April 1: April Fools
All of the information in this paragraph are absolutely true...except for the things that I made up. The day was quite odd. It was dry, but cool most of the day. Ellen is going to be representing her class for the the school spelling bee to be proffered by Jada. Several of her friends also will be competing to represent the school from all grades. At dinner, Phoebe lost another tooth. This one was the other front upper tooth. Also, Verizon has been changing some things around, so it took me an extra day to get the March journal posted trying to figure out how to FTP my files over. They warned me about the mail changing, but they didn't mention anything about my web site address. Though you should be getting it forwarded to the correct address if you're reading this.
April 3:
Winter weather has returned to the Pacific Northwest. We've got our spring storms lined up and rolling through with temps in the low to mid 40's every day with heavy wind and occasional heavy rain. The downside (?) of it is both of the girls' soccer games were canceled for today. The park district closed the fields due to the very wet weather we've been experiencing. The upside is that the mountain is getting hammered with new snow, so we may finally get to go snow shoeing now that spring is here. We'll try to do that tomorrow on Easter. Friday afternoon, Jada took the girls over to an art studio to glaze some creations from a party Ellen attended there a while back. It's called My Masterpiece Art Studio. They were able to go with some friends too, so they all had fun. Jada also lined up some summer camps for the girls already. They're a surprise for them. Registration isn't open for them yet, so hopefully we'll be able to get in. I have a feeling that the surprise one for Ellen will fill up really fast. More on that later if it happens. Yesterday we got emailed about a possible ride in mid June that we could do as a family near Silverton, OR which is where the Oregon Gardens is situated. We've never been, but it's close to where we'll be camping in Silver Falls State Park in late spring. We visited Gram in the morning up to lunch time. After lunch, I put a new chain on the quad, and got the tandem down to see how well Ellen might fit on it since I'd like to take her on Reach the Beach this year. Her feet can't comfortably reach the pedals, but she's close. Then we went to the Beaverton Pool for open swim. We spent 2 hours there. The girls actually started getting bored we were there so long. Ellen was disappointed that she didn't get to spend time in the deep end. She told me she had to swim the length of the pool and back to get to go down there, and she didn't want to do that. We went out to eat afterwards. On the way home, we stopped by Bike Gallery to see what we could do about making the tandem fit Ellen. They have pedal blocks, but I'm not sure that'll work all that well. I remembered something I had seen on a tandem site at one time called crank shorteners, so I went online to look for those. I found some, but I need to do some real measuring before I get something like that. We had a few minutes for the girls to watch some of the Olympics.
April 4: Happy Easter!
The girls work up to find Easter baskets in their room. It looks like the Easter bunny brought them some books, some long fingered cycling gloves, and a flashing red bike light. They were very excited, but it's April and we're still chasing snow. So they had to get moving early to eat. Since the mountain had been getting lots of snow this week, we had decided that we would take a chance on Sunday to head up to our favorite place of worship, Glacier View Snow Park. It wasn't snowing this morning, but it had on Saturday. We didn't have high expectations since it's been such a poor snow year. We were the only ones in the parking lot as usual, and the snow felt crunchy and frozen beneath our wheels. We got geared up and headed out at 8:30am. We were pleasantly surprised when we started hiking since the snow had a nice powdered sugar quality to it. Unfortunately, it hadn't snow enough since the previous day to give us fresh tracks. That just made it easier for the girls to lead. Ellen lead us out as she often does, but she had a bit of pain in her leg. She didn't know where it came from, but she had mentioned it yesterday too. So she gave up the lead just before the half way point to Phoebe to charge ahead. We had a minimum of complaining on the trail from Phoebe. We finished the 1.3 mile trail in a little under an hour which seemed to both Jada and I to be rather quicker than normal. We think next year we'll be able to try the longer Cross Town trail that hooks up to the Enid Lake trail. We were at the Huckleberry Inn for breakfast by 10am. It's been a long time since we've been able to go up there, so it was nice to see they hadn't changed much. We were home by a little after noon. By that time, Jada and I decided we needed to nap so we let the kids read, and we each laid down. We visited Gramma in the afternoon for an hour and a half. We made good headway on the puzzle we've been working on since January. By the time we got home, we were very behind in all of our usual Sunday chores, so we all got right to work on dinner, piano, bills, laundry, recycling and more piano. It was time for bed before we knew it. And Jada and I had an extra special surprise when we found out the Disney channel was showing High School Musical 3, finally! We weren't as impressed with that one. It seemed very much like they focused a lot more on the production numbers than the actual performances. I think number 2 is my favorite. (It's because he loves Troy/Zac Efron singing "Bet on It!")(Yeah, and I'm still bummed that he gave up the lead role he was meant to play in the remake of Footloose. That song and dance for "Bet on It" was basically his try out for that.)
