My Life – Page 9 – Her Green Life

Pacific time — What we did in Portland

It took a good 5-6 days of being stuck between Central time and Pacific time (so, Mountain time, technically), but we’re more or less back to our regular routine around here. Now it’s time to review our trip before I forget anything important.

Lodging
We stayed in four different houses/apartments over the course of eleven days in Oregon. We started in a VRBO house just southwest of Mt. Tabor in Portland. After three nights, we moved to a VRBO apartment in the Buckman neighborhood of Portland. We loved this location — very central for biking, plus some things within walking distance — and we were here for five nights.

At that point, we headed out of Portland for a couple of days. Our road trip took us to a VRBO cabin in Prospect, Oregon, just south of Crater Lake. That was our home for two nights as we explored both Crater Lake and the abundance of amazing waterfalls in the area, many of which are quite easily accessible (i.e., short walks/hikes that were relatively easy for Gabriel and my MIL).

We stayed in Portland at my SIL’s apartment for the final night of our trip.

Transportation
While in Portland, we mostly got around by bike, other than the trip from and to the airport. We shared a rental car with Matthew’s mom. My MIL shouldered most of the work of shuttling other people around in the car, and we enjoyed most of our time in Portland car-free.*

Over the course of six days (not counting the bike-free day when we drove to Silver Falls), we put in 60 bicycle miles in Portland. Our highest mileage day was 14 miles, and our lowest was 9 miles. If anything, I expected those numbers to be higher. It felt like we were all around the town. I guess the lower than expected mileage is a testament to Portland’s density?

We covered a lot of southeast Portland, some of northeast, and a bit of northwest.

For us, the rental car was essential for our day hike at Silver Falls State Park and the side trip to Crater Lake, and it was nice for getting to/from the airport (but we could have taken a cab), and otherwise a huge PITA (long wait for pick-up at the airport, then arguing that we had reserved/needed a 4-door vehicle vs. the 2-door they were trying to stick us with, then having to swap cars after two days due to brake and electrical issues).

Food
While we were in Portland, we were on the “bakery-a-day” plan (good thing we were doing all that biking!). The bulk of our pastries came from Ken’s Artisan Bakery and St. Honoré Boulangerie. At Ken’s, we love the Oregon croissant (though we weren’t quite as impressed this trip, compared to last time), the vegetable quiche, and the cannele. At St. Honoré, we love the mirliton (a small tart, filled with almond batter and fruit — two years ago we had pear; this trip, they had cherry, which was amazing!) and the cannele; we also had a nice chocolate croissant here.

We tried one new bakery this trip, Crema. Matthew liked their fruit danishes, though I wasn’t amazed (not enough cream cheesy filling and too much of a sweet glaze — I like my pastries barely sweet). I enjoyed a piece of their chocolate espresso bread (heavy on the chocolate, light on the espresso).

Outside of bakeries, my favorite food came from Pad Thai Kitchen (on SE Belmont), Boke Bowl, and ¿Por Que No? Taqueria. We ate at another Thai place and a French place that were okay, but not remarkable. It is quite possible that we spent as much money at bakeries over the course of the trip as we did on food at restaurants.

Vegetarian rice bowl at Boke -- the tofu in here was amazing! — Vegetarian rice bowl at Boke — the tofu in here was amazing!

The other food highlight that I should mention is the delicious paella served at my SIL’s wedding, from none other than a catering place that makes only paella. They knocked the vegetarian version out of the park with delicious white beans, mushrooms, artichokes, and other veggies.

Because we had full kitchens at all of our places, we also did a decent bit of eating in, which helped budget-wise, and nutrition-wise, too (ensuring we ate at least some beans and had some grain variety). This option was also very nice in Prospect, where dining options were limited (grocery options were also quite limited in the area around Crater Lake, so plan accordingly).

Things to do
So, what did we do other than riding our bikes from bakery to bakery? Mostly lots of low-key stuff.

