a weekend in words.

I’ve taken approximately 3 pictures over the past week, which mostly just sucks for you guys because what’s a blog post without pictures?  You’ll have to rely solely on my wordsmithing skills to paint you a picture of my incredibly exciting life.  So… basically I’ve been having amazing hair days, the weather has been incredible and I’ve been doing the fanciest things.  Ok maybe only like, one of those things is legit.  I’m not going to tell you which one though, a girl needs to be a little mysterious, no?

But yes, I’ve been slacking in the photo department.  I think it was that we we’ve had so much going on over the past few weeks that I just wanted to do stuff for a few days without documenting it.  Photographically at least.  In theory it was great but now when I actually want to tell you about it, all I have are my words.  You’re welcome?  I’m sorry?

We did have a pretty great weekend though.  There was a beer festival with friends on Friday night, a birthday brunch in the park and then dinner at a friend’s house on Saturday, and Sunday was spent doing house-type projects before we treated ourselves to a picnic table crawfish boil at our favorite neighborhood bar.  A crawfish boil probably eliminates “doing fancy things” from my mystery list.  I didn’t really have you fooled on that one though, did I?

On top of all that PG13 fun, we also found time to hit up Home Depot, Target and Ikea.  We had lists and everything!  At one point on Saturday we considered trading in the Ford Focus for a minivan because really what’s left to do after you’ve spent the weekend brunching and dealing with window treatments going to the freaking park?  I think we aged 8 years over those two days… I kind of feel like I’m one light fixture away from getting bangs and joining a book club.

It was good weekend, whatever.  How was yours?

It feel weird not showing you any pics though – so here is one of the three photos I took over the last five days.

Again, not fancy.  And it has nothing to do with our weekend.  But oh man Portland, I do love your weirdness.

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kate the great.

This is slightly random, but is anyone else following all stories about the William & Kate & the royal baby?  How could you not?  They’re everywhere.  That kid is already way more popular than Regina George.  Coincidentally, his name is also George.

But in case you’ve been living under a rock, I can fill you in real quick.  William & Kate had a kid.   The end.

If you really need more details, royal baby George was born on Monday and weighed in at a little over 8 pounds.  That’s approximately 12 US dollars.

Moving on.  You know what I love about Kate?  She has the ability to be pretty much perfect, but not in a way that makes me want to pull out my own hair.  Or her hair.  (I would like to touch her hair though, it looks so magical).  But she just seems like a genuinely amazing person.  Don’t you think?

Anyway, what brought on this post is when I saw the pictures of William & Kate leaving the hospital with their new little one, and I was so… happy… when I saw what Kate was wearing.  Stay with me.  These days women (mostly celebrities) pop out a child and 10 seconds later are back to wearing bikinis.  It’s so unrealistic.  Because from what I’ve heard, baby weight can be a beeotch.  And that belly sticks around for a while.  It’s sad to me that there is the expectation for women to snap back into shape immediately after birthing an actual human.  So, back to Kate.  She’s obviously a pretty slim lady but I was just so impressed that she wore a dress that accentuated her post-baby belly.  It was just natural.  She didn’t try hide it or cover it up, she was just there, doing her thing, and she looked great.  See for yourself:

Am I right?  Nice work Kate.  Way to be even more awesomer than usual.  Cheerio!

 

 

 

more visitors visiting.

So as I mentioned yesterday, visitors.  They keep happening.  Last Thursday, we said goodbye to Casey’s family at approximately 9am.  By 1:45pm, I was meeting my dad and stepmom at the airport for their long weekend visit.  Despite the fact that we hadn’t had time between the waves of company to change the sheets on the beds, and we had no clean towels for showers (my dad actually had to use two tiny hand towels the first day… which couldn’t have been fun) and we were in serious need of another trip the grocery store, we were so pumped to have them here.  It’s pretty much guaranteed that any time Papa Kenny comes to visit, we’ll have a pretty kick-ace time.  He is one of the best vacationers I know – and by that I mean that he truly relaxes, let’s loose and is up for pretty much any adventure.  I love it.  When he visits, it’s kind of like I’m on vacation too.  And it’s all about me, really.

It was also stepmama Denise’s first visit to Portlandia so it was fun to show her the sights and introduce her to this weird place we like to call home.

I played hooky from work on Friday and we drove to Multnomah Falls & Hood River for the day.  It was my one-millionth time to the Falls but my first time to Hood River, and it ended up being one of my very favorite days.

[ Multnomah Falls.  I’ve been there so many times and It always fails at disappointing me.  Just plain old sucks at it. ]

Hood River is about an hour outside of Portland and it’s just the very cutest town on the Columbia River… full of wineries, a few breweries and is home to Tofurkey.  What more could a wine-swilling pescatarian ask for?  In fact, I’ve since informed Casey that we’re moving there.  It was that good.

On Saturday we made our way out to the coast.  The whole day was full of eating, as these things usually go. We stopped for Blue Star Donuts on our way out of town.  I’m just going to say it… they are so much better than Voodoo Donuts.  I know, I know.  That’s very unpatriotic of me, but you know what?  My belly don’t lie.  Sort of like Shakira’s hips.

THEN we stopped at Blue Heron cheese company in Tillamook.  Because of cheese.

[ I got to feed this guy.  He wasn’t allowed cheese though.  Can you imagine? It’s pretty much not even worth eating, if you ask me. ]

And finally we parked it at Rockaway Beach for a while.  We did a bit o’ napping on the sand…

 [ Did you know that parrotfish eat rocks and poop sand?  It’s true.  Don’t say I never taught you anything. ]

…and then, MOAR EATING.

