Four Part Harmony

I’ve been meaning to put a few pictures up of our house now that the painters have officially packed up their tarps and hit the road.

I just asked Nicki, “Hey, how long were the painters here? 3 weeks?”

“Yeah.” she said. “Three long weeks.”

They did a great job though, all in all. They spent a lot of time going back and caulking up every little gap and crevice in the siding, and spent a lot of time backbrushing everything in. Two full coats everywhere, so we’re feeling like we’ve got a good solid base.

In terms of colors, we pretty much went with our old standby technique of a quick evaluation and a snap decision. We did bring Anna and Milo out to the paint store early one morning to peruse the color options. We pretty quickly settled on a palette of colors, and brought a few samples home to test on the side of the house. We ended up mixing and matching a bit, but ended up going with a lighter body color (which we both thought was a shade of green(?!). We used a slightly darker color on the upstairs front and the dormers, which is really hardly noticeable except from certain angles, and we went with a creamy/light colored trim color. We ended up painting the porch a really nice dark purplish color that we both like so much that we may go back on our own and paint that on as an accent color in a few places (if we get around to it) There is some crown molding under the eaves and some little places here and there that could probably stand a little color.

It’s nice to have the garage painted too, and the color really complements the multi-tone roof scheme. I hope that when we finally get around to replacing the roof on the garage that we can do something as visionary.

As much as we’re still kind of settling in to the overall color scheme (maybe too plain?), we’re pretty excited to have the house painted after several summers of promising ourselves that we’d get it taken care of. We’ve been holding off on really thinking about doing anything with the yard in terms of planting any trees or shrubs or putting in any new garden space until the painting was finished, so we’ve begun starting to brainstorm all of the planting we want to get done this fall. Hopefully some apple trees!

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We had parallel weekends at the coast this past weekend. Nicki and Milo went out around Lincoln City Newport with some girlfriends for a bachelorette party, and Anna and I were up in Washington at the mouth of the Columbia River.

It was hot here in Portland all weekend. Really hot. It was up over and around 100 for a few days in a row and never really even cooled off at night. I had initially been planning to take Anna on a short backpacking trip as we haven’t managed to fit one in yet this summer, but as it got closer to Friday we could tell that the heat was just going to be too much. Pretty much all of the Northwest was feeling the heat, except the coast, which was forecasting cloudy mornings and sunny afternoons. We changed our plans at the last minute and decided to head out to Cape Disappointment, a state park that’s right across the Columbia from Astoria. I’d worked there several years back, and had been looking for an excuse to get back there. It’s where (or whereabouts) Lewis and Clark and their entourage first laid eyes on the Pacific Ocean.

The coast was certainly cooler, in fact it was downright chilly. Anna and I drove in the sun and the heat right up until the ocean was in sight, and then caught a glimpse of our little sliver of land shrouded in fog. We got to our campsite and quickly changed into warmer clothes. The above picture is from Nicki’s trip. I can’t provide very interesting captions since I wasn’t there (I’m not even sure who it is in that picture), but it’s nice to see that the cool weather didn’t stop anyone from running around on the beach.

Anna was a great camping companion. She helped with setting up the tent, laying out and arranging the sleeping bags and pillows, cooking dinner, collecting twigs, and making a small fire (no campfire issues there on the misty coastline). She discovered a fondness for trail mix. We didn’t have a real elaborate camping set-up, but I did make sure to bring along plenty of snacks, which pretty much made the weekend for Anna. We sat up by the fire telling stories until dark, then went to bed as it started raining a bit.

Next morning was nicer for us, and we had a walk on the beach after breakfast.

Nicki and the girls had nicer weather on Saturday too, once the morning fog burned off. Here’s Nicki and Milo sitting on the beach. Milo was recovering from a fever that had us in the Emergency Room (!) Thursday evening (it’s turned out OK, and as far as we know was just a little virus). He was probably thankful to be away from the Portland heatwave. I’m not sure what he thought of being the only boy in a house full of girls at a bachelorette/girls weekend, but he seems to have survived it somehow.

He got to spend a lot of time with his friend and fellow newborn Lilly. Here they are relaxing under a beach umbrella and looking pretty content.

Meanwhile, up in Washington, Anna and I went on a short hike up the hill to this old lighthouse right out on the point.

A view to the north on our lighthouse hike. We took our time heading home on Saturday. We stopped in Astoria for lunch and walked along the waterfront there. We got home late in the afternoon, and everything was still pretty hot, so we went down for a dip in the pool down at the Erving’s and ended up staying for dinner. A nice end to the day.

Nicki and Milo and the girls spent Saturday night and Sunday morning at the beach. Sounded like they were having a lot of fun.