We visited a couple of playgrounds with Gabriel — easy, free, and fun way to pass time with a little one.

Playground at Dawson Park in N/NE Portland

Other than renting the Bullitt, our only paid entertainment was a visit to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), which felt like a blend of the Science Museum and the Magic House in St. Louis (paid admission, unlike our Science Center). You could probably spend an entire day at OMSI, but our visit was limited to just a couple of hours, which, after torturing Gabriel by walking through the [to him terrifying] dinosaur exhibit, were mostly spent in the Science Playground, a wing just for the 6-and-under crowd.

The Science Playground had a sandbox! With construction equipment! Sir was in heaven.

We did a bit of shopping in the stores around the 3500 block of SE Hawthorne, as well as a quick visit to Powell’s books in downtown Portland. (I was disappointed to discover Powell’s was not just used books, but rather a mix of new and used. They also don’t have a “used” section; rather, the used books are mixed in with the new, and, at least for children’s books, their offerings seemed to skew heavily toward new.)

Most of our remaining time was spent with family and new friends, celebrating my SIL’s wedding (for which Gabriel was a ring bearer).

That’s all for now, though I have at least two more trip-related posts, one on Crater Lake and one on bike infrastructure in Portland (I made myself take pictures this time around!).

*Between the rental car and the borrowed bikes, we didn’t end up using public transit, but a friend told me that Portland has a great app that makes it very easy for a visitor to use the system to get around (assuming you have a smart phone).

Portlandia

We spent Sunday at the airport . . .

. . . where we took full advantage of the new play area near the C gates in the main terminal before boarding our flight.

Flying direct was nice in many ways, but it did make for a long time in the air. I was hoping someone’s nap would be closer to two hours rather than less than one, but at least he took a nap, and we managed the rest of the time without too much trouble.

I’m very glad we chose to put him in the car seat on the plane, as having a structured place (vs. swimming in an adult-sized plane seat and/or squirming all over our laps) really helped, both with napping and in general.

A little over four hours later, we arrived in Portland! Hard to believe we were here almost exactly two years ago, when The Dude was a lot smaller and had a lot less hair.

Our “settling in” day involved acquiring food and bicycles. What more do you need?

After a morning grocery stock-up, we swung by my sister-in-law and soon-to-be brother-in-law’s place to pick up the bikes and trailer we’re borrowing for the week, then biked the five miles back to our rental house (similar to our last visit, we avoided streets with bike lanes as much as possible, sticking to “bike boulevards” (AKA neighborhood greenways) or plain ol’ streets.

After nap time, we headed out to find a playground for Sir. The closest playground happened to be located at Mt. Tabor Park, which put our hill climbing skills to the test. In addition to the playground, we were rewarded with some great views.

We’re looking forward to more outings by bike (being driven around in the rental car made me grumpy and carsick), including renting a Bullitt cargo bike from Splendid Cycles for a day!

Yesterday, Matthew and I enjoyed a day trip to Silver Falls State Park (just south of Portland) for some lovely waterfall-heavy hiking.

We saw eight(!) waterfalls over the course of a 9-mile [loop] hike.

The only downside so far is HOT and no air-conditioning in our rental house, but it cooled off a decent bit yesterday (our hike was not hot, so we weren’t too tempted to go swimming), plus we’re moving to a different rental place that might have A/C and is more centrally located, to boot!*

*We’re not relocating because of the A/C, but rather had planned previously to spend the first few nights at my MIL’s rental before moving to our own place.

Summer

While I’m not taking a full summer vacation from blogging, things have been a little slow in this space, which, as usual, indicates that life is anything but slow! Despite the craziness, life is actually pretty darn good right now, and I have lots of future post ideas stored in the drafts folder for a rainy day. Until then, here’s a peak at foodie and bikey happenings.

