Labor Day activities

This Labor Day weekend, I'm taking time off from endless summertime activities to do a little work, which sounds awful, but is actually a bit refreshing.

The past three weekends, we've been out of town, trying to cram the last bits of summer into our busy August. We've been camping near Newport (South Beach), camping at the Gifford Pinchot (Panther Creek) and hit the Kite Festival in Long Beach, staying at Toni and Jim's beach house.

This weekend, I am finally getting back to finishing up some things. My polka-dot party invitations are, finally, completely finalized and approved. Now I'm just waiting for the final transaction to take place before I can get these all printed up and assembled and mailed off.

A few months ago, the boys and I were walking through the neighborhood and saw some kids on scooters about their age. Always one to find new neighborhood playmates, we returned with their scooters and they scootered happily, side-by-side, without ever talking, as kids often do.

As the social experiment seemed to be working pretty well, I took the next step and located the overseeing dad and introduced myself. We exchanged pleasantries, names and the names of our kids. In reponse to his query about the boys' ages, I told him that they were eight.

This was followed by the inevitable question, "Oh, are they twins?"

Now, any parent of a new child gets a certain amount of attention, but when you have twins, you get a lot of attention and curiousity, especially when they are babies and adorable. Even today, though, I have a certain amount of odd pride in the fact that we have multiples, so I did as I often do, which is to look down, feign modesty and say, "Yes, yes they are."

This time, though, I was immediately one-upped when he told me that his kids were triplets!

(and, as if this weren't enough, both he and his wife were also identical twins)

Ka-zing!

Anyway, the triplets are over this morning for a playdate. They playroom door is closed and I don't hear sounds of destruction or anything, so I'm going to say that all is well. I went in a little earlier and was immediately pressed into building Lord Vladek(or something)'s castle, demonstrating how the Imaginext volcano worked and trying to pry hot wheels out of the hot wheels track. I quickly extracted myself and am making myself busy at the computer and things are a lot simpler now.

I might make a peach pie for dessert. Our neighbor, Tricia, is making us dinner tonight. Earlier this year, we started a dinner exchange program. Every week, one of us makes the other family dinner -- since it's often just a matter of doubling all the ingredients, it really is not that hard and it's so wonderful, every other week, to receive a home-made dinner, delivered to our doorstep. It gets us to try things that we normally wouldn't have ventured to try. The boys are more likely to give new foods a chance if they are made by her.

I love Portland Parks and Rec

I love my city. One of the wonderful things about living in the Rose City is our wonderful, active Parks and Recreation department. Among the things that it offers are free summer concerts. The Washington Park Summer Concert series, which takes place in August (and is sponsored, with a lot of pride, by Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA)) offers a fantastic variety of family-friendly musical acts. Above is some footage of the Lions of the Batucada. Can you spot the DTNA employee?

They were super fun, as was the Locust Street Taxi, that we saw at Employee Night the following week.

The Washington Park amphitheatre is a wonderful, grassy spot to bring a picnic dinner and relax while watching topnotch entertainment. The kids, if they get bored, can dance near the stage, purchase kettle corn or snacks and form those instant friendships with other children (why can't adults make friends so easily?).

In addition to the concerts (which they host all over town, all summer), they are also responsible for a number of other wonderful activities in which we've participated. The boys and Tad went to the Dive In Movie and saw The Bee Movie, while floating around in wonderful Creston Pool. This summer, the boys went from fairly tentative swimmers to boys who feel comfortable swimming in the deep end of the pool (for parents familiar with the parlance, that's going from penguins, zipping past otter and landing firmly as seals in this last session before school begins again).

In past years, they've taken classes (gymnastics, art, etc). I know some parents rely heavily on these programs over the summer while school is out.

We have such a wonderful city and the Parks and Rec department is one of the best things about it!

Panther Creek

This past weekend, we spent camping with our friends, Jan and Bill and also Val and Jim. We'd been out once before with Jan and Bill, who are old friends from way back. They are the boys' godparents, in fact (and have, indeed, sworn in front of a congregation to keep Satan's influence from our children). Swift Lake with Jan and Bill was delightful and we've meant to do it again, but we have not been successful the last few years.

This year, we decided to combine everybody and do one big happy camping trip. We were originally going to do Swift Lake, which is a tradition with Jan and Bill (who have a boat and can access the remote parts of the lake), however an earlier trip revealed that the water levels had overrun the beaches, the mosquitoes were rampant and loud, music-loving yahoos had invaded their sanctuary.

With just a quick week to figure out new plans, we settled on Panther Creek, in the Gifford-Pinchot, somewhat by accident.

