May 2
May 1st was a beautiful day. Of course, I was still oncall, so we couldn't do a bike ride. Instead, we settled for a trip to Costco in the morning. Ellen had a birthday party in the afternoon, and while she was there I took Jada and Phoebe over to the school to ride around the playground. Phoebe got some confidence riding, and Jada learned how to negotiate her 18 speeds. Jada picked Ellen up from her party early so she could go to swimming, and then I picked Phoebe up from swimming to go to our guitar lesson. Luckily, I avoided any calls until just as I got home after guitar, and it was extra lucky that I was only needed for a couple minutes.
Monday morning, Phoebe woke up not feeling very well. She ended up staying home from school. Jada was able to find a sub, so she stayed home all day.
May 7
Phoebe was back at school on Tuesday. The weather continued to be nice Tuesday and Wednesday when I rode my bike to work. By Thursday, it was starting to cool down and get rainy again. (That's sort of Oregon's "get down and get funky" tagline). By the evening, we had some dry weather for soccer practices. The actual field that Phoebe's team was supposed to have been using all spring was finally dry enough to use. By that, I mean, there was finally no standing water or bog-like areas. For Ellen's practice, we scrimmaged the team that shares the other half of our field. It ended in a 1-1 tie, so that was good. Friday, Jada had the kindergarten Mother's Day Tea. It was raining pretty hard after work. This week also happened to be Teacher Appreciation Week. The girls, including Jada, had fun planning and delivering gifts each day. The girls' classroom teachers were treated to a personalized tote bag and notepads, as well as flowers one day and a sweet treat from the Beaverton Bakery another. On Friday, thank you notes were delivered with a gift certificate to our favorite book store Powell's to their classroom teachers, as well as the librarian, music and P.E. specialist. Jada and the rest of the staff were treated well by the PTO with lunches, desserts and breakfast food throughout the week.
Saturday, Ellen and Jada went down to Portland State University for a writer's workshop. Jada was providing a chaperone for one of the groups. She got stuck with middle schoolers instead of elementary school kids. Ellen really enjoyed herself. She was able to meet two different authors (Graham Salisbury and Anne Osterlund), and Jada purchased some signed books from each of them. In the meantime, on the other side of town, I still had to coach Ellen's team. It was a really close game, and the teams were evenly matched. We didn't have any substitute players, and the opposition seemed to have a whole second team to put in the game. Our girls persevered though, and they really hustled hard. I had just enough time to drive home, get some food for Phoebe, and drive back for Phoebe's game which was also clear on the north end of town. It was raining when we got to the field, but it stopped by the time our game started. We only had 7 players show up, but the other team was also short, so we played 3 v 3 instead. Phoebe mostly played defense. Phoebe and I drove into Portland to pick up the rider packets for Reach the Beach. Ellen has reached her initial fund raising goal already. Thanks to all who donated to the American Lung Association to support her ride. The route into town from the soccer field took me up a road into the West Hills I had never gone on before. As I was driving up, I was thinking to myself, "I want to ride here". I think I'll keep this one in mind for when Ellen and I are training for Cycle Oregon. It'd also be a fun one to try on the quad, but it's too twisty to go downhill on the quad, so we won't be attempting it. The quad doesn't corner as well as a single or even a tandem. Jada and Ellen came home in late afternoon, and we all went out for dinner.
May 8 - Happy Mothers Day
For Mother's Day, we let Jada sleep in, and we went to the Zoo for their special Mothers Day brunch. I think Ellen more than made up for the cost of the buffet. She must have polished off 5 plates of food - eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, a biscuit, and because she had so much protein, a very small brownie. Phoebe ate a good amount too. I felt like I kept myself reigned in from eating too much. Once we were home, Ellen vacuumed the house, I finished watching the Stage 1 and 2 coverage of the Giro d'Italia before taking a nap. Jada read on the couch. We went to Gramma's to visit for the facility's Mother's Day tea. She slept most of the time, but it was still an ok visit. The piano man who plays the functions there played one of the songs Phoebe learned this year. From there, we took the girls to their swimming class and finally home for dinner. After all the day's excitement, it was difficult to get the girls to wind down, but eventually they did and even went to bed a little early in preparation for a late night tomorrow.
