Wild Crazy Weekend Update

It's not short. It's an update. I'm still recovering from the craziness!

Last Wednesday I left for Portland. Apparently I have a lead foot... because I made it to The Dalles in just over 4 hours including stopping to feed Cory lunch. (Hi Mom and Dad) It was nice though because it was a beautiful day and there was hardly anyone on the road. Plus there's a detour going on in the Columbia Gorge so I drove on the Washington side up high on the cliff and it was an amazing view! Sometimes you just need a new perspective, no?

Stopped to visit Cory's great-grand parents in The Dalles for a few hours.

They always feed us well. Plus Grandpa gave me a whole bag of jelly beans... and then proceeded to tell me that he had a candy dish full as well... bad idea! I ate most of them that afternoon. He wouldn't take the bag back though so I passed it on to the other great-grands the next day!

Got to our lovely friends Jason and Amber's in the evening and stayed up way too late talking. (which we did every night)

Thursday I drove down to Newberg to see the other set of great-grand parents.

Cory ate the food in the dining room like a pro... I think he even ate more than Grandpa for dinner! ;) He also found the bells they had and loved the fact that he could bang them against the door to get even more noise. These are "official" camel bells from Saudi Arabia!


(side note: how crazy is this? apparently I am going to get to visit this mystical land in about a year! Wow.)

Another random thing, driving back up to Portland I needed to stop and get some glasses at Bed Bath and Beyond. I have a number on my cell phone for Free 411. I managed to remember on the 3rd try which suburb the store was in, get the number, and find out if they were still open. Then I asked if they had my style of glasses in stock and if they could put them at the front counter for me. Which made my trip to the store way shorter than it would have been. Amazing things these cell phones. How did we live without them?

Friday after dropping Amber at her doctor's appointment (3 weeks until the baby's due!) I decided I was going to wash their floors for them. Picture this. Hardwood floors. Months of remodeling. 2 large greyhounds in rainy (read muddy) Portland. And Miss Amber not being able to really do housework. Equals me having to change the water in the mop bucket about a dozen times. I felt really good when it was done... until the dogs came back in and the next day it was muddy again! No offense Amber, but I don't think I could ever do dogs and hardwood floors together! ;)

Then we went to lunch at this funky little Mexican place. Can you all tell me since when does picadillo (shredded beef) equal hamburger with raisins, potato chunks, and some other thing I can't remember at the moment? It was weird. So much for my taco salad. Oh, and they had raw onions in the lettuce. Ugh.
Next door was a kids re-sale shop with a hyper opinionated pregnant lady ticked off because there were guys tarring the roof and smelling the place up. Crazy!

We finally made it to the mall (Lloyd Center for those of you who care) to meet Gina and Addison for about an hour and use my 20% off coupons at The Children's Place and Gymboree. I got some awesome cute shirts for Cory to wear at some special occasions coming up! Yes, there will be pictures.

This now put us at almost 5pm and we still had to get back to Amber's house, feed Cory, and get out to the airport hotel where the Discovery Toys conference was by 6pm. Even with Jason offering to watch Cory we didn't make it.

I can never be on time for anything. I wish it weren't true, but it is.

Poor Jason had quite the evening with Cory. He was fine until eating dinner he managed to choke on his water and got freaked out. Jason called me to ask how he should comfort him and I told him to pick him up and asked if he needed us to come home. No... but when we got home we discovered that he had been walking with him for the better part of an hour... and he had noodle arms! Part of the problem was that Cory had had about an hour nap all day. Not a great combination. Welcome to parenthood Jason! He mentioned he was glad babies don't start at 21 pounds...

Saturday morning we didn't make it to the 9am start. We had Cory with us and he did pretty well. He finally fell asleep in my new Ergo baby carrier, but we woken up when the lady finished her talk and everyone clapped with their little plastic clapping hands. Weirdness galore!

Cory likes the balloon we brought home from the decorations!

We were supposed to have an hour and 15 minutes for lunch. We had 45. Not quite enough time to get back to Jason and Amber's for lunch when it's 20 minutes each way. So we went, I fed Cory while they packed me a lunch, and I turned around and drove back. Cory took a good nap and then after the conference we met at the new IKEA for dinner! Those places rule! But seriously there's almost so much stuff it's too overwhelming to even know where to start. Too many choices.

One really sad thing, it was my mom's birthday and I was hoping to get her some yummy almond pastries they have... but I got all the way to the Bistro at the end to discover they don't carry them. Apparently this is a corporate store and the one in Seattle where I've always gotten them is a franchise so they carry different things. I was so bummed.

Sunday I actually got to sleep in because Cory was tired and went back to sleep in the morning. Yay! But that meant that by the time we got all packed up and back to the mall it was already after 1pm and that was my leave-Portland goal time. Ugh. We did manage to get out of there pretty fast going to 5 stores to get things I needed. (this is what happens when you live in the boonies, going to the city means you have to go to the mall!) So 4pm and I'm finally leaving only to get to Troutdale (read - cheapest gas around) and find that half the pumps are closed because they only have one attendant on duty. Stupid Oregon rule that won't let you pump your own gas. It literally took me half an hour to get gas.

I made it home about 10:15 with no major mishaps other than one semi-truck on the detour portion of the road who thought it would be okay to drive in my lane on a corner and almost hit me head on. I really wished there'd been a police officer there... I had a bit of adrenaline going for awhile!

Hard to believe that was only 5 days... And now I am mostly recuperated...

Is anyone still reading? :) Congratulations. I think you have just made it through the longest blog post in history!