April 5
Another Monday for the Boomtown Rats to sing about. The weather was miserable. It was really windy, mid to upper 40's at best, and rainy all day. It was the first day of the spring session of gymnastics for the girls. Phoebe ran her knee into her mouth and nose on the bars, though. But she did do a forward roll all by herself for the first time. Then Jada dropped Ellen off at soccer practice. The field was muddy, but not too bad on the side we used. It was really windy. If someone had been doing a video of us while we were going through the stretches, they'd have had a funny YouTube video of us all balancing on 1 leg while rotating our ankles when a sudden gust of wind blew us all over. One of the dad's on the team was able to find a great deal on duffel bags through his work, and one of the assistant coaches had one to show me. It's a nice bag. Hopefully the parents will want to spend the money since we don't do trophies or snacks. It'll be something they can use for a long time. It was also really chilly out, so the girls were cold. We did a lot of running to keep them moving including hill sprints which they didn't really complain about.
April 10
The week continued to be a little uneven weather-wise with chilly temperatures, and more snow up on the mountain. Phoebe had no rain for her soccer practice on Tuesday, but she was very muddy from the fields. Wednesday, Ellen had a dryer and slightly warmer practice. Thursday night we had a function at the girls' school for literacy and math. We split up so Ellen and Jada could do some activities, and Phoebe and I did some activities. One of Phoebe's activities was demonstrating how reading and math come together in books that show you how to make different things like playground equipment (stilts, balance beam, hacky sack), recipes for making cookies, and planting seeds. Phoebe participated in each of them, but the cooking part was most surprising since she volunteered to crack eggs, and she did it perfectly even though she'd never done it before. Friday afternoon was the group piano lesson for the girls in preparation for next week's junior festival. Luckily we got the times for the junior festival, and they won't be interfering with soccer on Saturday. Then one of Ellen's friends came over for a sleep over. They were up until almost 9pm, but they fell asleep pretty fast.
Saturday morning, they were up by 6am, of course. We were out of just about everything, but I was able to make enough breakfast for everyone. Then Jada took Phoebe to the grocery store, and I stayed home with the other girls. We took bikes over to the field that we practice at since both Ellen and her friend are on the soccer team so that we could do a practice ride from the field to her house since she hadn't done that before. Both of the girls did a great job of listening and riding safely. So now, I can ride to work, and we can ride home on practice nights. Before long, it was time for Ellen's soccer game. We had our full team minus one girl who hasn't been to practice since the very first one. But that worked out so we could do full shift changes except for keeper. We saw a lot of great things from our team. They spaced the field well, we saw some good passing, and no one wanted to sit out which is always good. Then we had to rush off to Ellen's eye appointment back across town where we met back up with Jada and Phoebe who had just finished hers. I took Phoebe home while Jada and Ellen stayed behind for the appointment and then to Gramma's, and I got Phoebe started on piano before her soccer game. The results from the eye appointments were a stronger prescription for Ellen, and Phoebe's astigmatism which is causing her to see fine lines and smaller writing (such as, say, piano music) more blurry resulted in a suggestion that glasses would help her be able to see some of those things better. At Phoebe's game, I assumed assistant coach duties as the coach of one of the split teams. Phoebe was on my team, of course. She did a good job and scored some goals too. By the time we all got home, unfortunately, there was still dinner to make and piano to do because we were exhausted.
