The Symbolic End of Summer

Labor Day weekend. The holiday originated in 1882 as the Central Labor Union (of New York City) sought to create "a day off for the working citizens". Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer. For the Cruzes, its the start of football!!

It wasn't all good news this week though. Blazer fans, including us, were saddened this week to hear about Kevin Duckworth's passing. I'll never forget watching him come out onto the court for game 7 vs. the San Antonio Spurs in the 1990 playoffs. I also remember meeting him after a Blazer game when I was a kid. He was very polite and signed the autograph "Big Duck". I've still got that autograph. He seems to be one of the more forgotten of those great Blazer teams of the early 90's but he was a big part of that team and a great role model in the Portland area for a lot of years.

Sunday was Kaden's birthday party. Mason and Siena were very excited. And thank goodness we had a party to go to. Anything to tear Mason away from his new favorite movie - our wedding video. Warning to parents: Do not show your wedding video to your children. You run the risk of them becoming addicted to said movie. We had the best wedding ever. However, that doesn't mean I want to watch it 10 times in one day.

Back to the birthday party. Mason picked out the gift (a semi truck) himself. And the wrapping paper (race cars). Here's Kaden pondering his forthcoming party.

Midway through the party, huge hail started. This wasn't the normal, wussy Oregon hail. This is like Oklahoma hail. The stuff you see on movies like Twister. The party moved under cover, except for Luis checking it out.

The Ladies. Mom and Barb are the two with their faces turned.

Here's Kaden and his little bro Ryder examining the hail firsthand, and barefooted...

Mason and Siena kept fighting over this little car of Kaden and Ryder's. Siena won.

Mason, doing a little dance...it is a party after all. A little rain and hail isn't going to slow anyone down.

Here's all the kids enjoying a slice of the birthday cake. All of the kids there were within a couple years of each other in age. That made it a fun guessing game whenever one would cry or yell "mama"..."is it mine or yours"...

We even got Mason to don a hat for the occasion.

Siena voluntarily wore the hat.

The best gift Kaden got was the bugle - clearly given by a guest with no small children in the house. If he learns to master the instrument, Jon and Gena will never need an alarm clock again!

Labor day itself was another fun day for the kids courtesy of sister-in-law Sara's work-related picnic. We're moochers of the first order and piled the kids in the car for the long, 5 mile drive to Oaks Park.

Oaks Park, despite its modest size, is one of the oldest in the U.S. having been in existance since 1905. For you history buffs, here's a little background on Oaks: In 1905, Fred Morris, president of the Oregon Water Power and Railway Company, invested a hundred thousand dollars to develop a forty-four-acre amusement park on the banks of the Willamette River. It was a time when trolley companies occasionally built amusement parks at the end of their lines to increase ticket sales during evenings and weekends, when the trolleys carried fewer passengers. A trolley line ran from downtown Portland to Canemah by way of Oregon City, and Morris located The Oaks at an intermediate point in order to increase short-haul traffic. He also hoped that the park would attract the crowds that were expected to attend the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition — a world's fair being constructed in Northwest Portland that would attract 1.6 million people during the four and a half months it was open. Its skating rink is probably its most well-known feature but today we were focused on the rides, especially now that Mason is no longer afraid of them. Well, most all of them.

As noted several blogs ago, the car rides are a family favorite...

And the motorcycle ride.

Oaks Park has a very cool, old carousel. There are a lot of different animals in addition to the standard horses. Siena is perched on a donkey.
Mason was able to nab a frog.

There we are! I was around to provide moral support...

And there were airplanes.

This is like the Red Baron in a little green plane with flames...

The Frog Hop was the one ride Mason wasn't quite brave enough for. That didn't stop Siena though. She's up for anything! (She's the second from the left)

Here's Siena dropping her jello on her lap. Thought I'd throw that picture in for good measure.

There were a lot of people at Oaks Park today. Several Union groups were having big to-do's and of course there was the usual group that amusement parks seem to attract. You know, folks with a lot of tattoos and not a lot of teeth and shirt-sleeves.