The trip had the potential for disaster written all over it. Not only had none of us even been to the campground (and there were few reviews written about it online), but one of our party was overcome by nausea Saturday morning and spent much of the first day vomiting on the side of the road or trying to ignore the rest of us as we talked in hushed whispers and wondered if it were something more deadly than food poisoning. Eventually, he retired to his tent and felt chipper enough the next morning to make a run out to Carson for coffee and cigarettes at 5 in the morning, so all was well by then.

The other alarming development was the heat advisory for the weekend that was all over the papers the previous day. I checked the online weather reports and everything indicated that it would spike at 100 degrees or higher and that people were advised to lie low, check on elderly neighbors and to avoid going out in the heat as much as possible. It felt a little foolhardy to leave our nicely air-conditioned home for this type of extreme weather, but we could hardly back out of it by this point.

Happily, all the portents proved to be false ones.

For starters, the site was a very short drive from Portland (a little more than an hour got us there), the campsites were large and generously spaced apart from one another. Tall trees shaded our sites. We were a short walk to a lovely watering hole at the nearby Panther Creek. While the water was icy cold, the day was quite warm and those of us who dared the depths were rewarded with a feeling of pure refreshment.

While it was quite warm in the afternoon, it never felt that bad near our watering hole and we returned to the site only after the heat had subsided.

We hit the Panther Creek Falls, ably directed by our camp hostess, Jackie (dubbed "Calamity Jane" for her fetching pigtails and irrepressible attitude), who seemed to take a personal interest in all her campers. They truly were beautiful, but we decided to leave the Falls Creek Falls (given a spectacular 5 stars in one review) for another trip.

Dining was awesome, with Val providing a unique and spicy Cincinatti-style chili the first night with cornbread. We made pasta carbonara the following night, which is a favorite camp dish with us. By mixing up the goop and frying up the bacon ahead of time, all we have to do at the campsite is to boil the pasta and toss everything together. It was also very well-received.

Jan and Bill provided a truly wonderful breakfast fry up on Saturday morning -- potatoes, red peppers, sausages, onion.... pure yum! Sunday was more laid back: cereal and fruit.

Toss in killer brownies (Val) (definitely not South-Beach-friendly) and you have yourselves some very happy campers.

The verdict: Panther Creek rocks! And the group, which has never camped together before, may do it again next year.

South Beach Fun

We spent the weekend before last in South Beach, which is just past Newport. We had planned to come with our friends, Mark and Lisa and Ava -- we'd talked about camping with them for years, ever since we met them after Ava and Colin both ended up in Mrs. Abel's kindergarten class and all of us clicked nicely but things never really got going until after Lisa simply took charge and made reservations for us.

The weather, going in, looked frightful, and our friends decided to skip Saturday and show up on Sunday. Hating to miss out on even a single day's worth of vacation, we went down as originally planned.

There was some rain on Saturday evening and we were further inconvenienced by the fact that we managed to leave one of our two well-packed camping bins at home, which meant that we had no pots and pans or dishpan or dish soap. We did, however, have some metal skewers and a packet of hot dogs, so we made do with that quite nicely.

The beach was conveniently close. The next morning, Tad officially lost his title as "Safety Parent." This is the title given to the one parent who is quite a bit more safety conscious than the other one -- there has to be one in every relationship, otherwise the children would never survive to adolescence. In our case, I lost any chance at that designation when I was left alone with the boys one afternoon. When Tad came home, he came into the bedroom where I was relaxing and demanded: "You gave the boys KNITTING NEEDLES to play with????" In retrospect, giving a pair of active little boys two pointy steel rods with which to practice their swordsmanship may not have been the best choice of playthings.

In any case, on this day, I managed to drop one of our walky talkies into the soft, dry part of the jetty. It landed on soft sand and I could clearly see it about six feet beneath me. The hole was wide enough so that I could probably have shimmied down after it, but I would have been quite cagey about doing so.

I waited for Tad to show up and when he did, I outlined the situation to him. I fully expected him, as S.P., to simply write off the $40 G.I. Joe's walkie talkies, but instead, he said: "Well, I think Ethan would fit down there, don't you think?"

Now, the truth was, the same thought had crossed my mind, but I was slightly horrified, less at the danger to my second-born son, than the realization that we had, with one blow, lost the designated S.P. in our family unit.

The boys are doomed.

In any case, I pinch hit and convinced Tad that even though he felt like he was "pretty sure" that he could fish Ethan back out without any difficulty, the fact that he had to qualify his response might perhaps indicate that there was a small chance of not retrieving our child again without a lot of trouble. So that was abandoned, though Tad lobbied for it at length and probably only gave it up when Ethan showed a less than enthusiastic response at the scheme.

