Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip.
That started from this river port,
aboard this tiny ship.

OK, I'll stop with the Gilligan's theme. The reason for it will become apparent if you'll bare with my ramblings. :D

Portland is a river town and ships play a big part in its daily life. There's the Columbia River on the north and the Willamette River runs through the middle. You may be thinking "Well, duh, it's called Port-land" - but you'd be assuming that it was named logically. It wasn't. The two men who founded Portland were from the east coast - one from Portland, Maine and the other from Boston, Mass. They both wanted to name their new town after their hometown and flipped a coin to see which name would win. That's right, if the coin had landed the other way I would be living near Boston, Or.

For 10 days at the start of every summer, Portland celebrates the Rose Festival http://www.rosefestival.org/ It's a HUGE deal here, with tons of activities and lots of ships that come just for the event. Two of the ships that come every year are the "Tall Ships" - the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain. If any of you saw that tiny little film "The Pirates of the Caribbean" then you've seen the Lady Washington aka The Interceptor.

One of the mom's in our homeschool group set up a field trip for our group on the Hawaiian Chieftain. We went on a three hour tour (*now* the Gilligan reference makes sense!) and had a great time. The weather's been, well, Oregon weather and we were afraid that it was going rain on us, but we were fortunate that the weather held out.


The Hawaiian Chieftain


The kids were put to work helping to get the sails in place.


Heave - Ho!



Whew - finally done!


After the sails were set, the kids broke up into 3 groups for "learning labs". The first that Cody went to was on the ship's officers, navigation, and sailing. They learned how sailors who couldn't read or write kept logs while on watch, and how to check the speed of the boat.

The second lab was on trade with other countries. During the American Revolution, they sailed ships similar to this one on trading missions to the Orient. It took 3 - 5 years to sail from Boston to China and back again! I guess if you want tea bad enough you'll do anything :)

The third lab was the daily life of the average sailor. Much of their time was spent on maintaining the ship, and meals were a high point in their day. After learning what they ate, I'm not really sure why. Besides the mouldy hardtack and mouldy limes, there was the mystery meat. I thought about sparing you the details, but decided to share. They would purchase the cheapest salted meat available from the butcher before leaving port. If they were lucky, it was the parts of cows and pigs that nobody else would buy. More often it was horses or dogs that had died, and sometimes even rats. Yummm.


Cody thought it was cool that they had to open the bridge to let us through.






Our motley looking crew.

Meeting one of The Band of Brothers

To say Cody is a WWII buff is an understatement. He loves it. He'll spend hours pouring over books, searching on the internet, and watching History Channel. When we bought this house last year, he requested that his bedroom be decorated "WWII, European Theater" and his bathroom "WWII, Pacific Theater." Umm, OK. Did you know they make camouflaged shower curtains? Me neither, until my mom found him one.

So it makes sense that he loves WWII themed movies. Bridge on the River Kwai. To Hell and Back. Midway. Tora! Tora! Tora! Kelly's Heroes. Band of Brothers.

When Mike and I bought the 10 disc set, Cody started asking to watch it. Then came the begging, pleading, bargaining, and pitiful puppy-dog eyes. When he was 11, after many months of discussion between his father and I, we finally agreed to let him watch the first episode, which covers their training. We knew he could handle hearing the swear words (though he doesn't like them), but we didn't think (and neither did he) that he could handle the intense fighting sequences and woundings that came in later episodes. He watched that first episode over and over for months. Finally he felt ready to try the next episode and watched that over and over. He progressed in this way for about 9 - 10 months. BofB became his favorite thing to watch. He studied maps to find out where, exactly, these battles had taken place. He watched countless documentaries in hopes of there being something in it that would tell him more about "his" Band of Brothers.

Last Sunday Mike saw this article in the paper about a book signing being given by Donald Malarkey, one of the Band of Brothers.
http://www.oregonlive.com/O/artsandbooks/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1210712110300530.xml&coll=7
Not only was Cody going to meet a real-live Band of Brothers soldier, but Donald Malarkey also happens to be one of the central "characters" in the miniseries, so Cody felt like he actually "knew" him. To say he was excited is an understatement. It was all Cody could talk about. All day Wednesday he practiced what he was going to say to Mr. Malarkey. The reason he practiced all day was because he was nervous. Very nervous. And one of two things happen when he's that nervous. The first is that he laughs. Incessantly and uncontrollably. If and when he gets the giggles to stop, he speaks with a British accent. Why, nobody knows, including him. But that seems to be the only way he can speak without laughing.