We celebrated last week’s unseasonably cool weather (highs in the mid-70s) — picnicking with friends at the Botanical Gardens and a trip to the zoo, both by bike. The cooler temps didn’t stop Gabriel from getting soaked in the raccoon fountain at MOBot.

Our return trip from the zoo marked my first time climbing the Macklind hill on Roadrunner. I enlisted my cheer leading section to chant “Go, Mama, go!” We were slow but steady on our climb to the top.

On Saturday, I spent a rare day at the garden, ostensibly to help dig the last of the potatoes. That didn’t happen so much (potatoes were dug, just not by me), but I harvested edamame, gave tours to a couple of friends who will be helping with the garden (and enjoyed catching up in the process), and cleaned and sorted a boatload of carrots!

That’s less than half of the harvest! Carrot harvesting was not on the list for Saturday, but, despite all of his anti-vole efforts, Matthew found evidence of vole-damaged carrots, so out they came! Fortunately, we got to most of them before the voles.

After a couple weeks of a trickle of cherry tomatoes and a couple of other small varieties, we harvested our first big tomatoes over the weekend, which meant Caprese sandwiches on Sunday.

Plus carrots and green beans!

Our “low-key” Sunday involved picking and freezing a couple quarts of basil, pickling some cucumbers, baking a coffee cake, and making bread dough.

Three!

Our weekend was filled with family, friends, and cake, as we celebrated Sir’s 3rd birthday.

We kept things pretty simple and low-key, which also equated to planet-friendly. The only “disposable” item that I purchased was the pack of party hats, but they’re all in good enough shape to be used again.

Matthew suggested that we look for some kind of reusable (ideally cloth) birthday banner that we can pull out at this time every year (his family had something like this growing up), and I think that’s a great idea!

Sir requested strawberry birthday cake, and I delivered, using frozen garden strawberries (I used the Jell-O-free recipe here, subbing whipped cream and sliced berries for the icing). I also pureed a bit of roasted beet for extra pink oomph — the batter was a lovely bright pink, but, as you can kind-of see in the above picture, the finished product just barely had a pink hue. Sir didn’t mind!

I’m on the hunt for a kid-sized table and chairs for G (not necessary, but might be fun for him, so if I can find something nice, at a reasonable price . . . ), so in the meantime, we borrowed my MIL’s. Fun place mats belonged to Matthew and his siblings.

Birthday presents were also pretty low-key: a deck of Uno cards (he plays at Mrs. L’s house) and a new-to-him bulldozer, which, not surprisingly, was a huge hit! (I picked up the bulldozer at a thrift store last fall, intending it as a Christmas gift, then forgot about it.) While I think gift-giving can be a nice part of birthday celebrations, I really prefer that the acquisition of more stuff not be the focus.

My planned birthday gift for Sir is/was a new-t0-us, three-wheeled scooter. I’ve been keeping an eye on CL, but not really finding anything. My first choice would be a Mini Kick Scooter (reviewed here), but I might have to compromise on that, if I’m also set on buying used. Either way, I’d like to get something so he can zip around like the adorable kids I saw in London.

Sir’s weekend fun also included not one, but two, trips to Grant’s Farm, first with Baba, and then with my family, who came from Iowa for the weekend. Gabriel had lots of fun running around with his cousin Noah and riding the “train.”

Returning to normal time

Have I mentioned that I like routine? Because I really, really, really like routine. I admit there would be some advantages to being more go-with-the-flow and less into routine. Some people thrive on spontaneity and change. I am not those people.

So it’s no surprise that my little world was in a bit of a tailspin last week, when both my primary (Mrs. L) and secondary (my MIL) childcare providers were on vacation. For the ENTIRE WEEK (how could they do that to me???). It felt like even longer, and, in fact, it was, as the week lasted from Friday the 27th through this past Saturday. Nine, count ’em, NINE days!

I’m used to having 8.5 hours of childcare, 4-5 days/week, including an overnight most weeks. To drop from that to almost nothing was a bit of a shock to the system. (Also, my MIL being out-of-town means we have extra garden duties, which is a double whammy.)

