PDX Happenings

I know, I know, I’m so late at posting this!  But I’ve been job searching like crazy and spending hours on end on the computer, it’s hard to get the motivation to blog.  But here I am, better late than never.

Last weekend John’s dad came out from Rochester, MN and we had an amazing time.  We were able to spend a weekend

"Bompba" and Hadley enjoying a book

in Cannon Beach at Tolovana Inn and we were even able to bring the pooches!  they are a former client of John’s company and so we’ve had the perk of spending a couple of weekends there on trade dollars.  Gotta love the trade system!  It’s a beautiful hotel, we have never been disappointed.

We headed out on Friday around lunch time.  Before we left town we stopped at a 7-11 to get some sodas for the road.  It just happened to be “free lunch Friday” at the 7-11 we went to.  So we started with a couple of sodas, some chicken strips and some jo-jo’s.  Score!  This weekend was going to be good!  It was a pretty uneventful drive out except for a couple of downpours along the way.  We got to the hotel and were able to check in an hour early because our room happened to be ready.  Score again!  We brought our stuff up to the second floor and opened the door to our “Luxury One Bedroom Suite” and had a look around.  The room was fabulous!  Double sinks and granite in the bathroom, full kitchen, large living room with fire place and a flat screen tv and a sweet little porch with a view of the ocean.  Hadley took off and started running around the place like a crazy woman and the dogs were content staring at the ocean out the wall of windows.

Haystack Rock, daddy and Hadley

We settled in, unpacked the cooler, and did our best to break in the leather club chairs.  After a couple hours of that, we finally got out to the beach.  The dogs loved being off their leashes and Patrick loved the feeling of the ocean air blowing through his curls.  They ran around, greeting people and other dogs and Patrick constantly fought the urge to go swimming.  He went in up to his belly, but the water was cold!  It typically only warms up to about 58 degrees by mid-summer, no matter what the air temperature.  But that didn’t stop us from putting our feet in and scanning the beach for sand dollars and other treasures.  It was Hadley’s first time going to the beach since she was about 8 weeks old, we were excited to see her reaction to the sand.  She loved it and toddled around in it and even made a couple of attempts at some sand castles.  But mostly she was happy walking around and pointing out all the “doggies” and “ducks” (seagulls).

We comfortably slept to the sound of the ocean and woke up to sunshine.  It didn’t stay sunny all day, but it didn’t rain either.  It was a comfortable 60ish degrees and we

Crab legs for dinner?

spent another couple of hours combing the beach and building sand castles.   Tom took us out for dinner on Saturday night at a local pub and brewery and we got our fish and chips and seafood fix and went back to the condo the have a couple of beers and full bellies.  We spent Sunday morning enjoying more beach time after some pancakes at the condo.  Then, sadly, we had to bid farewell to the beach and head back to Portland.

It was Father’s Day so John and Tom got some fingerpaintings that Hadley had done the previous week and we had a

Father's Day at the Beach

lovely day at home.  It was relaxing for John and I, busy for Tom as he was fixing stuff for us.  He fixed the hot water pressure on my kitchen sink.  The hot water has only been coming out in a trickle for the last 4 years!  We just never quite knew where to start on fixing it and let’s face it, we’re too cheap to call a plumber.  Well, 10 minutes later, a dirty bucket of water and a bent wire hanger later, my water pressure was fixed!  My quality of life has changed since Tom fixed our sink!!  He also looked at Hadley’s doorknob and took about 4 minutes to fix that as well.  It seemed the knob was longer than the width of the door and it would slide back and forth when closing the door and make a loud noise.  Obviously this is annoying when you are putting a tiny babe down and quietly trying to back out of the room.  Like I said, 4 minutes later, Tom had that

Mr. Fixit!

sucker pulled out, turned around, reinstalled and tightened.  Now I could close that door in church and no one would hear it.  We let Tom off the hook after that, since it was Father’s Day and all. But I have to say,  Tom inspired me to do a little home improvement around here myself.  I cleaned all the grout with bleach and a toothbrush in the kitchen.  I also removed all the old crumbling grout from around the sink and from where the backsplash meets the wall and reapplied it.  A minor fix that when all said and done, only took a couple of hours, but it’s made a world of difference when you look at my kitchen!  I’ve also purchased a tube of caulk and this week I plan on sealing all the cracks in the windown and door mouldings.  This should have been done when they were put up and before they were painted but the previous owner hadn’t caulked them and as new

Is there more paint on the picture or on Hadley?

homeowners, John and I didn’t know any better.  Mark my words though, it will be fixed by my birthday!

Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Bompba on Monday morning.  After daycare that evening we drove up to our house and Hadley started pointing at saying “Bompba? Bompba? Bompba?”  we had to tell her for a couple of days that Bompba went home but we would be seeing him again in September.

Thanks for coming out Tom, we all enjoyed your visit so much, and Happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there!!!

Now, what good is a post without pictures?