May 23
It's been a while since I wrote in here. It's just been really, really busy the last few weeks. On Monday, the 9th, Ellen had a make up soccer game at 6:30pm against a team that plays like a development league team. It got ugly fast, but our girls were still working hard. On Wednesday night of the 11th, Phoebe went to talk to the PTO about the results of her penny drive for Pennies for Peace. It's gotten a lot of bad press, but we believe it's still trying to do good work. On the 12th, I canceled soccer practice since it was Open House night at the school. I went to see all the things that both girls have done, and then I took Phoebe and her second grade teacher over to the "Signal to Noise" presentation. Signal to Noise is a program that encourages students to submit video collaborations. There are a bunch of categories from elementary through high school. Phoebe's class made a video called "Litterbug Woes". The whole class participated with kids directing, running the camera, writing the script, and editing. They were one of the finalists in the elementary humor division. They didn't win, but I thought theirs was better than the one that did get picked. It was the first entry from our school, and they're going to try to enter more next year. Jada and Ellen met us out there at the ceremony. Phoebe walked down the red carpet in her Litterbug costume, and posed next some famous celebrity (cutouts). On Saturday, the 14th, Ellen and Phoebe each had soccer games. Phoebe didn't have many games with subs all year, and this was another one. We ended up sharing a sub between our two fields. Between the games, Ellen and I went out for a quick 17 mile shakedown ride on the tandem trying to get ready for the Reach the Beach ride the next weekend. Then we went to Ellen's game. It was the second to last game, and Ellen scored twice by being alert in the goal box and following shots. We had a short ceremony and picture after the game since almost everyone was there. On Sunday, it was raining, and Ellen had her final soccer game in the afternoon. We were originally going to do the Walking with a Vision walk in support of the Foundation for Retinal Research, but the timing just wasn't going to work out with Ellen's last game. It was a make up game from an earlier rainout which is why we didn't plan on it. Ellen and I first had to get out on the tandem again to train for the 100 miles we were riding the following weekend. It was raining, but Jada threw us out of the house anyway. We enjoyed our little 17 mile ride in the rain, and we felt better for going. Then it was off to Ellen's soccer game. Ellen scored the first goal of that game. The girls all had a great game, and it looked like they were having lots of fun. Ellen only got to play the first half so she could get to her swimming class. Then I ran over there after the game to pick up Phoebe for our guitar lesson. When we made it home, we ate dinner, and Jada went to her massage.
Jada brought the tandem out to work on Tuesday night so we could get in another ride as our training after work. I mapped out a route from work to home that would be about 23 miles. The weather was a lot better. Still cool, but near 60 degree and sunny. The ride went well, and we increased our average speed over a longer distance. The girls were also preparing for their end of year piano recital. Though, one morning, and I think it may have been Thursday, they were in very good moods. They voluntarily practiced their duet for next fall together without arguing and without Jada or I in the room to tell them to do it. Some days, things just come together. Thursday night, I held my last practices for the soccer season. We just had a parents versus kids game for both teams. It was fun, and the weather was terrific. It was close to 70 degrees for that one with lots of sun. Friday was another really nice day. Jada brought Ellen out to work on her way to the beach. We had dinner before Jada and Phoebe went to Cannon Beach to stay the night to make it easier to get to the finish line the next morning.
Saturday morning, Ellen and I met up with the parents that we rode Reach the Beach with last year at Conestoga Middle School. It was cloudy, and there was rain in the forecast. We hoped for the best and pushed off. We had some sun push through as the day wore on, and the wind picked up after the first 25 miles when there was nowhere to hide in the valley. My lack of overall fitness was apparent, yet I was still able to get over the big hills well enough. We ran a ragged paceline across the valley floor trying to help each other survive the day. I was definitely the weakest link in that chain. When I'm leading, I'm fine because I can diesel on in my pace. When I'm tucked in, I can't compensate for the slight changes of getting sucked in the draft, soft pedaling, and then speeding up to catch back on the draft. When you have to coordinate a stoker, it makes sudden changes of pace difficult, so I was dropped off a few times, but I'd make it back up. We met up with the son of one of our crew at the halfway point of Amity, OR. He took some long pulls as well which was nice. I kept Jada in the loop with our progress, but it was slowing with the wind. I was looking forward to getting into the coast range to hide in the trees, but I lost contact with the group a little ways after the climbing started. I pushed my pace, and we did fine. I yo-yoed with one of the guys from our group all the way to the last rest stop where the temperature noticeably dropped about 5 degrees. We attacked the last part of the climb. My cohorts sprinted up the last short, steep climb while Ellen and I grinded our way up (Never give up, Never surrender!), and we blasted down the other side hitting 40 miles per hour. We caught everyone from our group and reformed the paceline once in view of the coast. We finally arrived at the finish line about 2 hours after I originally had predicted due to a combination of lack of training and brutal head wind. Phoebe and Jada were still waiting there cheering when we rode through. It was almost 5pm. I decided to skip the dinner at the finish line since it's never all that great anyway, and we headed for home. We ended up stopping at the Tillamook Cheese Factory for cheese burgers. It was 15 minutes before closing time, but they took our order and served us anyway. They got our orders wrong, but I was hungry. Ellen actually fell asleep on the car ride home. She never falls asleep in the car. Phoebe's sneezing fit when we were almost home woke her up. While Ellen and I were riding our bike, we would also get updates from Jada on how things were going at the hotel where they went out to breakfast, went to the tide pools, went swimming in the hotel pool, and went to Mo's for lunch. Then they waited at Pacific City for about 2 hours for us to show up.