Milo seems to have beat his fever, and is getting back to his happy old self again.

This coming weekend we’re back out at the coast again. My band is playing at this festival in Astoria which should be a lot of fun. Come on out if you’re in the neighborhood…

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The day after our Seattle trip was Anna’s 3rd Birthday!

She’s pretty clued in to the whole concept of birthdays and ages and stuff of that nature, and we’d been talking for a long time about how exciting it was that she was about to turn 3 years old. We had done our best to make all of the necessary birthday preparations the night before (while trying to unpack from the trip). We spent the previous night cooking for the party, wrapping presents, getting stuff ready etc. It made for a hectic night, but it was worth it to have the day to give to Anna and not feel like we had a million other things to do.

We woke up on Anna’s birthday and opened a few of her cards and presents, which she had fun doing. I told her I’d make her any breakfast she wanted, (I usually tell her that most mornings, though). I can’t remember if she chose oatmeal or pancakes…it was one of the two (it usually is). Some of Anna’s friends came over after breakfast to play, and that’s how she spent a good portion of the day. She got a quick nap in, and then it was time to head out to the party we had planned for her and Kadin. You all might remember that Anna and our neighbor/friend Kadin share a birthday one year apart. So the past two years we’ve had joint birthday parties for the two of them which has been pretty fun for them I think.

This year we had reserved a spot in the Mt. Scott Park. It was pretty nice and shady, and there was plenty of playground stuff to keep the kids having fun.

Anna also found her own stuff to play on. Actually, bubbles were a big hit with all the kids. So was baggo, the bean bag toss game.

Cake, of course was a hit.

Anna beamed when we started singing happy birthday. She does tend to like that part of any birthday party though. She and Kadin both successfully blew their candles out. No word on what was wished for. Probably a big piece of cake.

It was a really nice party all around. Plenty of good food and several good friends who it seems we just haven’t seemed to see enough of this summer.

I think it was a fun birthday for Anna. It’s hard to believe that she’s 3 years old already.

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To say we’ve had a lot going on lately would be a bit of an understatement.
For starters, we’re finally getting around to having the exterior of our house painted.

We’ve had a small crew here the past two weeks, and we’ve been a bit cooped up as a result. They’ve had the windows taped off and it’s been kind of dark and gloomy in the house. It got to the point where we had started referring to the house as “the cave”.

Thankfully, we had planned a weekday trip to Seattle, to take advantage of some free Mariners tickets that I had gotten from work. We decided that it would be fun for Anna (and us too) to take the train up there and spend the night.

Here we are in front of the Portland train station preparing to head out on our adventure.

Riding the train.

We stayed in a little hotel right across the street from the field, and just a block or two down from the train station. Here’s a shot of the stadium from the rooftop balcony. The hotel had a shuttle van that would drop you off and pick you up at various points throughout the city, and we really didn’t miss having a vehicle at all.

There was also a pool up on top of the balcony, so we managed to get a little swimming in too.

We got into town in the early afternoon, but the game wasn’t until 7:00 so we hopped on the shuttle and went to the aquarium on a whim. Didn’t get many photos there, but had a lot of fun. Otters and seals were the big highlights. We spent a few hours there, caught a bus back to the hotel, walked over to the pyramid brewery that was right across the street, had a quick dinner and then headed over to the stadium for the game.

The Mariners were playing Minnesota, and I was conflicted. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the Twins in the past 10 years or so, but I still thought that they were My Team. I quickly realized, though, that I knew absolutely no one on Minnesota’s team. I guess Kirby Puckett retired at some point? No Kent Hrbek? Gary Gaetti? I did recognize at least a few of Seattle’s players, and they were the clear underdog in the game. And so, I finally came to terms with the fact that it seems I’m a Mariners fan now (at least until Portland gets their own MLB team).

It had already been a long, long day, and it was no surprise when Anna fell asleep sometime around the 3rd inning. She ran around for a while, watched the game in one or two pitch increments, tried out every unoccupied seat in the section, and then fell asleep in my arms.

Milo was pretty content, so we ended up sticking around until the seventh inning. Seattle was playing well, and had the lead when we left. We checked the paper in the morning, and sure enough they won.

Next morning we headed out to the Pike Place market and spent a leisurely morning wandering around.

Veggie stand.

Anna found this giant piggy bank on the corner.

We had time for a quick dip in the pool and then it was back to the train station to head back to Portland. The ride home took a bit longer than the ride up, but it was still nice.

Nicki had brought along a bunch of these sticky letters, so we made this little picture(?) to commemorate our trip. We got home late and had a bunch of preparations to make for Anna’s 3rd birthday the following day. I’ll put some pictures up from the big day later on.

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