Charades

One of the ways Ryan passed the time at urgent care was playing charades. Can you guess what he is?

Hint: Think Star Wars.

Celebrating Abby's Birthday

We took advantage of our first day with temps above the 60s to be outside enjoying the sunshine. Since it was Abby's birthday, we got her "approval" to go to the coast and do some tide pooling. First we stopped at a fun logging camp restaurant, Camp 18, and Ryan wouldn't stop bugging us to go climb on all the old equipment.


Then, much to Ryan's dismay, we made a brief stop to see what was left of the tallest Sitka Spruce in the U.S. Ryan had no interest in this at all and just wanted to get to the beach!


Not the Sitka we came to see, but a neat tree formation nonetheless.
Finally, after some parking issues, we managed to climb down onto the beach. There were lots of people out enjoying the negative tide and the sunshine, but it really wasn't too terribly crowded.



Haystack Rock and the Needles.
Ryan was dying to see starfish (which he did), and he also saw muscles like this huge one he's holding, and anenomes and other critters. He even muscled up the courage to hold a hermit crab that Daddy found among the rocks and barnacles!



Ryan really enjoyed himself, especially once he found his much-sought after starfish. But all good things have to end, and the tide came in after a couple of hours so we left the beach and went geocaching before heading home.


Once we arrived home both kids were dying for Abby to open her gifts. Ryan has known what he wanted to get Abby for months now, and she was very excited to get it, a baby to go with her other Snap 'N Style dolls! Here he's giving her a birthday kiss, for him a more magnanimous gesture than the gift itself.


We were hoping that once Abby got a bike Ryan's competitiveness wouldn't allow him to give in to his fear any longer, and we weren't disappointed! While Abby was getting her new helmet and pads on, Ryan got out his long-forgotten bike and tore around the street like he had been riding it every day for the last two years. We hardly been able to get him to ride it because his fear of falling sucks all the joy out of him riding it (and drives me to distraction!), but yesterday he either conquered his fear or quit pretending to be so afraid and had a blast riding bikes with his sister!

LaCrosse Game

Daddy won tickets to see Portland's professional LaCrosse team the Lumberjax Friday night. We have been wanting to go, but now we had a great reason to do so...it was free! We picked up Daddy from work and then went out to dinner at Red Robin since we had a free coupon due to Abby's birthday. Then we parked on the street and took the light rail to the Rose Garden Arena.


Both kids were really excited, but Ryan particularly so. We had to read the rules in the program since we had no idea how the game is played, but it was a fast-paced game and we had a good time. I think Ryan's favorite part is yelling!



The music was incredibly loud, the people behind us terribly profane (although a bit better after we asked them to cut out the foul language) and Lumberjax ended up losing, but we still enjoyed our evening and may try to go again sometime.


Jaxon, the mascot.

New Challenge

Ryan has grown so skilled at checkers that he has been beating Daddy quite a bit lately. This afternoon Daddy broke out Stratego and started to teach him how to play. I stink at this game, and Daddy's hoping Ryan will get good enough at it that he will be a challenge to him since I won't play with him any more.

Doing Math

Whatever works has been my motto lately. Ryan has taken to doing his math book in strange spots lately. I used to fight with him to get him to sit at the table "correctly," but I just decided that wasn't a battle that was worth having. Now, with the exception of doing his assigned writing, he can sit however he wants as long as I can read his work and he isn't distracted.

Blooming Capitalist

Ryan has discovered the value of money in recent months. He has been asking for ways to earn money and has expressed some pretty capitalistic ideas. For instance, when Gramie was here we were waiting while our gas tank was being filled (yep, we aren't allowed to pump our own gas in Oregon), and Ryan said, "Mommy, when I grow up and if I own a gas station, if more people want diesel than gas, I'm going to raise the price of diesel, but if more people want gas than diesel, then I'm going to raise the price of gas and lower diesel."


Then when he found out that the bank pays you to put money into savings, he wanted to run right down and get his small fortune put into the bank! I think his main motivation is that he really wants to save enough money to buy this really cool R2-D2 robot that he saw on a video some time ago. Hopefully by the time he saves $120 he will be done with his R2 obsession and will use the money for something else! In the meantime he has been having fun translating words and phrases into "R2" with this cute website.

Goofing Off

I have a list of things I had planned to get done while Daddy was gone, but, alas, they remain undone so far. We are all missing him so much that on a whim I decided to just have a fun day yesterday. Ryan was counting his money and asking questions about banking, and once he heard you can earn interest, he wanted to go to the bank right then and put his meager savings into his bank account. He also wanted a tour of the bank but had to content himself with being lifted up to see behind the counter and taking a look into the vault (really, what else is there?). Being a typical six-year-old though, he found the play area infinitely more interesting than anything the bank had to offer!


After our bank outing we went out to breakfast at a local restaurant, then to a new place that just opened a few weeks ago called Out of This World (or what the kids call Pizza Planet). We got some half-off gift certificates and decided to buy a membership last week. I brought my book and just let the kids play to their heart's content. We stayed for FOUR hours, and they had a blast. They wanted to stay longer, but we were all hungry and I didn't want to buy food there (we're saving that for Abby's birthday).


In addition to the three-story play structure,
they have inflatables...

and a rock crawl (not to be confused
with a rock climbing wall!)...

and what they call Glider cars. Of course R & A have their
very own and were racing around like mad on the race track!

Again, Ryan has his own train table, but he still
spent quite a bit of time playing with this one.

After getting a quick bite to eat, we picked up some milk and the game of Life at Fred Meyer. We came home played the game and then it was bedtime. It was a very fun day for all, and the kids fell asleep almost as soon as their heads hit the pillow!

Reading Time

I went to check on how Ryan's reading was going yesterday and found him training his buddies how to read. He had a book open for each one, and they were all happily reading their stories. Sprinkles was reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Speckles was reading The Tale of Jasper Jay, and Ryan was reading Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue!

No Joke

I thought maybe it was an April Fool's joke when I saw the forecast for April 1st was completely dry and 60 degrees! Thankfully, it wasn't a joke, and we got outside and had a wonderful time in the sunshine. We went to the park for several hours, and then came home and planted some shrubs in our empty flower beds. When Daddy came home, he mowed the lawn while Ryan pulled weeds for about an hour (and earned three bucks doing so)!


Yes, believe it or not, there are shrubs in that flower bed!