I refuse to ever get sick of the Old Oregon Smokehouse.  I think that was our fifth visit there, and every time it’s stupid good… but this time they had a special: crab & cheese fondue served in a sourdough breadbowl, which thinking back on is making me salivate onto my keyboard.  I’d eat that stuff slathered on an old sock.

Saturday night was spent drinking whiskey and talking about how cool Portland is.  There may have also been some hammock swings involved (no pictures required).

Thanks for the fun times Papa Ken and Denise!  Please come back soon.  We’ll have semi-dirty sheets and plenty of hand towels upon your arrival.  And per usual, Chicago’s greatest hits on vinyl.  And whiskey duh.

the thompson’s take over portland.

Per usual, summer is fa-lying by.  The way it does.  I’m having minor heart-palpitations when I think about the fact that next week is August and I still have so many summer things to do.  Camping??  Last year by this time we’d gone thrice times!  Movies in the park?  I have yet to get butt-numb while watching Ratatouille and drinking 3 buck chuck in a seedy park.  And hikes?  Dear lord, I don’t think we’ve gone on a decent one in months!  So much to do, so little time.

One thing that’s different about this summer than last is the amount of visitors we’re getting.  HOO.RAY.  Nothing makes me happier than having a house full of people to show around our neighborhood and city.  Apparently it makes a difference when we have more than one bedroom (and bathroom, ahem) to welcome people to, because it’s like people are coming out of the woodwork to visit.  And we’re loving it like crazy.

Last week we hosted Casey’s family (mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, two nieces) for 5 days.  They flew into Seattle and we all met up in Seaside on Saturday afternoon… which was a quick and beautiful hour-long drive for us… for them it was a morning full of flights, another 3.5 hour drive from Seattle to Seaside, 1 speeding ticket and two tired little ladies to deal with.  We eased their pain by tapping the rockies in our hotel parking lot as soon as they got there.  Nothing but class, us Thompsons.

But Seaside was amazing: beaches + seafood + salt water taffy + biking around town in a surrey with two little ones and one squirrely little dog…  It’s the stuff memories are made of.

They spent the rest of their visit be-bopping around Portland with Casey as their tour guide.  Because of this silly little thing called work, I had to miss allllll the daytime fun, including a visit to the zoo, the rose garden, Disneyland for Dogs, Multnomah Falls, a hike, the Children’s museum and most importantly… Big Ass Sandwiches.  It was pure torture.  But I know they had fun without me, somehow ;)  I could tell by how pooped they were each night.  Luckily I got to be a party of the nightly happy hour and subsequent dinner eat-athons we seemed to have every evening.  I gotta say, that’s a top five perk of having visitors.  Free rein to eat and drink whatever .. because hey, we gotta show them a good time.  Right?  Yup.

And now, cue the peek-cheers!

[ salt water taffy.  i think i ate 3 chins worth ]

[ view from the back of the surrey.  i think my hands are still shaking… those seats were only like this wide.  and we had to deal with gus-monster who would just not sit still. ]

[ these little cuties love to giggle.  and cry.  but mostly giggle. ]

[ gus was obsessed with mark’s pocket.  something about a cheese stick wrapper…. ]

[ photo courtesy of mama nance and papa earl! ]

Thanks for the fun times family – we love you!  Gus says hey and he’s still looking for that cheese stick…

xo
The Portland Thompsons

bed shopping. and hopping.

Casey and I have been slooooooowly furnishing our house since we moved in a few months ago.  Coming from a background of small apartments + moving to everywhere all the time, we have a hodge-podge of next to nothing when it comes to furniture.  A nightstand from high school that has stains on it from sticking my gum to it, an old chair from the in-laws that has no springs and is far too uncomfortable for any human to sit on (but Gus loves it), a couch we bought for $75 from my old orthodontist boss… we are basically the Brad & Angelina of adopting furniture.  Give us furniture and we will show it the world!   Yah so, our house is still pretty echo-y.  Lots to buy.  Lots. to. buy.

But last week we made a total big kid furniture purchase.  Drumroll please….. a king-sized bed!  :: pause to do the carlton dance ::

You’d think that lay-testing (??) beds would be a dream job, but it was actually kind of a lot of work and made me very tired.  Go figure.  Wouldn’t life be grand if you could just go to a bed store and lay down and mattreses would swap out underneath you?  Instead of bed-hopping and forgetting if this one was more comfortable than that one but I forgot what that one felt like and that other one is cheaper but is it just as comfortable.. yadda yadda yadda.  Sigh… middle-class problems.  (speaking of which, have you seen this?  It’s amazing.)

We somehow made it through the process though… and after multiple bed store trips and two point five hours at a Sleep Country with our new best friend, salesman Jim, we found our new Sealy.  And you guys?  It’s so pretty.  It’s like we’re staying at the Ritz every night (that’s just a guess, the closest I’ve ever gotten to a Ritz is a cracker).  And by every night, I mean Friday night.  Because that’s the only night we’ve slept in it so far.  Casey’s family is visiting this week (post on that coming soon!) and we, being the amazing awesome kids that we are, gave up our beautiful new Ritz bed to Casey’s parents.  It’s definitely high-time that our parents stop sleeping on our air mattress.  They’ve been troopers for far too long.  I don’t know if it’s harder for us to give up our bed or harder for them to accept it but either way, we’re so happy to do it because we’ll have plenty of chances to faceplant into that bad boy over the next hundred years.  That’s how long it’ll take to pay it off, anyways.

So now we need a name for our new bed.  Cuz that’s what you do when you’re an adult and buy nice furniture, you name it.  Maybe “The Ritz”?  For obvious reasons.  Or “Your Mom”?  Because that joke never gets old.  Or probably just “The Place I Watch a Lot of Pretty Little Liars”.  Because.