Back in January, we had a visit early in the new year from my sister Cari (Aunt Cici), her husband Julio, and their baby boy, *S, Alton's first cousin on my side of our family. The trip to Oregon from their home in California would also mark the first time that *S traveled by airplane, cool! He and his daddy look packed and ready for anything.
Among the high points on their itinerary for this visit were to take *S sledding in the snow (would also be his first time seeing the snow!) and eat in at least one of the places from the Portland episode of Food Network's show Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. We Rhynes added some activities to the roster: having brunch with our Pacific Northwest cousins, the Groeners, and taking *S on his very first bike ride. So much fun to pack into a couple of days.
We took things easy for their first day in town, playing with *S while Alton was at preschool, and dining out at Mingo, our favorite local restaurant with delicious Italian food (love that pretty "retrovelo" bike parked outside the restaurant! not one of ours).
Friday then dawned clear, crisp, and sunny, so while Andy was at work the rest of us got prepared for a little bike excursion. Since this was a new activity for the Molinas as a family, we took them on a tour of our mini bicycle shop in the garage to see if a little bike ride was something they'd like to do. They were game, so we borrowed a baby-size helmet for *S from my friend and neighbor Marinda, fitted the baby seat onto one of Andy's bikes for Julio, and let the two dudes do a little practice pedaling up and down the street. I handed Cari her helmet and adjusted the saddle on the xtracycle Radish, my largest bike, which has easy upright handlebar positioning, stability from its "xtra"-long wheelbase, and a simple twist shifter for changing gears. Cari insisted that she'd concentrate on riding and forget about the shifting, and set off on her own test ride on the pavement in front of our house. She started out with a very slight wobble, but soon her pedal strokes evened out and she was cruising smoothly. After our ride, she commented that she couldn't remember the last time she was on a bike. I said, "Oh, maybe college years?" She said, "Nope, never had a bike at college." "High school, then?" "No." "Junior High School?" "Uhmmm...." We finally ascertained that she couldn't even remember the last time she'd owned a bike in the pre-middle school years, let alone ridden one. Wow, pretty impressive that she took so easily to two wheels with only that tiny wobble in the beginning! I guess what they say is true: it's just like riding a bike, you don't forget it. Alton and I rode one of the folding bikes with his little balance bike as cargo, and off we all set for the park, one mile away through the neighborhood. Alton was striding around on his pedal-free bicycle, *S giggled away happily on the swingset, and everyone enjoyed the sunny ride to and from the park!
The next morning, we were super-organized and up early. We had re-mapped directions to a sledding hill on Mount Hood that we visited last winter, and decided that the "slopes" were best tackled on a full stomach from one of those diners that the Molinas had researched. Breakfast at a Portland landmark: Pine State Biscuits! Since Andy and I had joined Weight Watchers on January 1st (along with most of the United States), we wanted to combat our indulgent meal with a calorie-burning bike ride. Cari and Julio very graciously offered to drive our Mini along with their rental car and both little boys to the restaurant and meet us there after our bike ride. Andy and I set off before 6a.m. with our two folding bikes in the dark, still morning. Our first destination was a Max light rail stop a few miles away. Riding the entire way would have been too long to make it to the restaurant by breakfast time, so we took the train from out in the 'burbs to the first stop in downtown Portland. Look how well those little bikes fit on the commuter car! (My bike has a big black bag attached to the front of the frame.)
It was still dark when we got off the train and started riding through the silent streets, but the skies soon lightened up, only dropping a few spots of water on us here and there. With plenty of time, we made it to Pine State Biscuits! To call this restaurant "cozy" would be an understatement: the dining area is about the size of Alton's bedroom! Even parking was at a premium, with sparse street spaces for the cars, and not a bike rack in sight. Luckily, the Brompton folding bicycles dovetail nicely on a street sign. Safe and sound and securely locked!
Andy and I wandered inside and dawdled over biscuits and jelly, trying to stake a claim at a first-come, first-served table. The Molinas arrived and lucked out with great parking spaces for the two cars, so we dove into some delicious pre-sledding food before folding up the bikes, putting them in the trunk, and hitting the highway.
Andy's brother Zach and his family had graciously loaned us their sled for the snow trip in addition to our own, so it was two sleds and no waiting for the little guys! After the first trip or two down the hill, it began to snow, so *S got to see the flakes falling for the first time in addition to checking out the blanket of white already on the ground. Both kiddos were wrapped up well, and we added another scarf to *S's face to protect him from the damp, melty snow bits that were steadily streaming. In the picture below, I am standing with *S in my arms next to Julio, and Cari and Alton are piled into the sled, ready to race downhill to photographer Andy.