We arrived at the bookstore an hour early, purchased our book and took our seats. They had set up about 125 seats for the event, and by the time it began there were over 300 people there. When Mr. Malarkey arrived, the level of applause nearly brought him to tears. After an hour of speaking and taking questions, the book store had to stop him in order to provide enough time for the book signings because so many people had shown up. Since we had arrived so early, we were in the first group to get to meet him. Cody desperately wanted his picture taken with him, but nobody was getting one, so I was trying not to get his hopes up.




As he was hard of hearing, I'm not sure how much he caught of what Cody said. But Cody walked up to him, shook his hand and said "Mr. Malarkey, my name is Cody and it is a great honor to meet you." While he was signing Cody's book, his daughter asked if Cody would like his picture taken with her dad. Cody nearly screamed "Yes!" and took position next to him. He was so excited I had to tell him to calm down so that he didn't show up in the photo as a blur. Everybody around us was laughing at how excited Cody was. I snapped the photo, and Cody grabbed the man's hand again and said "Sir, I just want you to know that this is the greatest honor of my life."






Happy Memorial Day!



Donald Malarkey's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Company-Soldier-Legendary-Sergeant/dp/0312378491/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211515514&sr=8-1

We've got tunes!

Woo-Hoo! Now that I'm getting a little more comfortable with this whole blogging thing, I've finally added some tunes to enhance the blogging experience (Topsy, you'd be so proud of me ;)
Anyone who's a Browncoat (Lori, Teresa, I'm talking to you!) will no doubt recognize and sing along with the first song you hear - the theme to Firefly. If you have yet to experience the perfection that is Joss Whedon's 'verse, I've made it really simple for you by adding a link on the right where you can watch every single episode for free. The rest of the music is all 80's. Seriously, what were you expecting??

Boys are Weird

Cody's buddy Jason is leaving Wednesday and will be gone until the end of August. A few weeks ago, Cody spent the night at Jason's house and the boys slept in 15 minute shifts because they were afraid to "waste" their last night together doing something as frivolous as sleeping. Yesterday, Jason came over for the last play day before he left - a 10 hour play day! There was much video game playing, lego building, fort building, MRE* eating, and 2 airsoft battles.

(*MRE: Meal Ready to Eat. Pre-packaged meals used by military personnel in the field. Resembles (and smells like) really bad dog food. For some reason, boys like them. Boys are weird.)

Jason brought his Airsoft gun and the boys planned to do battle against Mike when he got home from work. (For those who are fortunate enough to NOT know what airsoft guns are, I will explain. Airsoft guns shoot plastic bb's. They sting and leave little welts. Boys love them. Boys are weird.)

Mike got home early and immediately the boys suited up, ready for battle.




Mike almost didn't make it out of the house without getting nailed. Unfortunately nobody got a picture of him hiding behind me. I finally got them all out of the house after threatening to beat them viciously about the head and body with their own weapons. Hey, you don't mess with a woman in her own kitchen :D




Whatever works for cover, right?




You don't even want to know how many little plastic balls I picked out of my garden beds.

They ended up battling it out for 1 1/2 hours. The boys had a blast, and only a few good welts. Of course, everyone wore safety glasses so I didn't have to sound like Ralphie's mom from A Christmas Story - "You'll shoot your eye out!"

The boys are already planning a re-match at the end of the summer.

On This Day...

I saw this on another blog (which I abruptly "lost", or I'd have posted the link) and thought I'd give it a try.

Outside My Window... Spring is *finally* here. About time considering it's almost summer. And there's the big pit, AKA the pond, that makes it appear that we're strip mining in the back yard.

I am thinking... that I should really get off the couch and get some things crossed off my to-do list. Yet here I sit, blogging away.

I am thankful for... my family. With the state of most families in this day-and-age, it seems almost unnatural that we enjoy spending so much time together. But we crack ourselves up on a pretty regular basis.

From the kitchen... comes a mess that threatens to overtake the surrounding environs. That's what happens when I spend the weekend moving rocks.

I am going... crazy, but I own a time share there, so it's all good.

I am reading... several books, as usual. "A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a generation of leaders for the twenty-first century"; "Kidding Around the Gorge: The Hood River area's ultimate guide for family fun; and "Plenty: one man, one woman, and a raucous year of eating locally."