Sunday morning, I actually didn't feel too bad at all other than not sleeping well thanks to Scarlett knocking at our door all night. I apparently have enough fitness to survive without too many ill effects. My knees were a little achy, but not so much so that I couldn't walk. My back was even fine. We went out for a big breakfast followed by grocery shopping and a stop a Gramma's. In the afternoon, we went to Phoebe and Ellen's piano recital. They both did a great job on their pieces. Ellen won the overall practice minutes trophy with 6000+ minutes. Phoebe won her age group with just about 150 less than Ellen. They both got their 10 events trophy's, and Phoebe got her first Gold Cup. Plus they got a load of ribbons for the different things they accomplished this year. We are very proud of their efforts. All the kids in the studio played great, and the recital lasted 3 hours. We went home to eat, and then I had my massage appointment. My legs didn't hurt as much as they normally do when he digs into them. I was so tired that I fell asleep on the table a couple times. My shoulders were actually more stiff than my legs. And that finally catches me up.
May 27
Cold and rain returned to the Northwest this week with snow levels down around 4000 feet. I was able to ride to work 3 days in a row this week too with only a little bit of sprinkles during the times I was coming and going. We were also planning our Memorial Day weekend trip to Baker City, OR to see the Oregon Trail. The weather there was also calling for snow overnight on Saturday, so that should be interesting. I took Friday off to help get things ready while Jada had to go into work for teacher work day so she can do report cards.
May 30 - Happy Memorial Day.
Continuing on from my last thought on Friday... While Jada was at work, I took the girls out to pick up some items to help Ellen create her Conestoga wagon out of the wagon we have at home. We went first to Fred Meyer to pick up some swimming noodles to act as the bows. Then we went to Home Depot to pick up the rest of the things. We criss-crossed the store looking for things that might work to help put it together asking for help from several different people when we couldn't find what we were looking for. In the end, we located wooden dowels to help hold the Styrofoam bows together, small wood screws and washers to help hold the dowels in place, a painting drop cloth to act as the wagon cover, twine to connect the cover, and some Velcro that we can use to put on the sides of the wagon to try to hold the noodles in place. Once we were home again, Jada wasn't far behind. I packed the car with what I could, starting with placing our duffels of clothes in the cargo box and dry foods and games in the back. The 2 friends Ellen was bringing with us arrived just before noon. Ellen's friends sat across the back seat, so I only put one of the jump seats up for Phoebe to sit in. We were on the road by 12:12pm...and then I realized I had left the water bottles back in the garage. Luckily, we weren't too far away from the house when I realized it. Then we were back on the road again by 12:20pm. One of Ellen's friends had a serious bag of tricks that contained loads of things for them to do. We made a pit stop in The Dalles, and I filled the gas tank again just to be safe. It looked nasty over Immigrant Pass where we stopped at the Deadman's Pass rest stop. It only rained, but it came down hard in spurts followed by sun. We finally arrived in Baker City at 6pm. We checked in at the Best Western Sunridge right off highway 84. We had 2 adjoining rooms. We put the girls in one of the rooms, and Phoebe stayed in our room just so Ellen wouldn't constantly pick on her. Then we went into the city center to a Mexican restaurant called El Erradero. It was pretty good, similar to Mazatlan restaurants in our area. All the girls enjoyed their food. We even got to see a rainbow right over the town. Back at the hotel, we had planned to let the girls watch a DVD that we had brought, but the rooms didn't have DVD players. Instead, they got out some crafts, and Jada made some popcorn in our room. It was well after 9pm when the kids went to bed. The beds were a bit on the hard side, but not too bad. The thing I had a hard time with was the pillow. They were too thick. I should have brought mine from home like Jada always does. The heater was the other problem. It would kick on very suddenly, and loudly throughout the night waking us up. Then there were the usual loud people who for whatever reason don't feel it necessary to be quiet when they're in a hotel.