We got a bunch of good runs in before the snowfall began in earnest, with the temperature unfortunately high enough to make the precipitation more like half snow, half rain. We were all soaked! We began ambling back to the parking lot, but Alton did not care about the slush and was ready for more; Andy rallied around and took the bigger boy on several more long runs in the snow and cruised around in the sled.
After we'd gotten home and toasted up, the next morning we hosted brunch for our cousins who live in the area. Brothers Matt and Seth and Matt's wife Diana and two boys had not yet met Mr. Sam, so we chatted and caught up over muffins, fruit salad, and Aunt Coleen's egg strata recipe. A light overnight dusting of snow eventually gave way to a real flurry through most of the morning. Thankfully, not as wet as at the sledding hill the day before. Cari bundled little *S up again for a toddle through our backyard.
The three older boys (Alton the youngest, then *O, then *E) made snowballs, dragged mittens through the buildup on the slide, caught snowflakes on their tongues....
Alton almost couldn't be dragged back inside, and Minerva the Snowdog thought that our planter boxes had turned into snow feeding troughs.
Then that night was their last night in town, so we hit another local restaurant for a decadent dinner before their morning flight the next day. We hadn't had much luck with posing Alton and *S together for pictures, so with suitcases ready in the entryway and Alton still in his jammies, we plopped the two cousins together to snap a few shots to send to Nonna and Papa. Such little cuties they are!
It was a fun trip and a great opportunity for the boys to play together. Fast-forward one month, and a few days ago *S celebrated his first birthday! We were not able to attend his party at home, but enjoyed the pictures of him on the push tricycle present we sent down to him. A perfect gift from his bike-crazy family in Oregon. He looks so grown-up. Can't wait until our next visit with *S and his parents!
A few weeks ago, my sister Cari sent me this link to a recipe she'd found online for homemade yogurt. I'm not sure how she found it originally, but she thought that the tutorial and directions online seemed straightforward and she was interested, and then passed it along to me since she knows that I like making things homemade to reduce waste, save money, and be healthy. I read it thoroughly, agreed that it sounded fairly simple, and put it on my radar to try out.
Last Saturday, I was ready to tackle my first attempt at making yogurt at home. One commenter on the website described it as "easy as heating up a can of soup," which in essence it is, since according to this recipe yogurt is made simply by heating milk to a specific temperature, incorporating live yogurt cultures (from an already-made container of yogurt that you presumably buy at the store), and keeping the yogurt warm while it "sets." And so I began.
Heating the milk...
cooling it in the sink after it heats to the correct amount...
poured into jars...
in its "warm place" (small cooler filled with warm water).
I followed the directions precisely, put my yogurt in the fridge after its time to "set," and came home later that night to check on my handiwork. No! It didn't fully set. I had small blobs of yogurt floating in yogurt-y milk. Good for making smoothies, but not really spoonable.
Discouraged, I scoured the comments and discussions on the recipe to see if I could troubleshoot my half-failed batch. I decided that there were a few things that I could tweak about my method, but since my yogurt seemed to be partially firmed up, I decided that a longer "setting" period would be one of my changes for the next time. The recipe had said "three hours" in the cooler, so I literally set a timer for those 180 minutes and pulled out my quarts exactly on time. It doesn't seem like that was enough, so for Batch #2, I put them in the cooler at the end with the warm water, then left them in there for about 8 hours, until I went to bed that night. When I took the jars out of the cooler, I could still see a little liquid sloshing around at the top of the jar, so I was skeptical, but I put them into the fridge for the night.
This morning, I have yogurt! See for yourself.
Alton made adorable cards for everyone in his preschool, and a few extra fun cards with the preschool's watercolors, including one for Daddy.
I already mentioned here on the blog that the day before my cousin Louise came to town was Alton's birthday! This year he was fortunate to have his birthday fall on a Saturday, but boy, was it a busy day. Once each year, his preschool class meets on a weekend morning instead of during the week, to give parents who might be unable to get away from work the opportunity to explore the classroom with their little one. Awesome! However, Alton's birthday happened to fall on this weekend school day. Since a birthday celebration at school involves making a special crown and sitting in a special chair while everyone counts off your age in years, we knew that Alton would not want to miss out on this celebrity treatment and skip Saturday School. So after a whirlwind morning at school with Daddy by his side, Alton came home for a quick nap before the rest of the day's festivities began.
After he woke up, it was time to put on his bday finery. I knitted him a vest over Christmas in a blue-grey yarn with argyles across the front, and he was proudly sporting it to match his birthday theme. We decided that this year, since he had school in the morning and the day would be quite fast-paced, we'd do a very small party and keep everything very simple. The party decorations reflected his favorite colors--blue and green--and we invited party guests to wear those colors, too. One friend of mine even said that she snuck out to the store to buy her daughter a new blue t-shirt for the party!
