Westmoreland Asays

For the first time as a complete family unit, we participated in the 15th annual Monster March. The local business association sponsors the walk--which includes police escort--that travels from Llewellyn Elementary, through, downtown Westmoreland, and back to the school. People and businesses line the street to watch and hand out candy to the costumed participants. Ian wore his ninja costume from last halloween, Edward dressed as a hippie, Aaron wore his Thomas the Tank Engine costume ironically (he was a little embarrased at first, but his friends really liked his choice), Meg dressed as Black Widow (one of the Avengers from Marvel Comics), and I was Hawkeye (also from the Avengers, and one of the love interests of Black Widow).

Sports have been an important part of my life since I can remember. I played any sport I could, whether it was wiffleball with the Stone Hedge posse growing up or running on the cross country team in college. I make a conscious effort not to re-live my life through my children, so I haven't tried to push any of them to do play sports like I did. So I was mildly surprised and really excited when Aaron expressed his interest in playing football this past summer. Unfortunately, his fifth-sixth grade team could not recruit enough players so they did not field a team, but that didn't stop him from conditioning and practicing every night--sometimes in 100 degrees of heat, and once or twice in rain storms. Fortunately, there was another team in the neighborhood that agreed to scrimmage with Aaron's team for five or six practice games in the fall. The season went through mid-October, and by the end Aaron was ready to be done; but after a week or so he was already hankering to tac...

I took an afternoon away from the office to drive with the family to our second-annual visit to Sauvie Island to guzzle autumn beverages, scout for pumpkins to harvest, wander through a corn maze, and breath in some of the last warm air of the year.

We departed early on Friday--I took a half-day vacation, and we rescued Aaron from his last class of the day at middle school--hoping to beat rush-hour traffic, and were able to get out of town without incident. We left a partially sunny Portland only to run into rain falling through the coast range. Driving through rain usually isn't a problem, but when your van can no longer stay in gear, it just adds fuel to the frustration fire. Meg had been complaining about the slow-driving cars in front of us, but we soon became even slower than them all--karma unveiled its ugly head. She pulled over to the side of the road, and I exited the vehicle carefully and ensured that all four tires were properly inflated and had traction. Unfortunately, the problem wasn't something that simple and observable. Meg asked that I try driving--perhaps the Michael-effect would magically fix the problem. I was able to pull back on the highway, but after accelerating to second gear, the transmission c...

Somehow Meg found a way to offload our children--on a holiday weekend even--to two different families for about 30 hours so the two of us could get away for some alone time before the stressful start of school. Although Meg had secured a room at The Resort at the Mountain with the idea that our family of five would stay there, it worked out plenty fine for just the two of us. After dropping the children off at their friends' houses, we drove the scenic route (read: through the more repressed areas of the city before making it out to the country) to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. I had visited the lodge a couple of times--and I think watching The Shining a few times counts for something, too--but a visit was on Meg's virtual bucket list, and she had a gift certificate for the lodge, so she wanted to have lunch there with our friends, Susan and Chris. We drove through some rain, though not the downpours we experienced the day before, but it was dry-and-foggy-and-windy at the l...

We adopted a pet turtle, Shelly, last spring . She's lived in a large, plastic tub in the corner of Aaron's room ever since. The children take her outside for short stints (if she's lucky), but mostly she eats, breathes, and sleeps in the tub. I have long felt sorry that Shelly has to live in such an unnatural setting, and I finally got around to doing something for her that I thought she would enjoy. I spent a bit of time studying where an outdoor pen would be best situated; unfortunately, the best places--those with early or nearly all-day sunshine--would not work on our property. We have a small garden area in the back, next to the garage, that houses three rose bushes--one of which I've been eager to get rid of--and which receives a decent amount of sun in the afternoon and isn't so public facing to the many animals that wander in front of our house during the day. I had a fair amount of leftover cedar planks from earlier projects, so I needed one long board a...

Last year for Independence Day we camped at Lost Creek and hiked nearly to Ramona Falls (which Meg recently lamented not making to the falls and wants to return--hooray!). I liked that a lot, but this year Meg reserved a yurt for us at Nehalem Bay after the holiday. On Independence Day we took a family hike through Westmoreland and Sellwood, stopping at wild places like gluten-free bakeries for a treat (although I've yet to meet a gluten-free baked good that I really liked) and the Boys and Girls Club for the younger ones to play on the playground (we left Aaron at home, as he was still sleeping). That afternoon we went as a family to one of Aaron's friend's house for food and badminton. And we concluded the evening watching fireworks from the Sellwood bluff. We left early Sunday morning to drive to the coast so we could spend most of the day at the beach before checking in to our Yurt at the campground. I took the boys to Nehalem Bay last year , which proved to be f...