Tea, Cake and Death

As some of you know, I (Kate) have recently had the pleasure and the honor of becoming involved with Death Cafe.  Specifically, the newly formed Portland Death Cafe.  And I couldn’t be happier about this.

It all started back when NPR ran this story.  I missed the airing of it, but caught the article on NPR’s website.  It was a story about an emerging global movement to bring the conversation about death out of the shadows, by offering what are called “Death Cafe’s.”  A Death Cafe isn’t a physical cafe (necessarily) but a gathering of people for the purpose of talking about death.  The events are free, and tea and cake (or other similar refreshments) are served, and also free.

Death goes down smooth with a nice serving of tea and cake.

I was instantly excited and immediately began trying to figure out how I could get involved.  I read every part of the Death Cafe website.  I was ready to start organizing one myself when I had the idea of searching online to make sure there wasn’t already one in my area.  The search turned up the PDX Death Cafe Facebook Page (linked to above), and I wasted no time in sending the admin of that page a message explaining my interest in Death Cafe and offering to help out in any way they needed.  The response I got was from the nicest woman you could imagine, and she was very welcoming and willing to let me join the team of co-hosts.  So I did, and after some planning, some meetings, some more planning, etc. , we hosted our first PDX Death Cafe on a sunny Sunday afternoon late last month.

It was everything I had hoped it would be and more.  It’s a funny thing, the response you get from people when you have them sit inside on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, talking about death.  It’s sort of… well, if you take all the things you imagine when you hear the words “Death Cafe”, and then take the opposites of those things, that’s what you get.  A positive experience was overwhelmingly reported on the surveys we collected at the end of the event (of which about 90% of participants filled out and turned in), with 100% of respondents saying they’d be extremely likely to recommend Death Cafe to their friends and family.  Here’s some of the words used to describe participants’ experiences, in cloud form:

Response to PDX Death Cafe, in cloud form

Not too shabby for our first run, eh?

Anyway, I’m happy to say that I’ll be continuing my involvement with PDX Death Cafe, and we plan on having roughly monthly events.  I can’t wait to see where this movement is headed.  I’m very hopeful and optimistic that maybe, finally, a topic that deserves attention more than any other I can think of is starting to get it’s time to shine.

Also, as some of you know, I had the pleasure (and terror) yesterday of participating in a sort of on-air Death Cafe with a local radio station, KBOO, on a show called The Recovery Zone.  The terror part was my nervousness about speaking on the radio, compounded by our main host showing up with laryngitis and handing over her share of the conversation to me.  But aside from a bumpy start, it ended up being fine and even a little bit fun.  If you want, you can listen to it here.

 

Happy Birthday! May 19th.

As you may already know, today is a very special day.  A very important person was born on this 19th day of May.  Yes, today is a day for celebration.  Let’s all put on pointy hats and raise a glass to the man of the day!

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday, Pete Townshend!

Happy Birthday to you!

 

 

 

 

No?  Oh, did we mean Jim Lehrer?

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Boy!

 

 

 

Not him?  Okay…

 

 

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday, Joey Ramone!

Happy Birthday to you!

 

 

Yeah!!

 

No.  Still not right?  Hmmm…..

 

 

Err… Andre the Giant?

 

 

Umm….

No.  Hmm.

 

 

Oh, I know… That girl in Ace of Base!

 

 

 

Still no?

 

Who could it be…

Happy Birthday, folks!

Hmm, the only other awesome, amazing, superstar I can think of whose birthday is today is…

The one, the only!  Kane Fancy-Pants Brassington!

See him performing his starring role here as Patient #1 in The Galloping Poopy Pants…

 

 

 

Bravo!  Bravo!

 

 

Kane’s just the best.  No offense to Jim Lehrer or Psicosis, nor to Andre the Giant or Ho Chi Minh.  Kane is just the best thing to come out of May 19th since the centigrade temperature scale.  He’s cooler than cool.  He’s hotter than hot.  And we all love him more than the melting point of carbon or the boiling point of rhenium.