For the guests' goody bags, we arranged a buffet of candy treats in Alton's favorite colors, and even spelled out his name in gummy letters. Each child was invited to pick out his or her favorites from the table. (We had M&Ms and jelly beans in blue/green, green gummy frogs, blue gummy sharks, and licorice in blue raspberry and green apple flavors. Fun!)
Andy had fun stringing the ceiling with blue and green crepe streamers and shiny balloons, then laid on the ground to snap his handiwork with a (borrowed) fisheye camera lens.
When I stopped by the store earlier that morning to buy some balloons, the employee at the counter offered to give me a big bunch of red balloons for the party for free, because they were from another customer's canceled order. Don't mind if I do.
Before his little friends arrived, Alton opened his special gift from Mommy and Daddy. It's a LeapPad handheld tablet for games. He was so excited, and he didn't even know what it was!
After a Skype session on the computer with Nonna, Papa, and Uncle KC, he opened his gifts from them: LeapPad accessories! Here he is on the chair playing the Toy Story game from Uncle KC next to the carrying case from Nonna and Papa.
His friends arrived while he was still playing, and the kids immediately formed a crowd around the cool new toy. Little did Alton know that Uncle Zach and Auntie Karen had brought along another new game as his birthday gift!
After awhile, we put it away and got them interested in other things. Cousin *A looks like she's having fun!
Fun hats and snacks make for a great party!
Mr Four-Year-Old boy donned the paper crown that he made at school that morning to blow out his candles.
They converged again at present time!!!! He immediately wants me to open a package of two Transformers.
Nature Boy is going to love these binoculars on our bike excursions; he insisted on bringing them along when we went to the park a few days later.
There was one toy I had never seen before: HexBugs. Tiny batteries inside a bristly silicone "bug" make it vibrate to move forward. If you set up a little ramp/arena for him, he will vibrate around and bounce off of walls and obstacles to find his way around. They could watch for hours!
Everyone had lots of fun and the kids all stayed up way too late. But you're only four once, right? The next morning, Alton continued to play with each of his new toys in turn. One of the first items on his to-do list was to open the wooden race car kit from Grammy and Grandpa and begin painting his machine. He was so determined that his car should look exactly like the picture on the box, Andy even taped off sections of the car when Alton started painting, so that the multicolored stripes would have crisp, straight edges!
Wow, what a great time. Cousin Louise was just flying in to the airport the day after his party, and she brought along another cool gift: a set of dinosaur magnets, with a guide to learn all of their multi-syllable names! I will be an expert the next time you see me.
Thank you to all of our friends and family for the well-wishes on our little man's big day. We are thankful that we have so many near and far who want to celebrate with us.
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, we had some gorgeous sun and blue skies here at the beginning of February. With another morning dawning clearly bright with warming temps (mid-50s) and a good bit of wind to keep those clouds at bay, Alton and I decided to laze around the house in the morning and hit a local park for playtime and a picnic lunch. I was eager to jump on my hybrid bike, my "medium-sized" one out of the three bikes that I own, because last night Andy had set up a new mileage computer on it (Christmas gift) and installed twist grip shifters, which I was excited to try on the swept-back handlebars. Unlike my big Xtracycle, the hybrid does not provide a lot of space to carry stuff along with me; I'd modified a small-ish purse that I love but wasn't using much to serve as a mini pannier underneath Alton's child seat on that bike.
But I'd removed that little purse to clean it off after a ride on a wet/muddy day, so my wicker handlebar basket was all I had for storage. No problem! I tossed in my wallet and phone, packed up some food in Alton's lunch box and added that on top, and with my keys in my pocket we were ready to go. We arrived at the park with many other families taking advantage of the sunny day and happily climbing the play structures, but Alton wanted to eat first.
Hunger satisfied for now, he said that he wanted to go for a walk. Whoops! I left the bike lock behind at home. No matter, I walked the bike alongside us down the path so that I didn't feel nervous leaving it parked unlocked on a busy day. Alton had brought along his binoculars, a new birthday gift, and was using them to peer at trees and a nearby creek. We kept walking and came along to the little pond where one of the small manmade creeks in the park spills out and a little stage with benches and a roof overlook the water. Here Alton decided he wanted to toss tiny pebbles into the still water and watch it ripple out. He exhausted the supply of nearby rocks and pinecones, then found a flexible stick and wanted to lean waaaay out over the firm stage surface to dip it in the water. I told him it was too far to lean; he'd fall in. Problem-solver that he is, he stepped off of the stage and into the soft dirt at the water's edge to poke the soggy mud and flick droplets out into the middle of the pool.
