happened...

Gabe decided to learn BMX bike and spent most of the weekend riding up and down our street, jumping curbs, etc.

We fumigated the house to get rid of the spiders, so I took Jon and Larissa out to the store and made a stop at Star Bucks, where we enjoyed our food and drinks, and tried to absorb as much sun as we could.  This could be our last chance for a while...

A while back Jon asked me to leave an egg in vinegar (which we have done before), but this time I kept forgetting to take it out.  Finally, we took the egg outside and found out that it swell up so much, it wouldn't fit out of the jar opening.  Seeing how this egg was sitting out raw for a couple of weeks, I sure didn't want to break it.  I can only imagine the smell...

I finished my shelve for the kids' bathroom.

We were so busy doing nothing, we forgot about the Family Art Day at the Hillsboro Art Center...  Oh, well, at least we caught up to all the missed TV shows...

On Tuesday, Miranda had a Fall Choir performance.  Every one's performance was very well delivered and we all enjoy watching High School students do something productive ;-)

October 9th weekend, more or less...

This was the week when I couldn't wait to get through and be done with.  It seems like there was so much scheduled that I was worried that I will forget something really important, like getting a cake for Jon's birthday (which almost happened...).

On Friday kids didn't have school, so I signed Larissa up for a day long Drama Camp.  It was held at a local high school, and even though it didn't turn out to be as exciting as I expected, kids seemed happy to be there.  Larissa watched a movie, learned a song, played with make up, and made some friends. 
She still needs to learn to speak up when it comes to her diabetes though...  I told the teachers that she needed to test regularly and they had no issues with it, it was Larissa who didn't know how to get their attention and get a break to test. She ended up leaving her meter in a lunch bag and only testing once, right before lunch...  Grr!  Needless to say, I was worried because she wouldn't text me her latest #s.  But it worked out ok, she was within norm when I picked her up at 4:30pm.  Kids put a few musical numbers onstage.  Here is Larissa's group - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsEaW_9Jxpw
She is on the left left, black pants, white shirt.

Saturday started off with a steady rain.  Not a good day to spend outside.  Luckily, Jon's 6th birthday was scheduled indoors.  We booked a party room at a movie theater with the movie and cake to follow up.  A few kids cancelled at the last minute.  When we got to the theater, we were told that movie time had shifted and we need to rethink the order of cake/movie/presents... Ok, I thought, let's just try to do this as fast as possible.  Success!  We did miss all the previews and a few minutes of the movie, but kids didn't seemed to care.
Cake was ok, not great, and all the red die...  wow!
We did get to see the giant movie projectors and a huge ice machine, which quite impressed the kids.

After getting all the kids back to their parents we went home and I prepared the old fashioned "carb load" for the family, I was getting ready for my (next day) 2010 Portland Marathon.  I know that "carb loading" is not necessary, but it's almost like a pre-race ritual.  It makes you feel better.

One restless night later, I was up on Sunday at 4am (even though my alarm was set for 5am)!  Still, contemplating at the last second on bailing out of the race.  I really didn't train this year at all.  My longest run was probably around 6 miles!!! and on top of that it was pouring down rain outside...
The typical over-achiever that I am, I decided to stick with the plan.  Thank goodness I got everything set out the night before!  My mind just wasn't working at a full capacity.

I managed to get ready and drove myself downtown Portland.  Just as I got closer to my destination, the drizzle turned into a shower...  Large crowds of runners and their families were everywhere.  Most were wearing trash bags to stay dry.  Some were hiding in the doorways.  I realize that there is no way I can get a street parking and I have no option of being dropped off at the start line!  Closest garage will do!!  Parking fee is $5, which I think is a rip off since (I believe) Sunday street parking is free, but someone always profits from the other people's need.  All I had was two 1$ bills and a bunch of quarters.  Money is money, cant refuse it!!  Hee hee.

After parking and finding my assigned corral "E", I still had to check my clothes bag in.  The line was so long, I missed my scheduled wave and had to join a later one.  It didn't really matter to me, since the run is chip-timed and my clock doesn't start till I actually cross the Start line.  Plus, I knew this was going to be a long and slow "run" (if you can even call that a run at all).

Before I even started, I was already miserable and wet, but determined to run as far as I can, then walk the rest.  I lasted 13 miles of running!  then, alternating running and walking, with walking becoming increasingly longer and longer...  At the end, my time wasn't great (or even good), but it was "only" ~40 minutes longer than last year's.  And most importantly, I finished!!!
While running, I took a few pictures, sent a few texts to Tim, got a few encouraging texts back :-)

This is just one of them from ~ mile 17

Oh, by the way, where were YOU on 10/10/10?  at 10:10am I was still running, and at 10:10pm I was heading to bed.  Too tired to stay up any longer!

October 2nd weekend.

This was one of the busiest weekends we had recently!

On Friday night Tim and I went on a movie Date Night.  First, we made reservations at Syun Sushi, and a good thing we did, the place was packed!  I guess that tells you how good their food is.  Expensive too, but so worth it! 

We were seated very close to a family that was celebrating their daughter/grand-daughter 16th birthday.  Everything was going very nice, until she started talking about being vegetarian...  What is it with the high schools kids.  They seem to be all obsessed with going vegetarian/vegan.  Or is it just Portland?..  Her Mom was complaining how hard it is to be a vegetarian...  No kidding!  Hard on a pocket!  Then she moved on, expressing her concern that her daughter was not getting enough nutrients...  Trust me, from where I was sitting, she was getting plenty.  LOL

The movie was not very good (Wall Street), but free is always good, so no complaints.

I managed to score some free tickets to a Children Theater play and to a Winterhawks hockey game, so kids and I did both on Saturday.  Since both events were in Portland, we just made a (very long) day out of it.  The play was nice.  Don't know how much the tickets would have been, but I would pay $10 a piece :-)

Next stop lunch at the mall, and riding escalators...  which, by the way, totally freak me out (at this Mall).

We were one of the first people to arrive and claim our hockey tickets and were rewarded with most excellent seats, two hats and two bobble head dolls.  Yeah!

With plenty of time before the game, we ate early dinner and kids played a little in a water fountain.

Our seats were in a second row, slightly off-center.  I couldn't hoped for the better ones.  At first kids were a little bored, but once we started getting players smashed into the glass in front of us, it got their attention. 

I think we would like to go to another game soon :-)

A long ride home on a MAX train and getting Miranda (and her friend) after her Homecoming school dance finished out busy day.

On Sunday we also had tickets to see another movie on Intel.  We saw Legend of the Guardians.  Not a bad movie, but I wonder if that was age appropriate for Jon...  Oh, well, he didn't seem to mind it.