Tuesday, April 20, 2010













 We grabbed Megan's best friend, Ryann, and  headed off to Portland for a Girls Only weekend to celebrate Megan's 14th birthday.  The weekend included shopping, VooDoo Doughnuts, Powell's bookstore, an overnight stay at the funky old Mark Spencer Hotel, shopping at the Woodburn Factory Outlet Stores and Clackamas Town Center, and chocolate fondue at the Melting Pot.  The girls' stayed up late and watched a couple of movies (Signs and New Moon), ate junk food and cut out and pasted Justin Bieber pictures onto a spiral notebook that they wrote notes to one another in.  All in all, I think it was a successful weekend that we all enjoyed!!  Happy 14th Birthday, Megan!!  Love you!!

Monday, March 22, 2010

Mini Break in Sun River, Oregon

The whole family (including Joe!) has traveled over to Sun River, Oregon for a little 3 day getaway. We arrived on Saturday to 65 degree weather and an absolutely beautiful day. Joe is feeling a little under the weather and, unfortunately for him, spent most of the day asleep. Megan chose to stay inside and watch TV and read Breaking Dawn. Tom and Tucker hopped on a couple of the bikes provided with the condo we rented and went to the park to shoot some hoops. I played around on my computer a bit, then decided it was just too nice a day to stay inside, so I walked down to the park to watch the guys shoot hoops. Turns out the bike that Tom rode had a flat tire (bummer), so he walked back with me, pushing the bike, while Tucker rode back.

Got on my laptop a bit to check e-mail and such and got my first ever Skype call from Marc and Becky. What a cool thing!! I could see them sitting at their dining room table eating spaghetti while we chatted! Unfortunately, I do not have a camera on my laptop (because it terms of technology, my laptop is practically an antique!) so they couldn't see me, but it was really fun to talk with them that way.

We then decided to drive into Bend to find a place to eat some dinner. We found a GREAT place called Zydeco, which has a vegan menu and fixed a beautiful vegetable dish with some sort of tomatoey (is that a word?) sauce for Tucker. He liked it except for the fact that he felt it had too many carrots (not his favorite vegetable). Tom had baby back ribs, which he said had an unusual tasting BBQ sauce on them, but he found quite tasty. Megan had buttered noodles, which she commented were not the best, but she really like my grilled chicken that also came with "mixed greens" and really was quite tasty. Joe ordered a rib-eye steak which he found to be "probably his favorite meal in a long time." Joe, Megan and I all ordered their blueberry lemonade with our meals, which sounds kind of strange, but we all enjoyed immensely. Joe began coughing quite a bit on the drive home and coughed a lot throughout the night. So much so, that it kept him awake until about in the morning. We all came out to the living room of the condo around 8 am, Sunday morning, to find Joe asleep on the couch. He got up and moved into the bedroom, where we let him sleep until around noon. While he was sleeping, Tom and I made a run into the Goodwill store in Bend to find sweatshirts for both Tucker and Megan, who failed to bring anything warm to wear. While days here in eastern Oregon can be quite warm and nice, the temperature often drops dramatically and can be quite cold at night and day to day, you never know what might happen here! Tom found a guitar (of course) in the Goodwill that he decided he must have and bring home to fix up for resale and we did find some sweatshirts for the kids, too. Upon returning, we snacked a bit, then bundled everybody up into their snow clothes and headed off to Mt Bachelor to hit the innertube park. Sadly, Tom no longer feels safe participating in this activity due to his two neck surgeries, so he took some pictures then headed off to the lodge to stay warm and dry and eat chili fries. It was face-freezing cold out on the mountain and it was flurrying a bit of snow. Megan and I did a couple of innertube runs then headed into the lodge for some hot chocolate and some lunch. The boys came in a bit later and joined us. After warming up a bit, the boys and I headed back out to the "slope" and did a few more runs, one where we "caterpillared" together. I love getting out in the snow and doing this, but I fear this may be the last year that we come together, as a family, for this particular activity. The kids seems to be outgrowing it. Sigh......

Once back in the room, Tucker decided he wanted to work out in the spa. So Tom and I dropped him off there, then went to the little grocery store close by to pick up a few items. We also checked out the ice skating rink, because the kids had made noises that they would like to try ice skating. This should be good, since Tucker has only been once and Joe and Megan have NEVER been. The rink was closed until a little bit later, but didn't look skatable because it had a layer of water on top. When we got back to the room Joe was asleep (again), but soon woke up and fixed himself some scrambled eggs for dinner. I went back to pick up Tucker from the spa and what should have taken me about 10 minutes, took me half an hour because this place in so big and confusing to get around!!! Tucker was a bit disgusted with me and started walking, which was silly because he was in basketball shorts and it was beginning to snow a little bit!! I finally found my way, picked him up and went back to the condo. Tom and I weren't really hungry after munching at the lodge, but we fixed some food for Tucker and Megan, then settled in to watch Edward Scissorhands. The idea of ice-skating kind of faded into the background and didn't happen. It was MUCH colder today than yesterday and raining/snowing off and on and I think we all decided to stay in where we had a fire and were warm and comfy.

After the movie, Megan headed upstairs to her room to read a little bit before turning in, Tucker headed off to his room to watch Transformers, Joe got on his laptop to do whatever it is that he does while on there, and Tom and I got on our laptops to make our next moves in our Lexulous games (our new online game addiction.....basically it's Scrabble) (I'm actually currently beating mom in my game against her!!), watched a little bit more TV then turned in for the night.

Woke up to a beautiful light dusting of snow this morning. See what I mean about the weather here? Two days ago it was sixty some degrees and today there is snow!!! The plan is to hit the factory outlet stores in Bend on the way back home.

It has been a great weekend!