I snapped a picture of his fun with my phone about 14 seconds before he fell in! Whoops! Lost his balance and toppled to his knees in the shallow water, soaking his sneakers and fleece pants, and dampening the wrists of his shirt and jacket where he thrust his hands forward to catch himself. Luckily, the bike was right next to me since I'd forgotten that lock. I grabbed him out of the chilly water and hustled him onto firm ground where the bike was waiting. But there was no extraneous stuff on this streamlined ride, so I didn't have any kleenex or anything to towel him off. I grabbed my non-cozy polyblend orange safety vest to try to squeegee away most of the water on his hands, but he shivered and started his little chin trembling with the cold and disappointment of falling down. I decided to shuck off his sodden, dripping pants and shoes altogether, settled him into his sun-warmed bike seat, and covered him with my jacket so the residual heat from my body on the fabric immediately soothed his damp skin.
Although it was a sunny day, the air and wind were still very cool, and I was only wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt under my jacket. Time to get out of here! I threw his soggy clothes and my safety vest into the bike basket, jammed the lunch box next to Alton in his seat, and shaved my travel time in half on the one mile ride back home. We bolted upstairs to get him into dry, warm clothes, and soon he was tucked in bed with a story before his nap. What an unexpected adventure!
The day after Alton's birthday, we had a visitor fly into town: my cousin Louise! She lives in Colorado, but we grew up in the same hometown in California, so our families have always been close. Two other close cousins live nearby in the Pacific Northwest, so Louise's first trip to Oregon was an efficient opportunity to see us all.
The afternoon she arrived it was still bucketing rain, and I tried to look on the bright side that it was probably better this way, since no one back in the snowy but sunny Rockies would believe my Cuz if she said that she went to Portland and it didn't rain. We traveled through the drizzle to a lovely nuevo latino tapas meal with our other cousins, reveling once we discovered that it was half-off wine bottle night and we didn't have to decide between white or red; you get both!
The next day, it was cloudy but free from sprinkles as Alton and I took Louise to Portland to visit Powell's Books, the world's largest independent bookstore, and Kenny & Zuke's, an award-winning deli that Julio still raves about from his visit four years ago! From there, Louise picked up a car rental to drive south for a day to visit a close friend of hers who also lives here in Oregon.
Upon her return, Alton and I shuttled with her back to Portland to drop off the car rental and visit the Portland Japanese Garden, which I had seen for the first time last January when my parents stayed with us. This year, the attendant at the entry booth offered Alton a scavenger hunt page with different landmarks throughout the park to seek out, including the "Moon Bridge" he and Louise are posed on below. After a delightful lunch at the Oregon Culinary Institute, Alton was happy to conk out in the car on our drive home!
You might be wondering why I refer to my cousin as "bike-happy" in the title of this post. Besides being a biker herself (motorcycle rider, that is), Louise also went on a bike ride with us while she was here in town! After my morning commute with Alton to preschool was mentioned in conversation, she offered to ride a bike with us on Thursday morning for the little guy's drop off/pick up. She didn't even balk when I suggested that while Alton was at school, she and I could ride to the grocery store for coffee and breakfast in their cafe. With muscles toughened from motorcycle ridin', she was ready for the pedal power challenge!
We got prepared the day before by letting Louise choose which of the bikes in our fleet she was going to ride, then got her seatpost adjusted to the right height and helmet properly fitted before she took off down our residential street for a test spin. I was happy to learn that we shared a similar philosophy regarding safety in high visibility and rider caution on the road, and Louise saw nothing dorky at all in donning a helmet and orange safety vest to cruise along with us; perfect, because I feel the same way! She got warmly dressed in jacket, hat and gloves, and was ready to pose for a picture with snowgear-snuggly Alton before we rode away.
What a blast! Louise said that she had not been cycling since her commuter bike had been stolen right out of her backyard while she was in college, and she really enjoyed herself with us today. We rode a total of just over 13 miles, earning our coffee and pastries for breakfast. Happily, it was the most sunny, beautiful, blue skies day of her whole trip, so a perfectly bright and crisp morning for our little journey. We returned to the preschool, where one of the other parents complimented Louise on her cool bike! Alton and his fellow students gathered in the center of the room to don dragon and lion headdresses and beat a drum in honor of the Chinese New Year. Louise and I smiled and took pictures of the giddy little kiddos.
Soon, it was time for my cousin to return to the airport and more sun, snowboarding, and skating back in Colorado. We had such a fun time with her while she was in town, and hope that it won't be too long before we get a turn to visit her and make more memories!