I am hoping... to wake up in the morning 20 pounds lighter and 6 inches taller. Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

I am hearing... a cacophany of birds out on the back lawn, with an undercurrent of electric lawn mower. I abhor that sound (the mower, not the birds).

Around the house...Besides the usual laundry and dishes (it seems these are never crossed off my to-do list!) we're working on the pond. Still.

One of my favorite things... sci-fi TV shows. Cody's currently getting caught up on past seasons of Dr. Who, and we're all watching Stargate SG-1. We're also big fans of Stargate-Atlantis, Eureka, Buffy, and of course FIREFLY!

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week... I'd love to finish getting the rocks out of the pond this week and I ordered the new liner and underlayment. I found an on-line source for both and even with shipping, it's still about $500 less than what we could find it for locally. There goes the tax refund. Cody and I have yoga twice this week, and all three of us have chiropractic appointments. Wednesday will be our busiest day: yoga from 9 - 10:30, homeschool book group from noon - 2:00 (but the kids play afterwards, so it always runs longer), and at 7:00 we're going to a book signing by Donald Malarky. For those of you who don't know who he is, he's one of the "Band of Brothers". Stephen Speilberg and Tom Hanks made an HBO miniseries based on the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name about the 101st Airborne Division that fought in every major European campaign during WWII. We're all HUGE BofB fans and when Mike saw the advert for this in the Sunday paper, it immediately went on our calendar. Cody's been wanting to meet some of the men, so this was perfect timing. And I'm trying to plan a play-day on Friday with Cody's buddy Jason. He's getting ready to leave for the whole summer and Cody's pretty bummed.

Here is picture thought I am sharing.... since we're going to see one of them Wednesday night



So there you go. What's on your agenda this week?

The bane of my existence

One of the reasons we bought this house was the pond. The pond so big that you could swim in it (were you so inclined). In fact, when we first saw pictures of it, we thought that it used to be a pool. We spent our first evenings in this house sitting on the deck listening to the water pour over the two waterfalls. We'd lie in bed at night and the gurgling sound would put us to sleep. It was wonderful.

Then came the call from the water company (can you guess where this story is heading??) The very nice woman informed us that our meter was showing about 22,000 gallons of water usage every month. The average in this area for a family of 4 is about 9,000 gallons. Did we have a leaky toilet, she wondered? Um, no, but we did have a large pond that had an automatic top-off valve to compensate for evaporation. Yep, that was probably it. So to be sure, we turned off the valve and waited. By the next day it was down by a foot. The day after that it was down by two. By the end of the week it was half empty.

We tried patching it, several times. After each attempt we'd add more water and wait. And every time the water level would fall to a different place than it had before. Turns out that trying to find all of the leaks in a pond this size is nearly impossible. Not that we didn't try. So we decided to drain it and re-line it. This, of course, meant that we had to catch all of the fish. THAT was fun! Turns out there were about 3X the fish than we thought - about 70 total. Of course, the racoons ended up getting most of them.

Winter came and we had to stop working on it. Spring rains put about 2 feet of water in the deepest part of the pond - enough to bring back "our" ducks, Mike and Carol, for their daily visits. Well, the spring rains have stopped and the sun has returned! 'Bought damn time. So we drained out the rest of the water today - and then the ducks came. And they were pissed! Ever been followed around your own deck by two ducks quacking angrily at you? I have. But they must not have been too mad. They stayed for 5 hours.

So here's what our glorious pond looks like now.

See all those rocks? We get to move them all out of the pond before we can lay the new liner. I know, you wish you were me. What a glamorous life I lead. We started on it tonight after the temperature dropped to about 85 degrees. Tomorrow will be spent on it as well. Actually every day will be spent working on it until we get the new liner in. As big as a pain in the arse that it's been, we can't wait to enjoy it again.

After 14 years, he can still leave me speechless...

Friday night Cody spent the night at a friends house. Hubby and I took full advantage of our rare evening alone and went to dinner and a movie (Iron Man - it ROCKED!) So, we'd been together about 4 hours when my dear, wonderful, surprising husband pops off with a comment that led to the following conversation:

"I saw Barack Obama"

"Um, what?"

"Ya, I saw Barack Obama."

"Where, exactly, did this happen?"

"At the Starbucks across the street from my job site. I watched him come out of his hotel 2 blocks down and walk to Starbucks."

"Where were you, exactly?"

"On the sidewalk across the street. I could have walked up to him and shook his hand if I wanted to."

