Rainy, Rainy Portland

For the president's day weekend we made a quick trip to Portland to visit Uncle Joe and Aunt Deb and cousins Raquel and Lucas. We were also joined by Uncle Matt and Aunt Jenn.  It was Lucas' birthday weekend so there were lots of balloons, funny hats and of course cake.  Nathaniel was a big fan of their dog Nacho (or Nacko as Nathaniel prefers to call him).  It was a bit rainy so we spent a lot of time indoors, but that didn't slow the kids down a bit from having a great time with their cousins.

A week of Dude

A couple of weeks ago Nathaniel's babysitter came down with the flu and so we got to spend lots of quality time with Nathaniel instead of working as we normally would. The week was made challenging by the ever present demands of work, but a rare treat to have time for some fun outings with our little man. Tuesday he and Eric spent the morning playing croquet at the park with some other neighborhood kids. Wednesday Lillian proudly helped him get dressed, then he got to chase chickens at Hidden Villa with Kristen. Nathaniel and his sister also produced a musicale version of "Old McLillian" with Nathaniel playing the part of the animals, complete with custom lyrics and hand made masks for the cow and the pig. It was all good fun, but everyone was relieved when the weekend came and we all had a chance to unwind after an exhausting week.