To be fair, the last weekend in June was a vacation, as we spent Friday through Monday in Illinois at a family reunion. That was easier, with other adults around to spend some time with Sir, plus cousins to play with (though “play” is an optimistic term at this age, as it involves plenty of adult supervision and intervention — maybe we should just let them duke it out like puppies).

For Sir, the highlight of the weekend was the “train” shuttle at our resort. If I could have strapped him into it and let him ride it on his own, we’d have been set for hours! Alas, it required adult involvement.

Though the term “vacation” is an oxymoron when you have a child, it was a nice weekend, We enjoyed time with my family, including rare time with extended family from Texas, and manged to sneak in a few short hikes at Starved Rock State Park (from which we miraculously escaped without getting poison ivy).

But the weekend ended, and the week of no childcare loomed. I made it through one-and-a half days.

Then, to help save my sanity (and give me time to actually put a few hours in on my paid job), my mom came for a short visit — 28-hours that provided two afternoons and one morning of reprieve, leading into the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

In my experience, having two parents home is really not that much less exhausting than having one parent home, as you are either the parent who is “on” with the child, or the parent trying to get something else done, while the child begs for your attention, even though he has the attention of the other parent (I imagine having more than one child might change this equation).

The chorus of, “You want to play with me? You want to go for ride on my tractor?” seemed never-ending.

To mix things up a bit, we planned a few outings for the weekend, starting with a parade on the 4th. We originally planned to attend the community parade with my FIL in Webster Groves, but when I read about the VP Parade (the official 4th of July parade in StL), and realized this might be the one year in my lifetime that the parade was held in Forest Park, plus the fact that the parade featured numerous marching bands, we changed plans.

We were quite the patriotic bike family, with Matthew and Gabriel on Roadrunner (AKA Big Blue) and me on fire-engine red Baby Jake. We arrived early, and were able to bike right along the staging area where the floats were lining up (in retrospect, I wish we lingered a bit longer on this part). Cars were [mostly] not allowed in the park over the weekend, so bicycles had free reign!

The parade was awesome! I’ve never seen anything like it — the intricate floats, fancy costumes, music from both marching bands and live bands playing on the floats — spectacular.

We left a bit early, but we didn’t really miss much, since we biked back toward the parade start and were able to see most of the floats that hadn’t passed us yet.

Unfortunately, we didn’t leave early enough for Pookie. He didn’t want to go, but was clearly tired, as evidenced by his nodding off in his bike seat. This made the ride home not-so-fun for me. I felt bad that he was that tired and that we hadn’t gotten him home sooner , not to mention worried that we’d blown our chance at him taking a real nap that day.

Fortunately, he was strapped in (though he looked really pitiful with his head all over the place and falling forward on the bike), and his bike nap, by some miracle, did not take the place of his regular afternoon nap that day (important because we also wanted to nap in preparation for fireworks [sans Sir] that night).

Saturday morning dawned much too early for the two family members who watched fireworks on Friday night, but we dragged ourselves out of bed and got in gear in time to both make pancakes and get out of the house on the earlier side.

Our outing involved a visit to the Botanical Garden as well as a [rare for us these days] stop at Tower Grove Farmers’ Market. We have plenty of produce from the garden, so the stop was solely to pick up some snacks for the morning. At my insistence, we managed to time this outing to avoid any bicycle napping.

I don’t know if I can express exactly how much I’m looking forward to a “normal” week. I survived the interruption to our normal routine, but it wasn’t always pretty, and it left me more than a little burnt out!

*Between the rental car and the borrowed bikes, we didn’t end up using public transit, but a friend told me that Portland has a great app that makes it very easy for a visitor to use the system to get around (assuming you have a smart phone).

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*We’re not relocating because of the A/C, but rather had planned previously to spend the first few nights at my MIL’s rental before moving to our own place.

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