Phoebe didn't wake up until 7am the next morning which was nice. Ellen was up before 6am and reading by the light coming from around the curtain while her friends slept. We went to breakfast at the attached restaurant by 7:45am. We met up with some friends who came down later on Friday at breakfast, and then we went to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center which is only a few miles outside of town on Flagstaff hill. Highway 86, which we drove to get there, is a road I had ridden on Cycle Oregon in both 2003 and 2006. I don't even remember this place being there, though I'm sure it was. The reason we chose this weekend was because of the Wagon Encampment display that was going to be there. Plus the reason we were doing this trip at all is because the 4th graders are doing their unit on Lewis and Clark and the Oregon Trail. We thought it would fun to bring along a couple of Ellen's friends on a trip we were planning on doing anyway. We walked around the exhibit area first since the wagons were still getting setup. It was really interesting talking about how they survived the trail, why they used different animals to pull the wagons, different types of wagons, and what they carried. The girls had already picked up a kids pack (aside from the one that Jada had prepared from web site downloads for each of the kids) to work on getting their Junior Wagon Master bracelet. At 10am, we headed over to the Wagon Encampment. The first thing we saw were 2 huge, live oxen with a yoke on like they'd have worn on the trail. We learned that they only earn the name ox if they are load bearing animals. Each of them weighed over 3000lbs. Oxen were the least expensive pack animals for the trail at about $25 per ox. They were used because they were strong and eat pretty much anything. They just need prairie grass unlike horses and mules which also need oats and grains. The downside was that they were slow. We moved on to the wagons. The first one we came to had a pioneer handcuffed to it. He kept saying, "I was just borrowing some eggs" as the girls walked by. There was a trail band of 3 people playing songs of the time on guitar, fiddle, and lyre. At another wagon, they were cooking up food in Dutch ovens. They had a berry cobbler, an apple cobbler, and buffalo stew with biscuits. I had the stew which was really good. Ellen wasn't sure about it until she tried it, and then she wanted more. It was cold outside. The wind was blowing really hard, and we could see the rain/snow showers in the Blue mountains to west and Wallowas to the north east. We went back in to listen to a program with a re-enactor who played the part of Narcissa Whitman, one of the first missionaries to embed with the Cayuse Indians. Part of her party also lived with the Nez Perce tribe. She had warned us at the beginning when we were bringing in our 6 elementary aged girls that while not inappropriate for children, it wasn't aimed at them. I assured her that we've dragged the girls to all sorts of things like this, and they'd be fine. And they were...all of them. They seemed to enjoy it even if they didn't understand all of it. She stayed in character even for questions. We asked permission to bring our lunch inside to the little table area they had off the main entry way since it was so cold and windy out, and they approved as long as we cleaned up after ourselves. So while the girls worked on their booklets, I grabbed the cooler from the car. After we ate there was another presentation by the same woman, but this time it was aimed more at children called Wagon's Ho! She went over all the things that were brought along on the trip, and played some parts of period people like a man known as Captain Windwagon who created a wagon to sail the prairie using sails like a boat. She also had some funny bits about games and what people wore as well as how tobacco water was used mostly as a pesticide since it could kill lice on it's own when soaked in water and put on the hair. She also demonstrated how muskets were fired, though she didn't really fire it since we were indoors. It was a good talk. Following that talk, we went into the next room where they had a full sized wagon that could be loaded with different supplies - some necessary, others not so much. Ellen and Phoebe actually got into an argument with some of the other kids there who were trying to put things that weren't needed on the wagon. So we had them leave to calm down. We went outside again so the girls could try out the video camera for when they start on their own Oregon Trail at school. They went back inside and got their Junior Wagon Master bracelets before they perused the gift shop. We finally departed around 3pm. While we were getting into the car, they ox wrangler was leader her oxen down the parking lot road to her truck. She's just a small lady leading over 6000lbs of animal. On the way back to Baker City, we passed by a roadside pullout where we could walk down to the actual Oregon Trail. It's more of a ditch that was worn out by so many wagons and animals passing through, though there were a couple lines that looked like wagon wheel groves through the prairie brush. It was really a neat feeling to be standing there and walk along the path for a little ways.
