Scott, Eliot, and I had a quick trip to Portland a couple of weekends ago. Though the weather was a bit dicey at times, and the family dynamic was pretty tense and rocky at other times, in all we had a great time. Here are some pictures to show a few aspects of the adventure:

• Some scenes from the airport and the restaurants we visited, passing the time by drawing or playing airplane with Eliot.
• Quite a few pictures of our room, which Eliot thoroughly enjoyed. These are particularly indicative of his overwhelming love for his elephant – “Iyo” – these days. He just can’t get enough of this animal that is so thread bare and emaciated that my mom had to craft a fleece cover to keep the pachyderm intact. It’s a beautiful thing, though – a boy’s fondness of his cherished lovey!
• Then there’s the visit to the falls, in which Eliot summarily refused to participate. He may have been frightened by the immensity of the falls just after he had awoken from his nap. But, the next day, as we passed the falls again on the way back from Hood River (a very cool town with a great brewery), he announced that he would want to see the falls when he was older. Seems reasonable enough.
• And then there was the stop at the dam and locks – Eliot found this cool area landscaped with river rock and driftwood that he was fascinated by. He immediately began pulling out special rocks onto the sidewalk. Then he stood tall, looked at his assemblage, and announced, “Okay, now I have to ORGANIZE them.” Again, here are one of those times that you see yourself in  your child and it is wonderful at the same time that it is frightening. He did, though – sorted the whole lot into shiny, flat, and crooked piles. Seems logical to me.
• But the highlight of the trip was the soaking pool. AAAAHHH, the soaking pool! The place we stayed is owned by a company that buys historic properties and turns them into cool hotel/resort facilities. A signature part of their ventures is to include a cool soaking pool – essentially a shallow pool that is heated to about 100F, lovely to soak but not too warm that you are itching to get out after a bit. This one had the added features of showers that rained down after pulling on various chains – a huge hit for Eliot. In any event, he loved this one (as did we), and was keen on “swimming” back and forth to Scott and I, as long as we weren’t too far away. By the way, he has real swimming lessons beginning this weekend, so this was a great preliminary adventure to get him excited about swimming for real.
• And then of course there are the pics of Eliot zoning out in front of the DVD player we brought along that, well, SAVED OUR HIDE! There were no TVs in the rooms and filling the hours was a challenge at times, especially due to Portland’s liquor laws and given that almost the entire resort was either a brewery, distillery, bar, or other such evil locale, all of which had bold signs at the entry announcing “NO MINORS.”

So there it is – some brief snippets of our trip to Portland. We also visited our friends Beth and Geoff, who have a son Jago. Eliot and Jago had a fantastic time together playing with Star Wars legos, and we enjoyed learning of their lives in the beauty of Portland neighborhoods that have good public schools and lovely houses and the like, for a fraction of what we are paying. Hey ho. At least the Bay area doesn’t get 300 days of rain annually. We all make our choices, but boy were those beautiful, clean, tree-lined streets enticing!

cheers,

amy

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