Babyup!

Big wheels keep on rolling…

She’s just about to outgrow this bike, I may have a replacement road bike.
Most people don’t understand just how much mountain bikes actually suck to ride on the road if you have to go any distance.

Here’s Chloe showing off her burrito and her handmade Wacky Packages shirt she picked up at the vintage mall.
Some of you may remember this stickers from the 70’s.

There’s a nice greenway down the street from my new place. We can ride a bike path all the way to Tigard! Which has a Thrift Store!

Baby ducks!

Sprinkler time!

The card shark takes her dad at Punce.

Bike ride to OMSI for the animation festival!

A ride along the Esplanade on the Willamette!

What bike ride is complete without sushi?

Catching up on photos from July. Here we go.

Off to Sellwood Waterfront Park!

Fourth of July!

Chloe Art!

Chloe sold almost all of her Mutant Bear Stuffies.

Chloe is into Furbies. She’d love to have one that’s actually working.
Send it our way if you find one.

I <heart> Lard! Chloe-made Krunkle shirt.

She says she doesn’t know who this looks like, but you probably do.

Somehow it is the 80’s inside Chloe’s head.

She turned her Mutant Bear money into many things, including this walking Jimmy Carter peanut.

Birthday present she made for one of her school chums.
“Lobotomus Prime”
I gave her a voice recorder gizmo that’s now hidden inside so it can scream.

More Krunkles

“Uncle and Dumple”

At the Swallowtail school, they plan all year for a class trip after graduation. This includes a lot of fundraisers and the class gets to decide where they want to head off to. Chloe’s class chose to go rafting and explore southern Oregon a bit.

Chloe and Geo are quite excited.

Ready to go!

The class enjoyed exploring Ashland including the famous Shakespeare Theater!

Two days of rafting!

It’s official! 8th grade is in the rear view mirror.
If anything is wrong, ice cream will fix it. Here’s Chloe’s latest animation.

Here’s a few photos of her graduation.
Much more fun than whatever we did at Troxell Jr. High when we moved up to the big school.

Happy kid! I wonder where she gets her fashion sense?

Here they all are.

Cake fight!

Off to their next adventure!

On Sunday Chloe, Arnold and I journeyed into downtown for some fun.
Our first stop was Fathom, a way fun interactive art experience.
Normally Arnold is cranky and argumentative, but he behaved well enough (this time)
to get kisses from all the beautiful people

Chloe and Arnold as mermaid and mer-pig.

More smooches with Arnold.

Chloe, Dad and Arnold at the Lan Su Chinese Garden.

Believe it or not, the kid who wouldn’t eat sushi at all a few years ago,
pronounced the whole tiny octopus “good!”

Those are Chloe’s “Krunkle” characters she drew on her arm that Arnold is trying to eat.
You’ll be seeing more of them later.

Happy Easter! Chloe and I got busy.

Chloe like to make funny faces for photos.
This egg is actually one of mine.

Then we took a walk. A downside of the new neighborhood is that it is 90% canyons of sterile, characterless suburban housing. There is actually nothing one can get to by bike or walking except your parking space. But we did manage to find one road that borders some remaining farm land and is quite pleasant.

We found a log tiger!

Then we turned our attention to making a scary lamb cake.
Chloe enjoys making these disturbingly weird cake objects.
Click here if you’d like to see some other examples.

Big news in April! Chloe completed and presented her 9-month project on the history of animation. All the 8th graders at the Swallowtail school tackle a big, independent project like this and Chloe knocked it out of the park!

The other big news – Lisa and Chloe moved into a new place! It’s pretty nice.

Chloe has been making posters and putting them in the building’s elevator.
She also wonders why they keep getting taken down…

Phil’s Fabulous Subs – Forest Grove. A great place to have lunch. http://www.phils1500.com

Welcome to Goodwill. A place where Karl Marx is also a piggy bank.

Dad finds a way to have a monopoly over fish.

Spider thing, spider thing… what the heck is it?

Chloe is through being cool.

Chloe is also creating a series of characters. She’s calling them “Krunkles”.

Chloe has been flushing ice cubes down the toilet for weeks, because it’s a thing with the kids these days that this will make it snow. Either way, it did snow!

Chloe went on a rampage as “The Buttcrack Bandit”.
That is, adding butt cracks to any snowmen she could reach. See?

Meanwhile, she’s been enjoying mutating more stuffed animals.

In this photo we’ve left The Bird of Regret in a tree in the park for some unfortunate child to find…

Meanwhile, Chloe has inexplicably developed an appreciation for vintage 80’s Garfield stuffies.
This lead to us making lasagna. As one does.

Hey, big news! Chloe got into “ACMA” – Arts & Communications Magnet Academy for 9th grade. This is something of a big deal as it means she’ll be able to spend more school time exploring art and animation. If you’d like to know more about the school, here you go –> https://acma.beaverton.k12.or.us/about-us

Here’s Chloe dancing in the hailstorm that came down last weekend:

Squid-flavored chips are also a hit:

And she’s been busy with more mutants:

Here we are play-testing the board game we’re making. It involves eels. Also cacti, some sharks, the occasional cop, some spies and of course Crime Snail.

Somebody is going to be getting a birthday candle at the next birthday party!