Westmoreland Asays

Memorial Day weekend 2014 found us engaged in a variety of activities: we watched the new X-Men film at the local cinema, Meg and I ate sushi at Saburo's, Meg hosted a party at the neighborhood painting place (just a few doors down on our street, actually) and we partook of a short, urban hike in Forest Park with all the boys and two of their friends. Our hike was cut short, however, as part of the trail we were hiking was closed for some undisclosed reason. The end.

While partaking my first snack on the first afternoon of chaperone duty on my three-day, two-night stay at Camp Namanu--home of Llewellyn's fifth-grave outdoor school--I felt my excitement rise when learning of the complex food and waste disposal processes we were to follow. The rules are pretty simple, I think, but to outsiders it probably feels frustrating. With all the thought they put in to how to remove waste from the camp, surely an equal or greater thought went into the rest of the camp processes. But I think both Aaron and I left a little disappointed. Camp Namanu lies about 30 miles east of the central city. The forecast for was the 90's in the valley, but fortunately our location was about 10 degrees cooler, plus we were adventuring under cover of the forest most of the time.The science aspect of the camp was pretty light: they talked about stuff, stopped and analyzed things they came upon, but there wasn't any experimenting and not much hands-on. Considerin...

Meg wanted to celebrate being the mother of many children by taking a trip to near-by Mt. Tabor--Portland's very own volcano-in-the-middle-of-the-city. Apparently a lot of other people thought the same thing, as the mountain was swarming with people. The previous week had been cold and rainy, so I think a lot of people were itching to just get out of the house. We drove to a parking lot near the summit and let the kids run around the playground and play catch with the football. We then hiked around the mountain in search of a nice view for Meg's second request of the day: a family portrait . We walked around the top of the mountain for a while before retreating back to the car and then into town for a treat. One of Meg's gifts was a Fitbit One , which functions as a pedometer on steroids. It doesn't just track how many steps she takes, but the total mileage, calories burned, and hours of sleep. The idea is to motivate the wearer to remain active throughout the day; th...

In March Edward worked on a multi-week project on an important historical figure of his choosing. His selection: Captain James Cook. His two biggest assignments were a poster detailing Captain Cook--which he struggled to find the motivation to complete--and giving a two-minute speech in front of his classmates. His teacher recorded his performance (unfortunately her recording cut-off his dramatic last line: "And from now on I will sail the ghost ship . . .") and provided us with a copy. I captioned the recording and present it here for your enjoyment. Edward loathes writing, but I think he loves performing for an audience.