Westmoreland Asays

Apparently there is a television show about Portland that will be debuting this winter. Here is a glimpse of what it's like to live here. We actually live a little south of hipster-ville, but we can catch glimpses of it every now and then.

Our Westmoreland Keeper For the second time this year, we moved to a new house in Southeast Portland. Both Meg and I hope it will be the last.We had originally planned to buy a townhouse in Sellwood, about a half-mile from where we where renting a house, but the deal eventually fell through. We were a little shocked when this happened, but we immediately began looking for something else and found something better. Technically, this house is in Westmoreland, but it's basically the same neighborhood as Sellwood. I'm 1.5 miles closer to work; the boys are about the same distance from school, although they won't be able to ride the bus anymore; and we're about 1.5 miles away from our church. Aaron even has a friend who lives two doors down (and his twin sister is in his class). We have a little more finished square footage in this house, five bedrooms, an unfinished (but usable) basement, a little backyard, and a detached two-car garage. It was built in 1922, but it has ...

In our church, kids can be baptized when they turn eight years old. Meg's family had mostly converged in Sherwood for Christmas, and my mom flew in from Salt Lake, so we had a large contingency attend the event. Aaron was so excited about his baptism, I think he was looking forward to it more than Christmas.Although when we arrived at the church and got dressed and with everyone focusing on him, he got nervous and clingy. But after his baptism, he was singing in the changing room and said he felt different, better, very happy.

Our family will probably remember Christmas 2010 as the time we moved, witnessed Aaron's baptism, and celebrated in Sherwood with the Boorens for the last time (Meg's parents' house is for sale, and they intend to move to Virginia). As such, we were overly-stressed and not able to relax and enjoy the normally joyous and fun season. The Move Meg and I had made several trips to the new house during the two weeks between the time we closed on the house and when we made the big move. so we didn't have much left to move but furniture when I brought home the rental truck on December 23rd. My friend Jon from church and I moved everything out of the old house and into the new house within two hours. Even though we only had a partially-filled 16-foot truck, loading and unloading everything literally drained all energy my arms had (my legs are always fine--I could have run a 1000 miles afterward if I had needed to). It would take us a few days to organize everything, but we wer...