Eventually, Tad fished the thing out with a long stick and some string he found on the beach, so all ended without any significant tragedy.

On Sunday, our friends arrived and we spent a perfectly lovely day on the beach, marvelling that we actually felt a little hot (!) on an Oregon beach. It was wonderful, especially as they made us a lovely dinner that night. The boys had a lot of fun building dams and hunting for sea critters with Ava (Colin is shown at the top with a crab he caught in the jetty).

We did a few hours at the Oregon Aquarium on Monday afternoon and then vamoosed back home.

Sugar Shack gets an upgrade

I arrived home from work last week to discover that Tad had appointed himself the Sugar Shack's marketing manager.

As such, the Sugar Shack underwent a decided upgrade.

A colorful umbrella was set up to attract customers and shade our proprietors. Signs were printed up on the computer. The price of cotton candy was reduced from $1 to a much more reasonable $.25 for a small bundle. He even helped them purchase popsicles, which were very popular.

Colin came up with the Sugar Shack's slogan, which he shouted at bicyclists passing on the nearby bike path: "Get your snacks at the Sugar Shack!"

That day, the Sugar Shack raked in between $5 and $6 for each partner, which was a record high. They also disproved my assertion that the Shack would only be profitable on weekends.

Mommy isn't always right.

Ethan and Colin's Sugar Shack

The past two weekends, the boys have picked up a few dollars cash by selling cotton candy and juice out in front of our house.

Ethan, in particular, was motivated by getting enough money to purchase Bitil, a new Bionicle/Lego figure.

They needed help to get set up with an extension cord, seats, etc.

The cotton candy ended up being "cotton candy balls" that they rolled up and served in a bowl, like so many snow balls. I thought it was terribly overpriced at a dollar each, but they managed to sell enough (and got very positive reviews from kids) to make it worthwhile. The juice was only $.10 for a small cup and that sold fairly well. One day, I picked raspberries and they sold those as well.

Sales mostly went to neighbors and people that we happened to know, but there were some very kind passersby as well.

The name, "Ethan and Colin's Sugar Shack" was coined by Ethan.

The boys each made three or four dollars each on each day, even on the day that the neighbor girl helped out and the money got split out three ways.

On Sunday, we treked out to the Lego store and ordered a Bitil figure, which should be arriving in about a week. Well earned!

Campy camp camp

Well, I discovered the answer to the question of whether or not soap and shampoo is provided at camp: it is not. The answer to the question of whether or not a child would willingly spend money on toiletries at the camp store when they have a choice between something that would make them clean or, say, a disposable camera or a cunning little frisbee that folds into a tiny pouch is a decided "no."



When we picked up the boys, there was actually bits of dirt and goo crusted on their faces. The fronts of their shirts were well beyond what any industrial-strength detergent could possibly get out. The boys were not unproud of the fact that they had not seen the inside of a shower for three days (at which time, they simply rinsed off -- no soap or shampoo, remember?). Ethan had brushed his teeth once and Colin only twice. They were able to tell me, with some certainty, that it takes three days for face paint (as painted on them for Capture the Flag) to wear off your face if you don't wash it.



I sometimes will give them a sniff and pretend to be horrified at the funk, but this particular time, I didn't have to pretend at all. These were truly filthy children.



After their baths, which they were subjected to immediately upon arriving home (to avoid dirtying up the rest of the house), they left a crusty layer of sand and grime at the bottom of the tub.



They have come home with silly camp songs, stories of their camp counselors ("Bigfoot's favorite color is PINK!!! No, it really is! PINK!!!!"). (The counselors, by the way, all have made-up names, like Bam Bam, Bakes (the boys' counselor), Jingles, Seatbelt, Incoming and the like. It's like some teenage witness protection program designed to protect their true identities). They slept one night on the beach. They did Campfire on many evenings (singing songs). They participated in a Talent Show (somehow drinking two glasses of water constituted some measure of talent). They were thrilled to discover chocolate pudding in the salad bar one day at lunch, at which they were allowed as many helpings as they desired. This was lunch one day, followed by dessert.

Did they have fun? Oh, my yes! Here's some photographic evidence, as posted on the Camp Collins site.

One of the pix shows Colin holding up a tooth that came out while he was at camp, which he subsequently lost. Luckily, the photo that I printed off the website seemed to be enough evidence to satisfy the tooth fairy, who left him a nice silver dollar that night.