Memorial Day Weekend Recap

What a weekend! We left Seattle late Friday evening and headed south to Portland. After crashing at my parents house in Tigard, we had a very full day lined up on Saturday and Sunday. Missi had to work on Saturday but the kids and I got to head out to my grandfather's house in Scholls (after we had breakfast at Davidson's Restaurant - where I worked as a server and busboy 12 years ago!). After working in the garden at the farm, playing a game of Wiffle Ball, taking a tractor ride, and getting some lunch at the quaint "South Store," we headed off to swim at Tualatin Country Club. One of the biggest factors to making this an amazing weekend was the consistent 72 deg temperature and blue skies. The swimming was part of the birthday party for Missi's younger sister, Ella, who was celebrating her ninth birthday. After the kids had a BLAST swimming for a few hours, it was off to Maggie (my MiL) and Fred's house for a BBQ. Sunday was spent going to church at our old church, having a picnic with some of our closest friends, and then to Missi's grandfather's house for his birthday party. After a few hours with the "Hillier" side of the family we bundled the kids back into the car and headed north. What a whirlwind!






















And that was only Saturday and Sunday!!! Today we had a lazy breakfast, went for a bike ride around Mercer Slough, swimming with friends, dinner on the back deck, capped off by a great game of croquet with neighbors. To sum up this weekend, I pass along a thought that passed through my mind tonight: "This weekend was so great it almost seemed like it was out of a made-for-TV movie!"

Our beautiful five year old little lady

Text to follow.

Bring Your Child to Work Day

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to bring Drew to the office with me for our firm's "Bring Your Children to Work Day." The interesting thing about this is that, even though Drew just turned 9 years old, this is the first time he's had an opportunity to be part of an official "go to work with dad"-type event like this. I guess that's what happens when Dad has been in school for the past 3 years! But I digress...
The day started off with a bus ride into the city, which I think Drew enjoyed. The firm did an amazing job of scheduling out the day and planning a whole variety of activities for all of the kids to take part in. The theme of the day (which came from a larger national organization) was "Building Partnerships to Educate and Empower." Toward this goal, the kids were split up into three different "teams" and were tasked with planning a community service project that would require them to build partnerships. Interestingly enough, two of the three groups chose a service project related to helping animals and/or animal shelters in the community. When they weren't working with their teams to develop the service project, the kids also had some "computer training" time with our awesome IT trainer guy (this was actually just some Internet research on their chosen service project) and some "shadow" time with their parent or guardian. Drew and I also went to lunch in the Columbia tower, which is Seattle's tallest building and features a huge food court with about 15 different places to choose from (Drew chose pizza).

I'm not sure that Drew came away with any greater concept of what it actually is that I do for work, but I know that he had a good time and that's all that really matters, right?

A few pics from Easter

Here are a few pictures from an Easter egg hunt and cookie decorating party we attended at Sam's school, along with the requisite family photo from Easter brunch. You'll notice that we also brought one of Sam's best friends Kylie to the egg hunt. Kylie is a neighbor and the daughter of our great friends Andy and Shannon.

Mariners games

One of the things we were really looking forward to about moving to Seattle was the chance to attend Seattle Mariners games. Safeco Field is a great place to watch baseball and our whole family enjoys the sport. Fortunately my firm has a number of seats that they make available to employees, so we've already been able to attend a number of games this year. Here are a few photos from the game we went to with Drew and Missi's mom Maggie.

"Thank you for your patients"

Check out this latest occurrence of my pet peeve (misspelled words in public places)that was documented during last night's rain delay in the Washington Nationals baseball game. Obviously I wasn't actually at the game in DC, but I found out about this from reading this article. Classic!

Now THAT'S a wish

I was working out in the yard this weekend and Sam came up to me holding one of those puffy dandelions seeds. What followed was this conversation:

Sam: "Dad, did you know that you can blow this thing and make a wish?"

Me: "Yes, I did know that. Are you going to blow it?"

Sam: "Yes."

Me: "What are you gong to wish for?"

Sam: "I'm going to wish for a unicorn that is rainbow colored and that has wings!"

How sweet are these!

Wow. Words cannot begin to describe. If you're looking for ideas for my next birthday/Christmas gift, consider this a subtle hint.

Crazy Busy = No blogging

Yes, I'm still here, but my work life has been pretty insane lately, so I haven't had the time or energy to update the blog. We are in the midst of a complex multimillion dollar trial and the run-up to trial meant people were literally working round the clock. I have lots of recent pics to post and a few topic ideas so I'll try to make it happen soon.

Building Drew's Pinewood Derby Car

Drew took part in his first Cub Scout pinewood derby last Saturday. We didn't exactly set any land-speed records with our performance (to say the least), but we had a good time working together on building the car and getting it ready to race.


Tracing the car design


Tracing the car design


I tried to keep my assistance to a minimum (unlike most of the other dads, who appear to have side jobs as NASCAR engineers, but I did help by cutting the block into the desired shape.


Drew sanding it down.


Still sanding


The paint schematic.


Drew working on making the car look good. He really succeeded on this score as our car looked a lot better than it performed.


The track.


Drew and a few of his Cub Scout buddies.


The proud car owner/designer/manufacturer.

Really, Seattle Times? Really?

I would have possibly let this slide if it had appeared in the Seattle P-I, what with the fact that the P-I shuttered their print operation this last week, but this latest occurrence of my pet peeve comes courtesy of The Seattle Times, now Seattle's only daily newspaper. For those of you who may not remember, I have a slight irritation when I see misspelled words or poor grammar in public places (See here, here, and here for examples). The qualification about "public places" is important, as I have no problem with misspelled words in emails, letters, text messages, or other personal form of communication. My hackle is raised (yes, I did just use the word "hackle") when someone who obviously should know better (i.e., journalists) make very noticeable mistakes. But enough background, check out this misspelling that appeared on the front page of yesterday's online version of The Seattle Times (I've drawn a yellow box around the text at issue but click on the photo to see a larger version):

"100,000 in state breating easier"

The tooth fairy visits Seattle

Do you want to see a letter to and from the tooth fairy?
Drew had a tooth pulled the other day and wrote a letter and drew a picture. He also got $5 and a note in return.


Dear tooth fairy,
another tooth is gone! It hurted very bad because the dentist had to pull it out. It is very big and pointy. I hope you take care of it.

Your friend,

/Drew/

Drew Wilson

P.S. My birthday is on the 17th wich is tomorrow. Here's a picture on back.

BYE








To: tooth fairy
From: Drew