Thanksgiving Weekend

Here are a few photos from Thanksgiving break….

We had the traditional Thanksgiving feast with housemate Cara and little housemate, the Cub.  Then the toddlers napped.  After Silvie woke up from her nap we attempted our one and only Thanksgiving tradition, a quick hike up Mount Tabor.  To see past Thanksgivings look here and here and here (oh my goodness, look how little Silvie was last year!)  By the time Silvie had woken up from her nap, it was starting to get dark so it was a very quick dash up to  our favorite tree and an attempt to get a photo before it was too dark.  The dogs, the girl, the weather, all were not cooperating very well.  So this is the 2010 picture on our favorite tree.

On Sunday we went downtown to see the Christmas tree in Pioneer Square.   Silvie was more enchanted by all the stairs around the square and the MAX trains (“choo-choo”), than the tree.  Every time the MAX would stop, pick up passengers, and take off again, Silvie would let loose with a string of “bye-bye, choo-choo!  bye-bye, choo-choo!  bye-bye, choo-choo!”  I finally heard myself saying, “All right, that’s enough” after about the fiftieth utterance.

After a chilly morning in Pioneer Square we had to go get some coffee.  Silvie bellied up to the bar for a croissant.  Although we’re pretty relaxed parents, let me reassure you that the espresso cup is actually empty and she’s just working on sucking down the frothed milk foam left over from Nate’s espresso.  Only a tiny bit of caffeine, I’m sure.  She’s a true Portlander, she is.

Five Years in Portland!

We can’t let July go by without noting that it marks our 5 year anniversary of moving to Oregon and also our 5 year anniversary for this blog.

Here’s the first photo we took of ourselves in Oregon.  We had just survived 3 days of driving a Penske truck full of all our earthly possessions across the country from Indiana.  We were so excited to have finally crossed the state line.

For a trip down memory lane, here’s…

—our first blog entry

—our first apartment in Sellwood

—a blog entry about getting our jobs here in Portland

We’ve had a few changes in the past five years–a house to renovate, two dogs, four chickens, and a baby.  But can I just say that my original enthusiasm about living in Portland remains unabated?!   I feel truly blessed to live here.

Here’s to five more!

Biker Baby

We’ve been slowly introducing Silvie to our favorite sport, cycling.  Before she was even born she had the cycling cap.  Then she started watching the Tour de France with Nate every morning before he went to work.

We were prepping her for her first real ride on Sunday.  Our favorite Craigslist purchase this summer has been the Chariot.  This bike trailer/stroller/jogger is Silvie’s sweet ride for the next couple of years.  She seems to like it.  She loves being out and about and sometimes she “talks” while she rides.  When she gets tired she just bends over into the most impossible upside-down U of a shape and takes a nap.

Sunday Parkways is a Portland event in which the city shuts down a 6 or 7 mile loop of roads in one part of town to traffic and opens it up to cyclists, walkers, and joggers.  The route usually connects 3 or 4 city parks where entertainment, vendors and different organizations set up booths.  It’s a fun way to get to know a different neighborhood.  This Sunday the route was in Northeast Portland.  We rode up there with our friend Stacey.   Round trip was around 15 miles and Silvie did great the whole time.   Hopefully, an early introduction means she’ll be a fan of cycling too.

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If you live in Portland, may we recommend the next Sunday Parkway on August 16, right here in our own Southeast. Unfortunately, Nate and I will have to miss it as we’ll be out of town.

4th of July

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.

Reason #2343 to Love Portland: Crystal Spring Rhododendron Garden

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.

An Explanation

Really, we can’t explain the photo below but here are the known details. This bus + Vanagon was sighted down the street at the Reed College campus. Last weekend was Renn Fayre, the end-of-term weekend long party so all sorts of shenanigans were going on. We particularly liked the oak front door.

As they say:  Keep Portland Weird!

speechless.

Originally uploaded by ndmiller

On Sunday Mornings….

Yes, I know it’s Thursday.  We’re just a little behind with posting these days.

There’s a little story that goes along with these pictures.  When we were expecting a baby, I made a long list of names that I loved (Ava, Sela, Raina,  Elise, Serena, Ruby, Emmaline, Sophia, etc.).   I think naming is important (nod to Madeline L’Engle), and I had certain criteria that any name had to meet.  So I’d make my list, and then ,of course, Nathan wouldn’t really like any of them.  So I’d start another list and keep wearing him down with my favorites.  Finally, we got down to three names that met my criteria and that we both could tolerate: Lucia/Lucy, Eleanor/Ellie, and Sylvia/Sylvie (we went with the more Latin spelling later).  Ellie Miller just had too many L’s in it so we eliminated that one.  That left us with Lucia and Sylvia, and we were stuck there for a long time.  Neither of us had a strong preference for either name.

One day, with the birth looming over us, I made up some sentences for what I thought each name would say about the little girl’s character.  My sentences were:  “On Saturdays, Lucy comes home from her soccer game and climbs up in her tree house to read Anne of Green Gables” and “On Sunday mornings, Sylvie goes with Papa to the bakery to have chocolate croissants.”   We have a tradition of going out for coffee before or after  church (or in lieu of–shh!! don’t tell!) on Sunday mornings.  Little t American Baker on Division is Nate’s current favorite stop for Stumptown coffee and fabulous chocolate croissants (or pan chocolat, I believe, the French would call them).

While I could see myself as the mama of a Lucy- or a Silvie-girl, the chocolate croissant sentence seemed to seal the deal for Nate.  And therefore, Silvie must go to the bakery to have chocolate croissants with Papa on Sunday mornings.

Thanksgiving Tradition

Most people have Thanksgiving traditionS.  Not us, with just the two of us and no family around we seem to end up doing something different every year.  We make different recipes.  We hang out with different friends.  But we do have one and only one tradition: Thanksgiving morning we take a brisk hike on Mt. Tabor, the extinct volcano/city park a couple of miles from our house.  It’s one of our favorite places in Portland.  From the top you can look to the west and see all of downtown Portland stretched out before you.  To the west you can see a gorgeously-framed view of Mt. Hood on a sunny day.  And if you’re lucky and know just where to look you can often see Mt. St. Helens through the trees to the south.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!  Here are a few pictures from our hike today before we went to dinner at our friends’ house.

P.S. If you’ve got special Thanksgiving traditions, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

P.P.S. It’s easier to get hunting dogs to hold still for a photo when there are SQUIRRELLLLLLS on the ground behind the photographer.

its been a quiet weekend for us…

but the chickens have been making quite a fuss.

Isabella Bird decided that it was time to end the suspense and produce the first egg.

IMG_0118

Originally uploaded by ndmiller