And that is a lot of love.

Kane – - – -  We couldn’t possibly thank you enough.  For all that you do to hold this family up.  For your endless patience and gentle kindness.  For your superhuman toughness.  For the laughter you flood our house with.  For your dedication to our children and the fierce and loving presence you provide for them.  For being the hilarious, all-knowing, magical, engaging and enchanting father you are to our girls.  For being my rock.  For holding my hand as we stumble through this mixed up, bizarre world together.  For bringing me back down when I start to float away.  For letting me be who I am.  For being who you are.  Thank you forever and ever.  We love you.

 

Happy Birthday, Kane!!!!

The Day of the Mother

This is a bit late, but I wanted to share our Mothers’ Day fun with you.

First, I woke up to breakfast in bed.  Who doesn’t love that?

Next, when I finally came out of my bedroom (I had woken up feeling emotional and barricaded myself in my room writing this), I was greeted by my loving family offering gifts.  Yay, presents!  What I got was perfect.  A beautiful set of tea cups, in a display stand, from Kane.  A sheet music holder/stand from Eila (not pictured in photo).  A ceramic turtle candle holder from Shaelyn.  And a little porcupine figurine from Davia.  Oh and the flowers had been brought to me in bed.  All so sweet!

 

Then we went to a park for some fun.

 

And we took a walk…

Then on the way home from the park, we stopped at TJ’s to get some stuff for our tea party!

The tea party was fun, but we didn’t get any pictures of it.  What we did get pictures of was wig time.  What is wig time?  This is wig time…

This is how Eila felt about wig time…

Then I tried to organize a photo shoot with the girls while Kane was making dinner.  This is how that went…

And that’s it for our Mothers’ Day 2013.

Love to all!

kksde

Spring Things

Spring is in full effect here in Oregon.  That means we have warm days – even hot days!  (By our new Oregonian standards, anyway.)  And we have rainy days.  Sometimes a hot day teams up with a rainy day, for a day that’s fully both, just to keep us on our toes.  Basically, when we open the front door, we never know what we’re going to find.  It’s very exciting.

Spring is a fun time to be living in a house with Shaelyn and Davia.  Eila too, of course, but Shaelyn and Davia’s fun factor really peaks when the weather allows them out of doors.  Unless it’s pouring outside, you can bet these girls will be out there.  Part of their time outside is spent negotiating the very complex and persistent social dramas that unfold between the various neighborhood children.  That’s kind of fun to watch.

But even more fun is watching Shaelyn and Davia being the little scientists that they are.  They are so incredibly in tune with nature, they’re aware of every slight change in the ecosystem that is our yard.  Which flowers are budding, which are blooming, where a certain bug has been snacking on a certain plant, which plants are attracting which creatures, what the birds are eating, where the ants are heading… all of it!  They know everything that goes on out there.  Not just with the neighborhood kids, but with anything that’s alive.  It’s really cool to watch how amazingly observant they are.

The big girls also like to take Eila out there.  It’s funny – when they were Eila’s age, I never in a million years would have let them go outside supervised only by a couple of distracted 9-year-olds.  But my discomfort with that situation is often overpowered by my desperate need to vacuum or get another load of dishes in.  So out they all go.  One day I peeked out to check on them and saw this…

Eila in her wagon, Davia hard at play

And during that same peek, I saw this…

Shaelyn weeding

 

Another day this spring, I went out on the front porch and saw this…

As you can see, this is the single most adorable and sweet thing anyone has ever seen.  I was so floored by my heart melting that I totally forgot that I had told Shaelyn at least three times to stop playing with the hose.  But what could I say when I saw this and heard that Shaelyn had done it for Davia, whose feelings she was afraid she had hurt?  What could I do besides squeal and run for my camera.  Little punks though they may be at times, I think our kids are the sweetest things ever.