Anyway, there were also good representation by a couple politicians. Here's us meeting Jeff Merkley who's going head to head with Gordon Smith for the senate seat. We also met David Wu but I didn't get a picture.

I have no intention of using my blog to air my political views. Vote as you all see fit. I will note however that had the above politician been a republican, there wouldn't be a picture of us meeting him on my blog.

Busted Chandeliers and Egregious Misspellings

Before I dive into this post, apparently I had not one but TWO family name misspellings in last weeks post. Look, I am very busy and can't be troubled with things like proper name spelling... . Anyway, great grandma Torland was Helena SyRena Olina Svehaug and apparently little Mr. Evans' name is spelled BerrEn. The Dayzdtomato blog staff sends its profound apologies to all impacted.

Moving on, today is our (that would be Luis and me) 6th wedding anniversary. If you're into numbers, here's a few more fun statistics...in October we will have been together 10 years. We were 22 when we met, I was 25 and Luis 26 when we were married. And, as you will see in the following pictures, we were not only younger by 5-10 years, we were also about 20 lbs. lighter.

This is Luis a month or two after we started dating. When I saw this picture today, my first thought was who is that kid?
Luis and I...the dating years...

You'd think a Puerto Rican boy would have a little bit of a tan, wouldn't you? Well now you know why the serving staff at El Tapatio is so shocked when he starts speaking Spanish to them...

Note: Wedding pictures below courtesy of our photographer David Barss. God forbid I get sued 4 months into my blogging career.

Anyway, Luis and I call this his "GQ" picture. Oh yeah, he's hot.

I've always liked this one of ours. You can perfectly make out the contour of our noses...

The moment that sealed the deal:

Apparently we kept sealing the deal...

Not being one for mushiness, I won't start here. However, its been a great 6 years and I enjoy every day with my best friend.

So, you might be wondering how Luis and I might choose to spend our time together celebrating our 6th anniversary (or you might not, but regardless, that's about all I have to write about this weekend). Mason and Siena spent Friday night with Ya Ya and Papa Ron because Luis and I had one of our most important Saturday's of the year: Fantasy Football Draft.

Here's what a draft cheatsheet looks like by the end of the event:

Only time will tell how the Boricuas fare this year.

Last night we went out to dinner together (woah, that doesn't happen very often anymore) and then to see The Phantom of the Opera. It was my third time seeing the show and Luis' first. I'm glad to say that as reluctant as Luis may have been going into it, he enjoyed the show (I loved it of course but that's a given).

This is how we spent today, our actual anniversary. Yes, that is our laundry that needed to be folded. Ugh.

But don't think that the kids didn't have a nice weekend. Mason and Siena had a great time playing at Ya Ya and Papa Ron's house Friday and yesterday. Again, Mason took his Chevy pedal car with him and honed his mechanical skills in Papa Ron's garage. I'm not kidding. He literally puts his car up on a jack and makes repairs and adjustments meticulously. Whose kid is this?!?

As the weekend comes to a close so does the Olympics. I am sad. We've watched as much as humanly possible. Luis and I have adopted our Olympic "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" that we will now have to break up with - my Olympic boyfriend was Troy Dumais, the US springboard diver; Luis' Olympic girlfriend was the Swedish 110m hurdle girl who bit it on the first hurdle of her heat (clearly he wasn't into her for her athletic prowess). Well, I guess Mason and I won't have to battle for the tv in the evenings anymore.

All Work and no Play = KUMLA!!!

After not getting home until after 9 every night last week (except Friday), I was ready for a nice restful weekend. I was so tired by the time I got home Thursday night that I forgot where the parking brake on my car was (only had the car 5 YEARS). In addition, after taking the kids to Sushiland for lunch yesterday, I walked out and was putting the kids in the car before I noticed a crumpled up piece of paper in my left hand. That would be the unpaid ticket. I left without paying.

We did get some good news at work. Cadence withdrew their offer to buy Mentor which resulted in a collective woo-hoo from my hallway. Of course that's because we knew that our jobs would be secure for the forseeable future now. We won't talk about what's happening to Mentor's stock price now though.

