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

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easter weekend was all kinds of great.

Let’s give a nice big shoutout to Mother Nature this past weekend because as predicated,  she was magnificent.  Mid-70’s, sunny, perfection.  All.weekend.long.

There was a trip to the largest dog park in the universe where we spent almost 3 HOURS on Saturday morning.  The seasoned enthusiasts call it “Disneyland for Dogs” and I can see why… Gus friggin’ loved it.  And it’s so big that we barely saw anyone while we were hiking around even though there were probably hundreds of people/pups there.   Thankfully, no one but us saw when Gus decided to rub his entire body all over a dead skunk.  I’m not kidding.  He also ate a chunk of horse poo.  ……….. That’s all I have to say about that.

Among many other more respectable activities, we were also invited to a friends’ parents house for Easter brunch.  I hadn’t given much thought to Easter this year, probably because it’s generally a family holiday and we have no family out here.  But it was a nice surprise to be invited to the burbs by our friends – especially since what we thought would be a maybe-awkward, mostly-family gathering was actually a mix of their closest pals and neighbors.  It turns out that this group of people, who have all lived in that neighborhood at one time or another, have been getting together for holidays for years.  I’m talking 25+ years.  Most of them are Oregon-transplants who don’t have much family in the area so they’ve all basically adopted each other and each others’ children as their family.  It was so sweet to hear their stories and see photos of the same group of people from Easter, 20 years ago.  It definitely gave us hope for our future in Portland.  Because it can be so hard to be away from our families.  Especially knowing that we’re missing out on holidays and memories.  (do you hear tiny violins playing yet because I sure do.)  Seriously though, the “family” that we met on Sunday made me excited to continue making friends so great that even if were aren’t able to be in MN for a holiday, we’ll still have our own Portland family to celebrate with.

So, all that being said, who wants to hang out with me for Memorial Day?  No pressure.