April 11
Sunday morning, our friend Pete was in town for the weekend, so he stopped by and went over to our friend Laurie's house for brunch with us. While the brunch was getting made, the girls got to feed the baby some rice cereal. They had fun with that, but Phoebe was done after a few spoonfuls. Ellen stuck with it. She seems to be taking to heart the suggestion that she might be his future baby sitter. We all ate too much (but the girls were hungry not too long later again). After a nice visit there, we went over to REI to pick up my commuter bike from the shop where I got new front chain rings put on. From there, we headed straight downtown to the Convention Center for the Portland Bike Expo. We were hoping to catch the owner of Santana at his booth, but he had to leave early. We spent time talking to one of the other engineers about the travel cases that they make. As we were walking around, we found the Metal Cowboy, Joe Kurmaskie, at the Co-Motion cycles booth. He is an author of some biographical travel books that I have enjoyed reading. I didn't have any cash to get one of his books so I could have one autographed. He was just a very nice, and enthusiastic guy. He thought he had met us before, so that was funny. We had to get home for a quick snack for the girls since they were improbably hungry before heading off again to visit Gramma followed by swimming lessons. Ellen's in the group that swims the full 25 yard lanes now. She had a good free style, and her back stroke was looking really good. Phoebe's free style was good too. They've both made good progress in the last class, so they should do well this session too. We finally got home after a visit to the book store to pick up a couple books and the summer reading program hand outs. Then it was time to get to the chores we had been forsaking all weekend due to our busy schedule. It was unfortunate we had so much going on since we weren't able to enjoy the weather outside much today since it was in the 60's and mostly sunny.
April 13
So far the mornings have been rainy and the afternoons have been great with temps in the low 60's and a few big puffy clouds. It's certainly made soccer practice pleasant the last couple nights. Hopefully it continues to tomorrow.
April 17
The weather held all week for a pleasant spring week. Unfortunately, I came down with something Tuesday night, and I felt horrible Wednesday morning. I ended up staying home and sleeping all morning followed by an afternoon just sitting on the couch. I don't know what it was since it didn't feel like I had a fever, though I did have a hard time getting warm even under my blankets in bed before I finally fell asleep. I was much better by Thursday and able to return to work. I finally rode my bike to work again on Friday. I was terribly out of shape. The girls were getting ready for their Junior Festival all week, and accumulating final practice minutes for that competition.
Saturday was a very busy day. The girls both slept in, but they both still woke up in foul moods. I chalked it up to Junior Festival jitters. I spent an hour on the phone trying to get the girls signed up for their spring and summer camps. After 45 minutes hitting redial, I finally got through to get them registered for the classes they wanted. We got ready, did a final run through of their pieces, and headed to the church where they were to play. Phoebe's group was first at 9:30am. There were 4 kids in that group. Phoebe played her two pieces with great poise and effort. She played them so well she earned Superior+ on both pieces. The adjudicator made a comment on her review sheet that she had the highest score in her group. Ellen's group was right after hers at 10am, but there were seven kids in that one. They were behind as it was, so things didn't look good for making it to her soccer game on time. Ellen was one of four students who played a piece called "Race across the Serengeti", but I think she was the best. She did an excellent job on her second piece as well earning her third Superior, and her first gold cup. They were very behind by the time they finished. We finally got back to our house by the time we were supposed to be at Ellen's soccer game for warm ups, and to the field about 10 minutes into the first half. Ellen did a quick warm up, and she was sent into the game almost immediately. She ended up getting a goal in the second half. The whole team had some great moments too including a time where the left wing reversed the ball back to her defender in what is called a drop. That defender crossed the ball to the opposite side of the field and advanced it into the right wing which eventually ended on a good shot on goal, but not a score. It looked great though. We went to grab lunch on the way to Phoebe's game, and we got there about 10 minutes before kick off. We played another team with some friends of ours, so that was nice. Our team was a bit out matched, but Phoebe eventually scored our team's only goal on the field I was on just before the final whistle. Finally we were able to come home by 3pm. Jada went to visit Gram while the girls worked on getting some more minutes for their competition. With the return of spring, our yard is sprouting nothing but weeds. I need to figure out something to do with that since re-seeding every spring and fall hasn't yielded favorable results either. There are just some areas of the yard that will not grow grass. I need to come to terms with that and figure out a different solution.
