Bend, Oregon

We went to Bend a few weekends ago, to attend the wedding reception of Rebecca and Mike. When we originally booked the trip, we were supposed to fly in Thursday night and leave Sunday morning. Due to some additional developments with childcare, jobs, and whatnot, we ended up going about a half day earlier. We rented a pretty sweet house via vrbo and took a 45 minute Alaska Air flight save ourselves the 6-7 hour drive each way with a three year old.

The reception itself was pretty low-key, in part because of the couple and in part because the actual wedding was a few days earlier with family. There were a handful of kids there and Dom had a great time jumping around the dance floor and throwing his hat with the other boys around his age. We were fortunate enough to have childcare, so Dom went to bed around 9 pm and we stayed out until the end of the party.

Unfortunately, I woke up Thursday with a tickle in my throat that would develop into a full blown cold or the flu over the weekend. We didn’t do nearly as much in Bend as I’d hoped because I spent a lot of time in bed and even more time sitting around resting. Probably the worst part of it is I just recently got over whatever it was, but not before infecting Dom and Melissa. None have really done that much except be very sick in the two weeks since we got back. It was a nasty, nasty bug – the worst any of us has had for a long time.

Bend is an interesting place. It was cold, insanely dry (despite it snowing), and very reminiscent of a winter resort town. There was a lot of breweries, good food, and keeping warm by all the various fire pits Bend had to offer. The whole vibe of the place is to dress in really nice (and expensive) outdoor wear – at least that’s what we found of the tourists that appeared to be around us. It was hard to tell if we ever really around locals; I suspect not much. My cold really impacted our ability to explore, which is unfortunate. Everyone was really nice, though. It reminded me of how Seattle used to be when we moved here eight years ago.

We would go back to Bend, but it’s not super practical at this point in our lives. There are so many places closer to us in Washington (and Oregon) that we could drive to easily. Heck, we could even drive to Idaho in less time than we could drive the Bend. Flying is too expensive, even though tickets are somewhat reasonable. So, yeah, Bend! Congrats Mike and Rebecca.

Discovery Park

No long post here; just a bunch of photos I took during our hike (with Melissa’s sister) through Discovery Park this past Saturday. Mom did what I would estimate was three miles with the brute on her back – go mom! If you know anything about the park, you know it’s not flat. My fitbit says I did 39 flights that day and our bedroom is on ground level soooo… yeah, hills. My guess is we’ll spend a lot more time in the park during the coming months given it’s 500+ acres and only two miles away. We can head over for a picnic and some kite flying, then be home for mid-day nap. Bring on summer!

Have I mentioned how much I love this new lens??

18 Months

As I was creating this post, it occurred to me that we never posted anything about Dom’s first birthday. Life was complicated about then and there weren’t a ton of pictures, so we never really got around to it. We marked the occasion by moving our annual summer BBQ to Labor Day weekend (Dom’s actual birthday was Labor Day and we went to a Mariners game). We invited friends old and new and, well, wrapped everything up well before our previous BBQs did.

Anyway… 18 months. Dom’s about the size of a two or three year old, depending on the kid. We have a bunch of sounds that resemble words, but he’s still not really using them to communicate. The sounds things, like animals and trains, make are our sweet spot at the moment. Well, except he does say please at times when he wants something. Other than that, he’s very much a toddler. He tests boundaries, pretends he can’t hear you, but also understands consequences… like when I give him a choice to listen to his mother or be put to bed. Overall, he’s a really well-behaved kid who always eats at the table with utensils and tells us when he wants to go to bed (~7:15p) nightly. He sleeps 11 hours a night and naps 2-2.5 hours mid-day, so we have no serious complaints. That said, we’re definitely feeling being 40 and chasing a toddler around.

Here are some photos I took today, to help mark the occasion. We had breakfast with friends in the area, so we decided to run around a bit on the playground at Volunteer Park. Steps seem to be Dom’s favorite thing these days, so we spent much of the time climbing them and finding fun ways to get down. We were <10 minute walk from Bruce Lee’s grave, but getting home for nap time was our top priority. That’ll have to wait for another day.

P.S. – This new 35 mm is really working out well.