camping

This past weekend we went camping at Fort Stevens outside of Astoria on the coast. My mom joined us in her trailer. We were in our 3 room tent. We had a blast. We stayed 2 nights and the campground was really nice. It was loaded with bike trails so we all loaded up , (Nana too) and hit the trails. We went on a 5 mile ride to the beach and a cool shipwreck and then on to the abandoned battery.

The kids had a blast all weekend making friends at the campground and riding their bikes all over the place. They had a great time. We will definitely be visiting again this summer.

I heart Barack Obama

Ok I know I don't normally do posts like this, but I promise it won't turn into a common occurrence. But as a native Oregonian, it should come as no real surprise that I am a bleeding heart, bedwetting liberal. As such I love me some Barack Obama. I won't go in a long winded argument as to why. I still believe that politics , much like religion is a personal choice. Point and case, just because I consider myself a Christian, certainly doesn't mean that I only vote for the "conservative vote". I vote for the person that I think will do the best job and the person who will take us in the direction that I think we need to be going.

If this tarnishes your golden opinion of me, well then so be it.

In any case, Obama was in town yesterday down at the waterfront. I love this city for a lot of reasons, but I especially love that when a guy like Barack Obama comes to town, all the folks come out. As you may or may not know, Portland is one of the most bike friendly cities in the country. Add the two factors together and you end up with a million bikes parked anywhere and everywhere.

I guess Portland broke some sort of record for an event like this. We had over 75,000 people down at the waterfront.

Awesome!!!

Great day for a bike ride

On Sunday we got out and went for a great bike ride as a family. Bug and I rode our bikes and Rock star husband pulled the younger kids in the bike trailer. It's quite a workout. But it gets us all out and riding. We rode down the 4 mile trail downtown and then played in an awesome fountain on the waterfront. It really acts more like a sprinkler. It blasts like 10,000 gallons of water from 16 different spouts. It's really fun.

Luckily we got down there before the heat of the day struck, had a picnic lunch, played in the fountain and then biked the trail back home just as the heat really kicked up.

Downtown was especially busy this afternoon and I'll write out another post about that a little later on.

It was a great day.

Saturday afternoon bike ride

So yesterday was Saturday and as I have said before it has been unusually beautiful weather for February. So we thought we'd hop on our bikes and take advantage of it. We have a bike trail near us that goes all the way downtown. The trail goes along the river and is nowhere near street traffic. Once we got going, we realized we weren't the only ones with this brilliant idea, but even though it was crowded, we still had a lot of fun.

Sunshine and Peanut are still too small to bike on their own so my super hero husband pulled them in the trailer. Bug however, is old enough to keep up with us on the trail and he did so magnificently considering it was about an 8 mile ride round trip.

We are really trying to make it a habit to get out and enjoy the outside and the area we live in rather than just gripe about how much we hate living in the city. Plus it's pretty awesome exercise too.

Although I'm not going to lie.... it feels like I have been horseback riding at full gallop on a wooden saddle. Translation...my butt is sore. Luckily I have all that cushion :)

Also my sister in law joined us for the ride. We didn't go across the river into downtown (mainly because riding with the trailer through the streets can get a little hairy) . But we did go as far as OMSI which is directly across the bridge from downtown. We had us a nice little picnic snack right on the river and checked out the submarine (Omsi is a science museum here in Portland and it has a real sub right here in the river. It's pretty cool) and then headed back.

It was a good day.

Maniac on a tricycle

So i have said it before and I'll say it again. This kid is fearless! This was a couple days ago we actually had a brake in the rain so we got the kids out and playing.

Notice here how her feet hardly even touch the petals. She's like a freak road warrior. Flying down the street at mach speeds.