We don’t spend all Spring outside.  Here’s proof…

 

 

 

 

 

And here are a few to prove that I’ve been practicing my ukulele…

 

 

 

 

Happy Spring, one and all!

 

xoxox,

Kate, Kane, Shaelyn, Davia and Eila

Something Like Easter

Easter hopped in and out of our lives this year like a giant, pastel, clumsy bunny.  We were missing our Kane (who was down in California visiting his parents and sister), but on something like a trade, we landed two dear friends (Lori and Davey) of ours to stay the weekend with us and participate in all our Easter festivities.  I actually wasn’t feeling too good for most of the time, so the weekend was kind of a blur to me.  But I do know that I was surrounded by lots of laughter and joyful squeals and other indications that fun was being had.

I don’t think I got any great photos, but here’s the best of what I got:

You want my delicious homemade cupcakes.  You really do…

 

Oh, and the Kate, who was missing Kane, decided to make a Kane puppet type thing, so that it would be like he was there with us.  And it was just like the real thing!  Okay, almost.

 

Kate even took the Kane thing to bed with her.

 

In the morning, it was time for some chocolate madness.

And that was Easter 2013 at our house.

Hope you all had a lovely day, celebrating Easter, or if not, celebrating Sunday, or whatever.

Lots of love to all!!!

kksde

Ice Cream Walk

Toddlers are a pain to go for walks with, unless they’re in a stroller or wagon or something.  They walk so very slow, and often they walk in the wrong direction.  They stop to look at everything, picking up rocks, trash, anything they see.  A walk down two blocks can take all day.

But a few days ago, Lori (who’s back up here for a visit right now) discovered the trick to making a toddler walk a little faster.  We were in a lovely area of Portland, the Alberta Arts District.  We were walking back to our car from lunch, several blocks.  Luckily someone had the idea to stop for ice cream (gee, I wonder who and who else that might have been), and then this happened:

 

Yummy!

We got to the car in record time.

The Park in March

This past weekend, Kane took the three girls to the park so Kate could focus on her business class homework for awhile.  This post shall contain photographic evidence of the fun that went down at the park that day.  (Apologies for the limited captions and commentary… the author of this post was at home working on her elevator speech.)

 

Eila got the wheels turning…

 

 

Shaelyn got caged in…

 

Eila got pushed around:

And snuggled…

 

Davia and her baby sister hit the slide…

 

 

And here’s an event we call, “Who swung it best?”

Kane?

 

Shaelyn?  (in the back)

 

Davia?

 

Or Eila?

And that’s what it looks like, when three girls and their papa hit the park one Sunday in March.

The Laundry That Happened

There are days when a blog post is a riveting account of your adventures.  Trials and tribulations.  Deep thoughts.  Big announcements.  Or anything else that falls under the umbrella category of “interesting content.”

And then there are days like today.  Today was laundry day.  (I should clarify… EVERY day at our house is laundry day.  But today was a day when we piled all the giant pieces of laundry into the car and drove them around a corner and across a street to the local laundromat.)  The big girls were at school.  Kane was at work.  It was Eila and myself, against a mountain of blankets, sheets, duvet covers, towels, and some small purple mystery thing that ended up staining some stuff.

First we had to get there.  Luckily, we have a minivan.

 

 

We got there nice and early.  It looked like this.

 

Inside, Eila looked like this…

Machines looked like this…

 

Eila helped pick out soap like this…

 

Kate wore her best bed-head for the occasion…

 

Eila looks cuter in bed head, but she has less of it.  So… tie?

 

Our blankets got clean like this…

 

Message from above, or just a place to get coins?

 

 

 

 

Kate and Eila, washer girls…

 

 

Eila, checkin’ it out…

 

Running down the aisle…

 

 

 

 

That’s all the pictures I got.  There was no one to shoot my camera while I was dragging the enormous duvets and comforters that we’d spent the past 2-3 hours getting clean through the muddy puddles on the way to the car.  There must be some better system for that!