"Why didn't you???"

"I don't know. Why would I?"

"Um, because he's probably going to get the Democratic nomination for President? Because he could possibly be the next President?!? How could you not at least go up to him? Was he with a lot of people?"

"No, he was just with his secret service men. Nobody else was with him on the street. He was in Starbucks for quite a while before going back to the hotel."

"Well, yeah, they were probably all SHAKING HIS HAND."

Slight pause.

"I saw Bill Clinton when he was here, too."

"WHAT? When?"

"When he was here a couple of weeks ago. They all stay at the same hotel. And no, I didn't shake his hand either. If it makes you feel better, I haven't seen Hillary yet."

"OMG, I can't believe that you saw them and didn't bother to at least go shake their hands! How could you not at least do that much?? What's wrong with you??"

Slightly longer pause

"So....I probably shouldn't mention that this was the second time I saw Obama."

Yep, he still leaves me speechless.

Hair today, gone tomorrow...

Blame it on my time spent in beauty college, but I always change my hair. Cut it off, grow it out. Layer it, grow it out. Color it light blonde, dark blonde, strawberry blonde. I'm always amazed at women who keep the same hairstyle for years. If I keep one for 3 haircuts it's a big deal!

Well, much to my hubby's chagrin I've spent the last year growing out my hair. Unlike "most men" (which is a term he hates, and he's constantly saying "I'm NOT like most men!) he hates long hair. To be honest, I don't particularly care for me with long hair, either. But I forget how much I hate it. You see, I have thick hair. Very thick hair. I always have visions of this beautiful long, flowing mane but reality makes that near impossible (unless I'm willing to spend a good 45 minutes every day styling it. Which I'm not). When I see someone on a movie or on TV with great long hair I forget that they have a stylist who does it for them. I forget the pix the papparazi snap of them with their hair in ponytails and shoved up under a baseball cap.

I finally snapped and was ready to lop it off. Fortunately for me, my friend Jamie recently moved to the area. We've known each other since high school, and went to beauty college together. Unlike me, though, she stayed in the biz. So when I decided I needed something, anything done with my hair, I knew who to call. I found a photo online of a cut I liked and e-mailed it to her. She picked a couple of colors for my hair and went to town!

The "Before" shots:



See how brave I am to post a "During" shot?? I was getting great reception with all that foil in my hair!



The "After" shot:


It's a great cut and I swear she took off a pound of hair. Mike's thrilled that it's finally short (and light blonde) again. So now I'll just have to wait and see. Do I keep this hairstyle, or start growing it out again... ;D

Headless Chickens and Comics

There was a notice that came over the local homeschool loop about an open house tour today for Bob's Red Mill. For those of you not in the know, it's a local company that sells all kinds of natural grain products worldwide. Oprah even mentioned them on her show (and yes, they were flooded with calls afterwards). I started buying their products about 5 years ago when we lived in California, and was thrilled to learn that they were so close to us when we moved up here.

Since I had a chiropractic appt. this morning, I printed out directions from the Dr.'s office to the mill. Let me just say - Mapquest sucks. At least when trying to find anything around the Portland area. Approximately 50% of the time the directions are wrong, which wouldn't be so bad if I had any idea where I was going. But I usually don't. Which leaves me running around like a chicken with my head cut off. So after an hour of driving, with my son laughing hysterically at me and the verbage that was spewing from my lips (does that count as "vocabulary"?) we finally found the place. The tour wasn't anything spectacular, but we did get to wear the latest in hairnet fashions.

Here's their website: http://www.bobsredmill.com/ If you haven't tried their products before, I highly recommend them. We especially love their flaxseed and their line of gluten-free products. Best of all, you typically don't have to hunt them down at health food stores - many regular markets carry at least some of their 400+ products.

The highlight of the day, though, was a trip to our favorite comic book store: Things From Another World.

We always start out by looking at all of the collectible stuff they have. They have tons of comic and sci-fi related action figures, trading cards, posters, statues, and best of all - things from the Whedonverse. Cody may have found what he wants for his birthday this year!

As luck would have it, today they were having a sale on all of their back issue comics for 50 cents each. Wouldn't you know that this was the day Cody found the *least* amount of comics?? Ah, well, he still found about 15 including some of his favorite WWII themed ones, which are pretty hard to come by.

The BEST thing we picked up were issues #1 and #2 of Joss Whedon's new Serenity comic series! I think I may have been more excited about that than Cody ;D