My twin brother Andy, his wife Kori, and our mom all came to visit us over Spring Break. We scheduled in a few chores: updating our computer with awesome software, pawning off some of the things in our house so they wouldn’t have to be packed, and visiting an antique store for Andy & Kori to buy some knobs for an antique french door they have in their Idaho house. We started out with a great morning over in Sellwood, at a coffee shop named 
http://www.bluekangaroocoffee.com/. Kori bought the drinks…thank you! I had a spicy chai, it was one of the best I have ever had!
They had a nice little play area for the kids, complete with a mini table and a basket of toys. There was plenty of room for the adults and their “serious” talk, and also the kids to play around a little. As a mom, I appreciate that so much! I did notice that a nice pair of ladies moved from their table shortly after we arrived in the kid section, we were happy to oblige and take over their spot.
After our spell there to dry off and warm up, we sauntered across the street to a toy store, and then down to 1874 Antiques, where Andy & Kori browsed for the perfect doorknob set. They found one, and I can’t wait to see how it looks on their office doors. They’ll have to post a picture on their blog. Hint, hint.
After that, our jaunt was cut short my the kids’ need for naps, so we went home and met up with Jasper Grammy who had arrived while we were out. Jasper Grammy is named so because she has a wonderful black & white cat by that name. She just thought she would be “grammy”, but the kids like to embellish & I kind of like the name because it is special. That evening, after a wonderful corned beef dinner (there can never be enough corned beef mind you), we decided to go out for an adventure.
We took them to www.uwajimaya.com, Uwajimaya, an Asian specialty supermarket providing the widest variety of Asian groceries and gifts and freshest meat, seafood and produce.
We had a great time looking at the gift items, and also the grocery items. My favorites were the wind up sushis and animal themed kitchen gadgets. The rest of the family found some interesting items as well:
Then we headed home to do the kids’ bedtime routine, which consisted of a very drawn out “snuggle” with pretty much everyone in the house. Including Jasper Grammy:
Snuggling is a big deal to Eli right now. He loves that physical contact, and will take every little bit of it that he can get. Aunt Kori must have done a bit of head scratching, because after they left, Eli informed me that it felt good and I needed to do it just like Aunt Kori had done it. Apparently I don’t do it quite right. We also have the tradition of “stories”, which are different from books. Stories are made up on the fly while you snuggle. It is great fun to see what different family members come up with for Eli. Mine usually have a moral message, others are just funtastical creations….on the level of Willy Wonka.
The next day, I can’t even remember what we did in the morning. That is so bad. But, we did get a sitter, and decided to make a reservation so Kori could experience so good seafood. That didn’t turn out as we expected, when we hit Dan & Louis Oyster Bar at happy hour time instead of at our reservation time. We couldn’t pass up the thought of $1.95 salads and $2.95 oysters, so we altered the evening’s course a little. Then we tried out Kincaids (but left before ordering…), a random bar for a happy hour priced drink (that ended up not being priced for happy hour), and then Oba for fru-fru drinks and some fun food. Andy had an amazing girly cocktail that included a habernero pepper. Sweet with a serious kick. I had an amazing key-lime pie drink. Mmmmm. Strong.
During all of that restaurant hopping, we made a stop at Voo Doo Doughnuts, a Portland landmark. http://voodoodoughnut.com/. We liked so many of the choices, that we got a pretty large box. I’d post a sampling of the doughnuts, but some of them aren’t so kid friendly. Here is Andy with his bacon wrapped maple bar though:
Ian and Andy thought they were pretty good. I’ll stick to ones with sugar thank you.
Speaking of sugar. If you’ve ever spent any significant amount of time with the Frahms, or Ian for that matter, you’ll know that we like sugar. Any kind. But Andy and I have had a love of Sour Patch Kids for quite some time. Probably for more than a decade. When Kori and Andy took their dogs out for a walk, this is what they came home with. We used Andy’s head for size reference:
Now I know that this makes it look like he has a small head, but he doesn’t, he’s a brainiac…this is just an incredibly HUGE bag of SourPatch kids. Truly, there is a God who loves us.
After all of that fun, we all had to say goodbye. Frown.
