7000 Days

If the only way you could get your kid to eat was to take a bite of soggy, mushed-pasta covered cracker…?

After bath and before pjs

Brett is an Oregonian girl who met and married Wayne, an Aussie boy, and lived in Sydney for the past several years where we met. They moved back to Portland about 6 months before we did and shared all sorts of tips about US Immigration, moving companies and the like.

So it’s only right that we spend Australia Day with them and their friends. They had a barbie of course. Complete with sausages, homemade Lamingtons…

face tattoos (and a very cute boy Gus’ age)

a pack of wild kids who migrated from play room to play room

men with beer

and of course afternoon tea.

Now, if they just could have arranged for us all to have the Friday and Monday off, we’d have never known we left.

Except perhaps for the fresh snow that morning.

I’ve had a bit of work on lately so been lax with the posts. But I have some back log I’ll be putting up soon. In the meantime, here’s a Gus pic for the Grandparents/Granties to tide you over:

Great at going up the stairs. Not so good at getting back down.

We drove Dad to the airport this morning for his flight to Ecuador. He’ll be gone for a whole month just seeing the sites and the house already feels empty without him. He’s not missing us, I imagine.

But when we got back Charles, Gus and I huddled around the computer to watch the streaming coverage of the Inaugural oath and speech. And then later in the afternoon we popped down to the pub where 20 people from Mosier had gathered to watch it again and bask in the changes. It was as good the second time. I was even inspired enough to uncross my fingers long enough to sign up to volunteer.