Back in Baker City, we went downtown again to look at the remodeled Geiser Hotel which had been around since the founding of the town, I think. Though the people there were a little snooty about letting us come in just to look around the lobby. We were going to let the kids play in a park that was nearby, but it started hailing. Instead we went back to the hotel and waited for dinner time where we met our friends at the Sumpter Junction restaurant across the street from our hotel. This restaurant's hook is trains. They have a 16 gauge train track running throughout the place which the kids enjoyed following around. The food was only ok. We all had burgers. After dinner, we had the 4th grade daughter of our friends come over for a sleepover with the other girls so we had 4 in the adjoining room. Jada made up some popcorn again while they played some games that one of them had brought. We finally got them down for bed around 9pm. I had to warn them of getting too loud once around 9:30pm, but I didn't hear them again after that. Unfortunately, Phoebe had picked up a cold which kept her awake sniffing, sneezing, and blowing her nose all night. None of us go much sleep that night, I can tell you. That's always nice when you're going to be driving for over 7 hours the next day. Luckily, I am uniquely suited to doing just that through years and years of sleep deprivation training.
We were up at 6am, as was Ellen so we had her wake her friends up so we could go down to breakfast by 6:30am. We wanted to get out by 7:30am to head to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument Sheep Rock Unit on the way back to Portland. We dropped off 2 of the girls with the other couple that had come out in a separate car. They were going to spend the day in the area still, so we said our farewells, and we were on the road by 7:39am. On the way to John Day, we drove over the Blue Mountains encountering several deer and one coyote along the way as well as freshly snow flocked trees from the night before. The temperatures at the 3500 feet summits was in the mid 30's, but the roads were fine. The scenery was fantastic. We arrived at the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center just before 10am which meant we were just in time for the ranger talk on fossils. She had a table with a bunch of fossils and others that were molds of original fossilized skulls and trees that the girls could touch and ask questions about. Then we got to watch a video on the area. The park encompasses a massive area (check out the link above to see the map). The most famous are the painted hills which we weren't able to visit this time. The area is teaming with new fossil discoveries of animal and plant species. One of the more interesting things that I found out walking through the exhibit is that the North American horse was quite prevalent through this area, but it is now extinct. All the horses that are on the continent are descended from other lands. The girls were able to earn another Junior Ranger badge, and they got to wear real ranger hats while they were sworn in. It was raining pretty good the whole time we were there so we didn't do any hikes. We drove down the road to the Cant Ranch Museum. There wasn't a lot there. Just a few displays about the pioneers and sheep's wool industry. We picnic'd in our car since it was too rainy to use the many picnic tables out there. Then it was back through the windy canyons and rock formations of the John Day Fossil Beds area. It was really neat to drive through, though the twisty roads were difficult. The rain went away as we got out of the canyons and onto the high grass prairies. It was sunny, but the wind was really blowing up there. We got to drive through a wind farm which was pretty cool on our way back to the interstate. It was raining again by the time we reached Multnomah Falls. We stopped off in downtown Beaverton at the Red Robin for dinner since we were in just before 5pm. We got the girls to bed not too much after 6pm. I finally got some work done since I wasn't able to get my laptop to connect to the wifi at the hotel. My phone connected just fine, but my work laptop wasn't even able to determine that there were live wireless access points nearby. Then we went to bed. Jada was out when her head hit the pillow, and I wasn't too far after.
Monday was a work day to say the least. I got the laundry started straight out of the gate. The girls did piano, and we all went to Storables to order the new closet organizers for the kid's rooms. We'll be splitting them up finally this summer, so Jada's been helping them clean out the playroom so it can become Phoebe's room. She's arranged for a friend of ours to come paint the themes for the rooms. I'll talk more about them next month when they're done. We visited Gramma for an hour, but she slept most of the time. The girls both played piano, and Ellen told her about our weekend. The rest of the afternoon was just cleaning out the room. I tore apart the existing closet fixtures and cut up cardboard boxes in the garage while Jada herded the kids in cleaning out things they don't need any more and storing what they did want. Then Ellen and I worked on her Conestoga wagon built on our wagon chassis. It's looking pretty good so far. Jada's going to help with the cover by sewing it to fit a little bit better. I found that I don't have a very good saw for cutting small dowel rods. I need some sort of drimmel saw for those sorts of things. I guess Father's day is coming up.... Jada and Ellen learned how to cross-stitch as Ellen's other project for the Oregon Trail. Ellen is to be a seamstress on the trail, so she's trying to work on it with a bookmark kit Jada bought in Baker City over the weekend. After dinner, Jada went to get her massage while I tried to catch up on this journal since tomorrow's the end of the month already.
May 31
Tuesday was the day we had a friend start painting Phoebe's future room (currently the play room) in a coral reef motif. It looks great already. I ended up being home for it anyway after a foray to work first thing in the morning, my stomach wasn't feeling good, and I got a headache. I also felt shaky. I spent my day laying on the couch drifting in and out of sleep among other things. I did ok with lunch, so hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.
Journal Entry: May 31, 2011