March 2008

    Beware the Ides of March!   But more likely, just don't get between Phoebe and a birthday cupcake.

    The first day of March was Phoebe's birthday party.  We held it at a place called the CeramiCafe.  It's one of those places where you select some ceramic art and paint it.  Then they take it, glaze it, and fire it in their kilns.  Phoebe invited 4 little girls to her party.  Most were from her school.  The place provided the cupcakes, and the kids provided new books that will be donated to the SMART (Start Making a Reader Today) program.  We collected another 15 books to donate in honor of Dylan Emslie.  Then Grandma and Papa came over for Phoebe's birthday dinner.  We had a yummy stuffed chicken and salad for dinner (with oven roasted garlic for dinner.  Mmmm.  garlic.  Let's just say we didn't have to worry about vampires for about a week).  On Sunday, March 2, our little Phoebe reached 5 years old.  The skies were clear, and it had snowed on the mountain over night, so we decided to go snow shoeing.  Phoebe wore her Happy Birthday tiara in the car all the way up.  We had first tracks, and Ellen led the way using the trail markers (the little blue diamonds on the trees) to guide her.  It was a gorgeous day with blue bird skies.  Phoebe completed her first 1.5 mile show shoe trip.  Sure, there was some complaining, but she completed it.  I gave her a mantra to repeat up the final climb, "I'm strong, I'm tough, I'm Phoebe".  We finished it off with the traditional Huckleberry Inn breakfast of pancakes.  Everyone finished every bit of their food.  Since we got home late enough, we even skipped naps and instead went to the girls and Jada's school to ride bikes.  Phoebe just rode around and around.  Ellen, who we are still working on without training wheels, gave it a good effort while we were there.  A few of her school friends were there offering encouragement and tips since they too had just recently learned to ride.  Afterwards, we went out to REI to check the clearance sale.  We were able to get Phoebe the next size snow shoes which she'll need next year at a discount.  For dinner, we decided to try a new place here that's part of a national chain called Claim Jumpers.  The portions were GINORMOUS.  Jada and I split a steak dinner, and we took desert home with us.  The girls both liked it after they complained about going at first.  They both enjoyed their deserts.

    The week was busy as Jada prepared for her political event the following weekend.  Lot's of calls from candidates and interviews.  In gymnastics, Phoebe got the ok to move up to the next class because she had mastered all the necessary things for the beginner 1 class.  Friday, Jada left us for Salem, OR to rub elbows with the rich and powerful in the state legislature to try to get them to care about education...or at least acknowledge that it costs money to educate everyone equally.  I went to collect the girls from school.  Ellen threw a huge fit when I asked her to put her coat on because it had gotten a little chillier since she had last been out.  That girl's temper is just...there are no words.  Phoebe was at least happy to see me.

    Sunday was another bday party day.  On the way back from an errand, Phoebe was dancing and kicking the back of my chair.  I asked her to stop, and she said, "I love this song".  I had to smile since it was one of my iTunes compilations.  The song?  "Roll with the Changes" by REO Speedwagon.  I guess I'm doing all right raising my daughters.  Ellen had a party to attend in the afternoon.  Phoebe and I went to pick her up and brought the bikes with us so that we could go ride them after at Ellen's school.  Ellen made a little more progress with her riding.  She got two pedal strokes in this time before surprising herself and putting a foot down.  I was fully expecting the magic to happen today since I had forgotten to bring a camera of any kind.  Hopefully the weather will keep cooperating with us so we can keep it up.  She's close now.  Then we'll have to work on steering and stopping.

    Wednesday night, I picked up the girls.  Phoebe started singing the Beatles song "8 days a week".  This was after hearing her randomly break out with lyrics from BNL's if "I had $1,000,000."  We also found out this week that Phoebe has been fibbing at school.  For instance, she has an older sister in college, and something she just found on the ground was something she got for Christmas.  So we had to have a talk with her along with her teachers.  Ellen picked up a cold on Wednesday, but she said she was going to fight it by washing her hands a lot.  Sure enough, by the next day, it was gone.  Unfortunately, Phoebe picked it up, and it has been plaguing her for 2 days now because she won't keep her hands out of her mouth.  She was up much of the night Thursday which caused me to not hear my alarm and get up late.  I was still able to ride my bike to work thanks to Jada's help to get me out the door on time.  But at least I got 4 days in this week which is good since gas was at $3.41 all week.

