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