This may have been the most perfect 4th of July yet. I’m not a huge fan of the holiday and it was an unusually-hot 95 degrees so my inclination would have been to hunker down in the cool basement and watch some mindless television. But my friend Carolyn was getting married. So, rather than curl up on the dog couch, we loaded up the car and headed to Hood River.
What’s a baby to wear when it’s ferociously hot and sunny? Well, rock star sunglasses and giant sunhat, of course! She was adorably cute and went out of her way to charm as many people as possible with her toothless grin. She made it into the Official Wedding Photographer’s pictures a couple of time and we shot a couple (or twenty) of her too.
The setting was on a bluff overlooking the Gorge at a private residence. The wedding was elegant and surprisingly comfortable in the dappled shade with a breeze. The dinner featuring lamb and salmon was fabulous. The company (teacher friends) was engaging. The evening ended with sparklers and a fireworks display below us on the river. A perfect ending to a beautiful day.
Categories: Friends · Great Outdoors · Portland · Sprout
Tagged: Hood River
Nate had Poop Duty today:
Chicken Poop + Dog Poop + Baby Poop = The Trifecta
Categories: Chickens · Dog's Life · Sprout
Categories: Family · Sprout
We’d taken Nate’s mom hiking in the Gorge before so we thought we’d go some place new. Usually we hike into the waterfalls closer to Portland but this time we decided to venture a little further east to Tom McCall Preserve to see the wildflowers. 
The lupines were just gorgeous.
It was Silvie’s first time hiking and it really wore her out. Nate had her in the Moby wrap. By the end of the (short) hike they were plastered to each other with sweat and she was completely tuckered out. We need to have a more substantial carrier before we attempt a longer hike with her!
Categories: Great Outdoors · Sprout
Whew! The school year is finally over and I feel like I’m coming up for air! The last four weeks have been a whirlwind that left little time for luxuries like blogging. So we’re a little behind here in the blogland. Bear with us while we post a few things well after they actually happened.
Nate’s mom, Mary, came to visit us in Portland in May. We’d like to believe she actually came to see Nate and I, but you all know that the real attraction was little Miss Silvie-girl. Mary was here my first week back to work and Nate’s first week of being a stay-at-home papa. Whenever we have out-of-town guests we try to take them to some of our favorite places, but Mary’s been here a couple of times and we’d already shown her our usual faves: the Japanese garden, Rose Garden, Powells, waterfalls in the Gorge, etc. We had to get a little more creative.
So we walked on down to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden (say THAT three times fast), a park within walking distance of our house that we often forget exists. The Rhody garden was developed in the 1950s d0wn by Reed College, and it is just gorgeous in the spring. It’s a bit of a hidden garden– there is not much to see from the road, but there are paths and springs and waterfalls and ponds and bridges tucked in among hundreds of rhodies, azaleas and Japanese maples. Lovely.
Credit for the first two photos goes to Mary Miller.
Categories: Family · Portland