    Saturday and Sunday were pretty uneventful.  The weather didn't really cooperate all that much.  Ellen had another birthday party to go to on Saturday.  It was a rock'n'roll themed party, so she wore a white shirt with faded blue jeans with holes in the knees (we didn't put them in there, they just happened to be a pair of jeans that had worn out knees already.  Just like when I was a kid, I use what I have), her cowboy boots, and sun glasses.  While she was there, I went off to run some errands.  While picking up a metronome for Ellen's piano practicing, I found a pink Fender Squire Stratocaster electric guitar which was oh so tempting for Phoebe, but I walked on by.  Then I went out to pick up grandma to bring her back for dinner.  Sunday we just had a quiet day at home.  We had considered going snow shoeing, but it was supposed to be the one decent day in a while so we thought we'd try to get a bike ride in.  The weather was dry, but it was quite chilly barely making into the 40's.  So the girls played all day, and built a Leprechaun trap out of Lego's for Monday.  It was quite elaborate, and it used a Leprechaun hat that Phoebe had made at the library out of construction paper as bait.  I made a quick run to Haggen's to grab some chocolate gold coins to use for the morning.  We placed a couple gold coins in the trap for them to find in the morning.

    On St. Patrick's day, the first thing Phoebe did was walk into the play room to check the trap.  I was in the kitchen, so all I heard was Phoebe yelling, "Ellen!  We caught one!  We caught one!"  Then she came running out to show me the coins.  They were very excited.  Ellen immediately started writing her next book about catching a Leprechaun.  (Her other book is in process at school.  She's created a series similar to the "Magic Treehouse" series with the lead characters named Sal and Lilley that I'll have to transcribe in here at some point, though perhaps I shouldn't so that when she publishes her first book, no one else can say they wrote the story first.  I figure that'll be by the time she's in 3rd grade at least).  Jada was at an all day Kindergarten conference downtown, so I took the day off Wednesday since it was the girls' last gymnastics class of winter term.  Phoebe got to move up to next level even after she face planted while doing one of the warm-ups.  She took a nice rug burn to the cheek, but she kept on going.  Phoebe's a trooper.  We got to Ellen's class early after I picked Ellen up from school, so she had time to finish her spring break home work, and I even got some of my work done on my PDA.  Ellen's class was good too.  She managed to accidentally jam her nose with her knee, but no blood came allowing her to continue on.  She did a walk over( I think it's called) which is kicking your legs over starting from a bridge.  She had been practicing on the biggest pads, but the teacher had her try it successfully on a shorter and shorter stack of pads until she could no longer do it on her own.  They're both quite good.  I had to take Thursday afternoon off too for Jada's parent/teacher conferences.  I was on the phone all morning for work meetings.  Then we met up with Jada at school for Ellen's PT conference.  It went well.  She's high in reading which we already knew, but we were both a little surprised at how well she's doing in math compared to the beginning of the year.  She's quite self-motivated to learn.  We're very proud, of course.  Then I dropped her off at her piano lessons where her teacher is always impressed with how much she practices.  Since she was going to be there for an hour and half, I took the opportunity to run an errand to Guitar Center before picking up Phoebe.  I'm shopping for an acoustic guitar.  I had time to play a few in my price range which was nice.  Mid-afternoon on a Thursday is apparently not a huge time for the store.  I didn't buy anything, but I have a 10% coupon and another week to use it for their March Green Tag sale. 

    Saturday the 22nd was our yearly well child checkup for the girls with their doctor.  It has been a whole year, thankfully, since the last time the girls saw their doctor.  As much as we like her, we're still OK with that.  Both of the girls are in great health.  I thought for a minute when the nurse took them down the hall that I was going to get to sit out the urine sample this year, but a minute later she came back in and said the girls told her that "daddy always does that."  But at least this year, they gave me a latex glove to use...which was nice.  The sad part was that Ellen ended up getting 1 shot to catch her up with new requirements, but Phoebe had to have 5 shots which she was not happy about in the least.  She was clutching Jada and crying that she didn't want any more pokes.  It was heartbreaking as usual, but she got through it, and she was fine shortly after.  While we were waiting for the nurse to come back with all the shots, Ellen was entertaining us with her dramatic interpretations of a children's book that was in the room including a dance with the hand gestures from the book.  Here are the vital stats:

    We had a nice day today with temperatures in the upper 50's and mostly sunny, though breezy.  We had talked about going for a ride, but I couldn't find a good route that would land us at a park at the half-way point.  I did eventually find one, but by that time it was too late in the afternoon to go.  So instead, we decided to take the girls to the school to ride bikes again.  Ellen was even closer today to ride on two wheels while we were there, but I still thought her seat needed to be raised a bit more.  I forgot to bring the wrench, so when we got home, I went ahead and raised the seat again and walked down to the cul de sac to see how it would go.  We were both glad we did.  Ellen was able to ride on 2 wheels across the cul de sac a couple times.  She was very excited and proud of herself.  I was able to record it on the digital camera, but not on the video camera.  So next time we go out, I'll definitely bring the video cam.  She has been doing a really good job this spring of trying to get up and go, and it finally paid off for her.  We're so happy.  By the evening, we were all very tired.  We played a round of Zooreka.  Phoebe's hips were starting to tighten up on her where she got the shots so we gave her some Tylenol to help her get to sleep.  They were both out before we finished getting the Easter baskets together in our room...er, I mean, the Easter Bunny finished getting the baskets together.

