Last time I was out in Forest Grove and took Chloe on bike riding practice she was pretty frustrated that it wasn’t working. Yet tonight, it all seemed to click and now she’s riding on her own!
Ok, she needs more practice but she’s got the basics. How exciting!
Here’s Chloe and The Saddest Tree In the World — it was relying on the vast network of brambles for support, the brambles I removed when I cleaned out the side yard. Now it’s growing downward!
Chloe is quite the little sculptor. Here’s her rendition of a s’more, a watermelon and a turtle.
Speaking of s’mores, here she is roasting marshmallows.
Two days after the small gathering we had on Chloe’s actual birthday with Randy and Jeane, Lisa arranged for a kid-style party at PDX Playdate, an indoor place with a huge indoor play structure for them to run, jump, crawl and climb in and private rooms for parties.
A stand-out of the experience was the hand-made birthday cards the kids made for Chloe. Take a look:
This one works best if you read it out loud…Note: The cat is labelled “Cat”
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Soren and I started off Father’s day on Saturday by having most of the kids over and firing up the charcoal grill.
Here’s Chloe and Soren & Marya’s daughter Saskia showing off the fortress they’ve started building in the back yard. You’ll notice that they’ve got weapons and are prepared to stick it to any unfriendlies who try to storm the gates.
stick them with the pointy end!
You’ll notice two things — it’s still light out in Portland in mid June, even pushing 9pm. Also, neither of these munchkins were willing to wait for the second set of charcoal to get lit to start working on their s’mores…
…and here’s some hats!
The next day we went to the Zoo. Just to prove it, here’s some flamingoes.
…and since Chloe didn’t eat her breakfast at home, we brought it along. Here she is trying to keep her chocolate pancakes from the local dragons.
Is a sunny day complete without hopping into the Willamette?
Of course, there was ice cream.
…and this was a week ago. Here’s Chloe showing off her dragon costume, viking hat and mask.
Yeah, so my old friend Soren invited me to stay with him for a bit while I work out my personal housing issues. He missed the window for free xmas tree disposal, so it was still hanging around in May. I happen to have this giant truck machine so we tried taking it to the dump… Well, let’s just say there were many misadventures and the dang thing was on top of Ford SpaceLord for nearly a week before I successfully disposed of it.
We were treated to the most elephant action than I’ve seen since I was in Thailand, quite some years ago.
Saskia is incredibly bored, but being a good soldier about it. Or just maybe keeping her yap shut as she’s whip smart and knows we don’t get out of the Zoo before we get out of it.
Hey sports fans! Chloe and I went on the annual Goodwill Hunting assault on SW Portland’s thrift shops. And we did mighty good.
Building MineCraft Legos and watching MineCraft Videos on our MineCraft ComputerChloe poses next to an Art Car, decorated with yarn!Chloe got Tigger Slippers and a baby Flamingo — Dad got a Fez!
It’s a kit where your Minecraft-obsessed children get to assemble their own computer, then are launched into a series of Minecraft-driven interactives to introduce them (sneakily) to STEM learning concepts by wiring up components and doing some basic programming. I helped her a bit to assemble the box (a couple years from now she’d be able to do it all herself) and after we booted up, she was off and running.
When she goes through all the interactives, add a USB keyboard and it’s a portable Linux desktop for exploration, learning and probably playing a lot of games.
I wonder what she’s going to do with it? Let’s sit back and watch…
