Let's Pretend Like We Live in Portland! (Plus Other Random Highlights From Our Week)

1.  Daphne loves a chance to 'play a word' when David and I are playing one of our Scrabble games.  We let her play in our Tuesday game and then we worked our words around her randomly spaced letters.  It added a nice twist of excitement for us because if there's one thing Scrabble needs, it's more excitement.

2.  Monday we got to go to a birthday party where we made a little bike parade.  It was so festive.  (Except now Christian is afraid of balloons thanks to the wind blowing these ones into his face one too many times.)

3.  Playing with rice means I can get dishes done.  But then it also means I have a rice mess to clean up.  What's that saying about cleaning a house with children in it is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos?  I would say it applied here. 

4.  Today Daph made sure the Avengers glasses were able to talk to each other during lunchtime. 

5.  Dance parties are the most fun when Daddy joins in with his impressive dance moves, as what happened this morning before BSF.

6. Lately we've been trying to get out of our boring rut of going to basically the Town Center and Cascade Station and take advantage of some of the great amenities that our fair city has to offer.  Last weekend we went to Mother's Bistro for brunch, where David, hater of all things related to downtown said, "We really need to come downtown more often.  There are so many cool places down here."  I'm so glad he's finally on board with venturing out of our East Side bubble.

So Tuesday we went to the Pearl District (David has a special kind of aversion to the Pearl) to take the kids to Powell's, only the most wonderful bookstore you can ever imagine.  It's been years since I've been there so I had forgotten some of the magic.  It did not take long for all the glory to come back to me.   Why haven't we been going there every week?  Oh, probably because I would be poor if we did. 

it's not a Portland photo unless it contains a homeless person

Thanks to the wonderful kids area we were able to spend over an hour in the store.  David and I took turns splitting up to go search for the items on our lists.  David found all four books on his list while I found zero of mine, but I did find some great kids books to bring home.

Have you seen these classics-turned-board books by Jennifer Adams?  I would like to own them all.  I was so happy to find Jane Eyre, but I've seen a few at Costco too.  I love the illustrations and now I want to read Jane Eyre again. (The big girl version, in case that needed clarifying.)

It's good that David had so much success with his book list because it means he has positive feelings toward Powell's and wants to go back again soon.  We also need to make a date night out of it so that I can run into Sur la Table, Anthropologie, Peet's Coffee and Buffalo Exchange.  Well, OK, with a list like that, maybe a date weekend. 

Thanks, Portland, for being so cool.