Westmoreland Asays

Halloween in Western Eden usually produces cold and rain, but our streak of rain-free trick-or-treating sessions in Portland continued to three in a row. It rained much of the day, but the clouds broke for a few hours in the late afternoon and made life much more pleasant for our boys, who dressed up as follows: Edward : Luke Skywalker Bespin Aaron : Some kind of clone trooper from the Star Wars expanded universe Ian : Maverick from Top Gun, although he got mad when you called him that and insisted he was a "fighter pilot." I had taken the afternoon off of work so I could photograph the older boys' class parties at school, and afterwards we drove them to a couple of friends from church who lived not near enough for the boys to trick-or-treat, and both of whom are Ian's teachers in his nursery class. The first woman had just seen her son off on a two-year mission (meaning, she won't see or talk with him during that time, even though he will be a close d

Aaron and I enjoyed complimentary tickets to the Blazers game Friday night (thanks to the grand opening of the Sellwood Les Schwab). We rode the bus into NE Portland and ate at the nearby Applebee's using a giftcard that I had hoarded since Christmas. The restaraunt was packed, but we got seats within a few minutes of arriving, and we packed our food in just as quickly.   The arena was as empty as I've ever seen it. Our seats were pretty poor, so when we saw the cheer squad prancing up the stairs a few sections over to lead the silly game of having the crowd pass the game ball down to the court. I asked Aaron if he wanted to get in on the game and he quickly grabbed his jacket and ran over to the area where the ball was surely to pass. And pass it did. Since nobody was there, we just planted our butts in our adopted seats and enjoyed the game from a much better view. The Blazers lost to a similarly-mediocre team AND failed to push the score past 100 so we didn't even