April 24
Boy I have not had time to update this week. Let's see, I guess I have to go all the way back to last Sunday now. I don't remember everything now, so I'll try to do as much as I can. I do remember it was a beautiful sunny warm day. We went grocery shopping in the morning, and we visited Gramma after that. Then we went out on a bike ride. The girls voted for riding up to Washington Park, so that's the way we went. We clawed our way up and played at the play ground at the Rose Garden. Then we went up through the houses. When we finally got to Murray, we got a flat tire. By this time, we had already missed their swimming class, but we had decided before we left, that if we had to, it'd be nicer to be outside in the great weather. Jada's headache was starting to become a migraine, so she called a friend to come pick she and the girls up while I finished changing the flat. I was unsuccessful in getting my spare tube inflated because the nozzle was too long for my frame pump to fit on. Then the hole took 3 attempts to fully patch because of it's location and size. But on the bright side, I learned I can turn the bike over to easily remove the rear wheel, and there is an easy to remove drum brake connection so I don't have to have a bunch of extra tools...which is nice. I rode it home alone, which took less than 20 minutes compared to the 1 hour for the repair.
The week was pretty eventful. From the nice 70 degree weather of Sunday, it steadily went down hill through the week. We had brief showers at Ellen's soccer practice on Monday night. Phoebe's practice was dry but cold. Ellen's practice on Wednesday was dry and sunny, but cold. Thursday, I rode to work. Jada was sick pretty much all week, but she still went to school every day. Ellen started feeling yucky on Thursday, and Friday she was completed stuffed up, but no temperature. I went into school in the morning to see Phoebe's first grade class put on a skit about Determination. They did a great job, and Phoebe had a big speaking part in one of the skits. I worked from home the rest of the day until it was time to pick the girls up. Jada had to head downtown to her political action committee conference for the weekend. The girls and I headed over to recycle our old TV (Finally!), and I forgot how heavy it was so that pretty much did in my back for the whole weekend even though I lifted with my legs. Then we drove downtown to River City Bicycles to pick up the crank arm shorteners that I think should help Ellen ride with me on the tandem. Traffic was a madhouse on highway 26 due to an accident I had noticed in the west bound lanes on the way into the city, so I took a scenic route through town and up into the west hills to skirt the area of the blockage in case it hadn't recovered. Besides, it was Friday afternoon. The highways are always a mess with rush hour traffic, but Portland itself was pretty smooth sailing. There's a tip from your uncle Dave. When I got home I tried to start the lawnmower, but it wouldn't start after 100 pulls on the cord (yes, I counted since it usually takes between 25 and 50 to start) while also giving me blisters on my fingers. I need to get a push mower, but I didn't buy one when they were still cheap. Now they cost as much as a gas mower.