     Easter Sunday was semi-relaxing.  We did get up early to go to Mass.  The girls were excited to wear their new pink dresses, but Phoebe especially was very squirrelly during the sermon.  We had our usual brunch afterwards, and then we drove out to visit Grandma for a little while and brought her Easter basket.  The girls also entertained Gram with a dance.

    Spring vacation allowed Jada and the girls to schedule play dates.  On Monday, they visited the Thorntons for some rambunctious play time and then lunch out at Noodle and Company.  For Tuesday, Jenny brought over Nolan and Brycen.  Ellen played with Nolan, and Phoebe flitted back and forth between both the boys.  Brycen is almost walking and can sing some of his ABC's.  Nolan was disappointed when it was time to leave.  The next day the girls were excited to host their friends Paige and Brooke whom they know from THPRD classes and day care.  Almost immediately after their friends left it started to snow.  It was very slushy and only lasted about 20 minutes.  In the afternoon, they headed over to a friend of Jada's who has a two year old daughter and a baby due this week to drop off some clothes and games that the girls had out grown.  This turned into an hour and a half visit and much fun was had by all.  On Thursday, Jada had planned to take the girls and Gram to the coast for lunch.  Unfortunately, snow had accumulated in the coast range and Jada does not prefer to drive in snowy conditions.  It ended up snowing again at our house too, but this time it was fluffy and left a light dusting around the house.  It melted quickly so it was decided to head out to Forest Grove for lunch at the Grand Lodge.  Gram enjoyed her time out with the girls.   Friday morning meant more snow in Beaverton.  This time it fell pretty consistently in the morning so Jada waited until 10 am to go grocery shopping.  In the afternoon, the girls welcomed a visit from from Papa.  Ellen played piano for Papa and Phoebe corralled him to help with her Erector set.  Papa stayed through dinner time-a nice long visit of over 3 hours.  Fun was had by all.  Since it was a week where Jada didn't have any meetings after work, I got to ride my bike to work all five days putting me over 500 miles for the year so far in commuting miles.

    The last weekend of spring break, we decided to get in one last day of snow shoeing.  The mountain had gotten lots of new snow in the last week.  We went to Enid Lake again and hiked in the clockwise direction this time so we wouldn't end with the big climb.  There was a camper there at the trail head, but that was all.  We only encountered a couple of cross country skiers just past the halfway point for our hike, but Ellen had been breaking trail up until then.  The snow was light and fluffy which was perfect for snow shoeing.  There was only the one other car parked at the trail head when we came out (another Subaru, of course).  Then it was time for pancakes at the Huckleberry Inn.  In the afternoon, we ran a couple errands.  I picked up an acoustic guitar to fill out my stable of guitars.  This was the last weekend of their big sale, and I spent most of the time trying to decide if I really needed one.  In the end, I decided that I didn't really need one, but I got it anyway with the sale and coupon.  It was a good deal.

    Sunday was a lazy day...mostly.  The bizarre spring break weather continued as we saw rain and sun, hail and sleet throughout the day.  We had set up a test ride for a triple (that's a bike with 3 seats) with Gateway Bicycles that afternoon since at least by the paper (which is never right) Sunday was to be the driest of the days this weekend.  They had done a lot of the pre-work to set it up, but our unique geometries took some time to adjust on the stock bike there.  We brought along the trailer for Phoebe as well so she could come with us.  They had a 3 mile loop through the neighborhoods north of the store.  It was a different feel, that's for sure.  But the thing I noticed most was how much easier it was to start and stop without all the extra weight of the trailer bike and trailer.  Even with the trailer in tow, it wasn't bad.  The turning radius was a little different too, but it was easily adjusted for.  Unfortunately, the person that we needed to talk to about getting the process started to order our own was on vacation, so we'll have to wait another couple weeks.

    The last day of the month, as always, was Nana's birthday.  Happy Birthday, Nana!  "Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of White, if it's not too dear.  We will scrimp and save.  Grandchildren on your knee.  Vera, Chuck, and Dave."  (I figured I could give a musical hint at your age rather than come right out and say it.  Thanks to John, Paul, George and Ringo).  And, of course, the kids and Jada were back at school for the first time in a week.  Phoebe did get to do her gymnastics this morning at the new level.  When I asked her about it, she said there were a lot more bridges.  Ellen performed her piece "Magic Pony" on the piano during her music class at Fir Grove-Thanks Mr. James!  See ya next month.

Journal Entry: March 31, 2008