Portland After Dark

Last Saturday, July 24, was Scott Kelby's 3rd Annual Worldwide Photo Walk. Cities all over the world participated that day in groups of up to 50 photographers. I participated in a night walk in downtown Portland. I drug my friend Jocelyn along and I had so much fun. I think Jocelyn was feeling a little done with the day before I even picked her up, so I hope she had fun too, despite my keeping her up so late. :)

 I took lots of pictures and posted a selection of them over at Laurie Marie Photography.

The last picture I took of the night was a self portrait outside of Tiffany & Co. The sidewalk was covered with stones engraved with sayings and after spotting this one I spent several minutes getting up and down off the ground to get this, because I'm just crazy like that.


Another guy, Ben, walked around with Jocelyn and me. Along a section of Yamhill there are animal statues and fountains. Someone said one of us had to pose on the deer, so up I went because, again, I'm crazy like that and Ben took this.


Then Jocelyn and I were "being otters" with the statues when this guy jumped in. We told him we were acting like the otters and I guess we both internally decided to just let him be the crazy one since clearly he was without trying. Hm, yes, the Portland nightlife was thoroughly entertaining. (I did crop this down from what Ben shot so you could see us better)


 I just pulled these shots of Ben from our walk's Flickr group. There's also a Flickr group for all the Worldwide Photo Walk participants.

Seriously, I loved this night. I had such a good time that I'm leaning towards choosing another night time shoot next year! (Travis probably likes that better too since it doesn't waste a Saturday for him and I didn't even leave until after the boys were in bed!)

KO

This is always good entertainment.

Flat Tire

Tonight Travis noticed this is a very flat tire.


And the culprit was sitting right on top.


When Travis took it to get fixed it turned out it was a heavy duty piece of wire bent sort of like a staple... but with 4 inch spikes!

An Evening

The Friday after the 4th of July we went to Travis' parent's house to have dinner with DeAnna's parents. We were all hanging out outside and suddenly it was raining on Carson


Here comes the rain!


Oh, it's just Uncle Kevin


Ah! The rain is following me!


Don't even think about it, Kevin.


Inside, Julie was working hard on her plank position.


And scooting around after stuff


Then I headed back outside to check out the tadpoles. This is what's left of the pond. I'm standing in the bottom of it and if it was full I think I'd have my head covered. The guys say they don't remember the pond ever lasting this long into the summer and getting this gross.


Um, green tea Gunner?


This robin kept coming close to me and hopping around.


Here's a crop from that picture. Can you see what's flopping through the air just to the left of the robin's head in the picture? A tadpole! What a great source of food that little pond must be. No wonder the robin was back and forth all over the place.


Here's some more close crops of some pictures I took of the little tadpoles swimming and coming up for air. The bottom right one has two tadpoles just crossing paths but shows some pretty developed legs on one of them.


While we were there the guys also needed to load up and haul their quads home from our trip to Shotgun Creek the previous week. Of course, you can't load up without playing first...


Kevin and Travis think they're pretty cool.








That's getting your rear a little low, Travis


And that is too low, Kevin!


finally falling off after skidding to a hault


Oh, you think you're funny, huh?


Check out that skid mark!


Blueberries! No, Emmett, those are pine cones, but there's cherries over there...


Gunner likes cherries too.


Mmmm


Then the sprinklers came on and Avery wanted to run through them. I had to stop him quickly and tell him to go change back into his already wet clothes!


What is it with kids and airplanes? Duh, they're just so cool.


Wanna go for a ride, Emmett? Yeah!




I wanna ride too. But Carson who's going to pull then?


I will Mom!


Avery to the rescue


Such a good big brother.


Such a good evening.

To Straw

Or not to straw in this case.

Wash Your Feet

I didn't tell them to do this, I told them to keep playing outside and I'd take care of them soon.


Mostly this worked out alright, except for the part where they used way too much of my nice soap and Carson got his pant legs wet to the knee.


That was back at the end of June. I think it was the very next time Avery did this and I wasn't there to help him finish that I found my nice hand towel all spotted brown after he had dried with inefficiently washed feet and hands. Now they have a rag towel to dry with that we use whether Mom has helped or not. NO MORE using my nice hand towel!

Plumber

I promise I won't add "crack" to that.

Have I mentioned lately how thankful I am for having such a handy man around?

Back in June Travis fixed a leak under my kitchen sink


I promise it's not the only reason I keep him around - he's good for a break from the kids too... :)


And then last night he replaced a sprinkler head in our backyard.

That's one way to hold a pipe




The glue he used on the pipe looks funny when it lands on the water




Tape measures always need playing with, right?

Seat Stealer

Aw, isn't he cute all cuddled up watching tv? WAIT a minute! That's not his monkey or blanket, those are Avery's! And Avery was sitting there!


That's right, Emmett likes to get a rise out of his brothers and knows just how to do it! Avery saw the camera and made his show of "anger" nicely obvious.


And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.


(This was back on July 7th, when Emmett still had his splint on, which is gone now but I'm still catching the blog up...)