Saturday morning, my back hurt really bad, but there was too much to do. I had to get the kids fed and out the door to get the grocery shopping done which was setback by 30 minutes because I forgot to bring the list with me on the first try. We were late getting to Ellen's soccer game, but we at least got there before tip off which was better than the head coach. Ellen did pretty well in the first half. She didn't score, but she was right where she was supposed to be, and she had a couple good shots on goal that were gathered up by their keeper. Her cold caught up with her in the second half, and she drifted around more. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one. But the girls seemed to wake up again just a little before the end of the game after we talked about some things we were seeing between shifts. We got to have a leisurely lunch before heading out to Phoebe's soccer game in the afternoon. We managed to sandwich the games between the rain showers that went almost the entire time from the end of Ellen's game to just before we left for Phoebe's. So that was nice. Phoebe scored several goals in her game. And I found it was difficult to run when my back hurts like it does. We hit Bike Gallery after the game so I could get some tubes and look at tires for the quad. I'm trying a different set of tires this time which should roll a little more smoothly. However, I did see they had the same tires I had before, so I can pick those up again if I end up not liking these. I'm worried that they'll ride too rough, but we'll find out tomorrow at the Monster Cookie ride. Jada got home around 5pm from her conference, and she was able to help me get the quad packed into the van. I laid on the floor for a while to rest my back. It kind of helped. Then I iced it while I ate. Then we had dinner and put the kids to bed for our early wake up call in the morning.
April 25
Sunday morning we got up early to drive down to Salem for the Salem Bicycle Club's Monster Cookie Metric Century. We had hoped to catch up with a couple other parents from the school, but they didn't get down there until we were ready to ride off, so we went on our own. We got the usual comments. We put the bike together in about 20 minutes which is a lot better than we did last year. Ellen was even able to help which I think made a huge difference. The rest stop was only 17 miles in, but Phoebe was crying about being hungry most of the time. It was chilly out at the start, but it was sunny. The lines for check in were really long, and even the lines for new riders was long. Whenever the weather is expected to be good, that ride always fills up. The girls ate a lot of sandwiches at the snack stop, so it ended up being an early lunch more than a snack for them. Most people do the 62 mile ride since it's a pretty easy ride thanks to the flatness of the route. We turned around and headed back from the rest stop on the second half of the ride. We were on our own for a long time, and we were some of the first people back for the monster cookies. We got the bike broken down pretty quickly again, and stowed in the van. We touched down long enough for me to shower, and then we wanted to get to Gramma's for a quick hour visit before getting the girls to swimming. We just left the bike in the back of the van. We were able to make it everywhere, but the girls were a little late for swimming. We got home, and Jada and I put the bike back together while Ellen did her piano. We've gotten really good at the bike breakdown and reassemble. Now it's time for dinner, so we need to make that. Scarlet seems to have caught the cold that everyone else has had.
April 28
The spring rains have returned this week. I stayed home all day on Monday to lie flat on my back in the front room as well as apply heat and ice to it in hopes that it would speed recovery. It helped since I was back to work Tuesday. I also skipped soccer practice, and we kept Ellen home as well to try to get her over her cold. Phoebe's soccer practice was canceled on Tuesday due to a swamped field. Wednesday was Passport day at the girls' school, so I went to do that as well as see Ellen's "Informance" for her music class. It was an informal music class performance. They sang a bunch of songs and the music teacher showed video of when they played "Hot Crossed Buns" on violin. Jada brought her kindergarteners down so they could hear it too, and so she could get to hear the show as well. Soccer practice was in the afternoon. We managed to avoid the rain, which was weird since Jada and Phoebe were caught in a downpour a mile away.
April 30
On Thursday, Phoebe had her "informance" in the afternoon, so I took the time off to drive across town to see that. It's funny how much louder the first graders sang than the third graders considering how outgoing a lot of those third graders are. I had to get back to work after that for a meeting and a chiropractor appointment at the end of the day. On Friday, the girls had their Syllabus testing which they had to be pulled out of school for. They both passed after all the hard work they have been putting in! We all met out for dinner at the girl's choice of Macaroni Grill, and then we put them to bed super early after a taxing week.
And this brings to close the month of April. Here in Portland, we had 24 of 30 days of rain. May is usually pretty good though, so we have that to look forward to.
Journal Entry: April 30, 2010