But muddy blankets and purple-stayed sheets aside, laundry day happened.  With a toddler.  I call that a success.

I told you this post would be fascinating.

love to all!!!  xoxox

Our Trip to the Coast

We took our first family vacation to the coast (in Oregon anyway) a couple weeks ago.  We went and stayed the night in a yurt at Beverly Beach State Park, about ten miles north of Newport.  Then we went into town to visit the beach, have lunch and go the aquarium.  Lots of fun.  Here are some photos and videos from our trip…

The three girls at the campgrounds:

 

 

Who has the cutest belly button?  It’s this kid:

 

Twins, in their element:

 

 

And we heard the strangest bird on our morning walk.  Eager to play it for Grandpa Jim for identification, I got out the video camera.  However, Shaelyn and Davia identified it, roughly.  They at least ruled out the “bird” part.

 

Here are the three girls at the beach:

 

Eila, her first time at the beach:

 

Big girls:

 

 

 

 

 

Then we had lunch at the Savory Cafe.  The girls got fancy drinks (smoothies) and didn’t let those umbrellas go to waste.

Shaelyn:

Davia:

Even the pizza got fancy:

 

And then the aquarium.

 

 

 

That’s our trip!

love to all,

KKSDE

What’s New and Stuff to Do

“Why is it that whenever I feel inspired and motivated enough to give this blog a thorough updating, it’s when I only have a few minutes to do so?”

The above quote was the beginning of a post to this blog that I started last night and then quickly saved and abandoned when something interrupted me.  I think that would be funny as a stand-alone-post, but since I have more to add today – and actually a few minutes to do it! – I’m going to just keep writing.  Quick!  While I have the chance!  Right?

No, seriously though, something is going to interrupt me again.  It’s only a matter of time.  So I’ll try and be quick with this update.  I’ll start it with a video of Eila in her “new” boots (new to Eila, used to belong to the lovely Lottie)…

 

 

Now I’ll tell you a few things (unrelated) and then wrap up with another video.  That is… unless something interrupts me.

Things to tell:

1. Kane’s rocking his job back at Laika!  It’s such a great company to work for, and they do amazing work there.  Kane’s so happy to be a part of their team.  They’re working on a movie called Box Trolls, that’s due for release actually on S and D’s birthday in October of 2014!
2. Speaking of birthdays, Kate’s is tomorrow!  The family will be heading to Portland tomorrow for some fun birthday adventures, followed by a cozy stay in a queen sized guest room at the Kennedy School.
3. Speaking of tomorrow, Shaelyn and Davia start their “We-Build Robotics” class at the Saturday Academy in Portland tomorrow morning, where they will be building and engineering robots made of legos!  (The class was an awesome Christmas gift from Grandma Bubba.)
4. Speaking of Shaelyn, guess who is the student council representative for her class this semester?  It’s Shaelyn!  We’re so proud of her for taking the initiative, and having the courage, to apply, and we’re thrilled that she was elected.  Go Shaelyn!
5. Both Davia and Shaelyn just earned shining marks on their second report cards of the year, and they’re both apparently star students.  Great job, girls!
6. Eila has a new dance move that involves hearing music, pausing, wiggling her head ever so slightly, and then dropping her butt to the floor for some major wiggling.  It’s awesome.  Don’t know where she got it though.  That’s actually not one of my moves.
7. Kate’s very excited to be starting her small business class next month.
8. Everyone’s very excited that Bubba’s coming to visit in a couple weeks.
9. Oh, and on President’s Day weekend, we have plans to visit the Oregon coast for the first time.  We’ll go to the aquarium (thanks to another Christmas present, from Grandpa Jim) and stay the night in a yurt at Beverley Beach State Park.  Fun!

So there’s a lot of fun going on right now and a lot of good things to look forward to.

Now quick!  Before that interruption comes, let’s get another video in here!

 

 

That’s all for now.  Hope you all have a very fun and relaxing Kate’s-Birthday Weekend!!  Love to all.