Anyway, Mother Nature had other plans and cranked up the heat to close to the century mark with a little humidity on top. That meant the Cruzes cranked up the AC and stayed indoors. Mason was feeling under the weather most of Saturday anyway so he didn't mind being confined. And of course the Olympics were on so its not like we didn't have pleanty to watch.

Yes, of course I went back inside Sushiland and paid the bill. What kind of a schmuck do you think I am?!?

Now its Sunday. Mason was feeling better and we had a birthday party to go to. Second only to celebrating Ellia and Berron's birthdays was the fact that kumla was on the menu!!!

Here's the birthday boy Berron. He has the cutest big blue eyes...
For those of you unfamiliar with everyone that I know, I'll try to provide captions. Berron is Heidi and Dan's little boy (Heidi is my cousin).


This is Berron's cousin Jocelyn. She is about a month and a half younger than Berron and one day off from being exactly 2 years younger than Siena. Jocelyn is Jay B. and Chandra's little girl (Jay B. is my cousin too). Oh yeah, and she had a good lunch.

Alas, the kumla. For those of you unfamiliar with this wonderful substance, kumla is essentially a Norweigian potato dumpling dish. Essentially kumla has 3 ingredients...ground potatos, flour, and suet. Yes, fat. There's an alternate method involving the use of butter rather than suet but the suet version is the more tasty variety. This is fairly similar to potato dumplings made in Norway.

The "Torland" family twist however is that my Great Grandmother Helena Sylena Olina Svehaug Torland* (I type that out in its entirety only because its the coolest hame ever) used muslin bags to boil the kumla. The 3 ingredients detailed above are packed into fat sausage shaped muslin bags and boiled (as shown below).

Once the kumla is properly boiled (dialated?), the "birthing" process must commence. This involves opening the muslin bag and, well, pushing. Here comes the kumla now!
There are a few non-kumla eaters in the family, more commonly known as "in-laws". My mother seems to be the once exception to the in-law kumla hater rule. She enjoys it. Uncle Doug will eat some too. The rest, however, can only be described as losers...the pizza is for them...

Amanda and Shelley are checking out the reject dinner...

Anyway, back to kumla. Once the kumla has been delivered, it is sliced in chunks and eaten with butter. Notice of course there is no other food on my plate. When it comes to kumla, no other food matters. Note of course that the suet chunks are picked out and not eaten.

Here's one of the losers-oops-I mean in-laws eating pizza...

The crowd eating their kumla.

Mary Lou and Bruce had a great assortment of water toys and bubbles outside that all the kids had a great time playing in. Daddy is launching Siena down the ramp...

Post splash-down...

And the cool bubble machines. I think the grown-ups enjoyed them as much as the kids. Especially Chandra. She also got the prize I think for producing the biggest bubble.

Mason in one of the other wading pools the Ham's had set up. This is the same pool that Siena later climbed in fully clothed. That's my girl! (Unfortunately no pic - camera battery died).

Chandra again. This time twirling. I thought I'd spare her the post twirling dizzy, nautious picture...

Siena and bubbles got on well. It was great to see her engage in an activity that involves a soap-based formula rather than dirt.

I don't know if Papa Ron was enjoying the bubbles quite as much as Nannies though...

Since Ellia was getting over a bit of a stomach bug, Heidi kindly decided that Ellia shouldn't blow out the candles over the cake. Instead she blew out a candle in a piece of kumla...that's a special treat in and of itself!

The Evans family during the birthday song...I'm not sure what Ellia is saying about our collective singing...

Berron's got his knife in hand. He's ready for cake.

Course, Siena's cake eating involved a blue mouth...

The "Kumla Feed" was at 2 and now that its 8, it occurred to me that I'm hungary again so a sandwich may be in order. I'd love nothing more than to fry up some of the kumla I brought home (the kumla fest doesn't end at the feed) but I'm not entirely sure that my digestive tract can handle that much potato and nothing else in one day.

On a side note, I just cut my thumb putting dishes in the dishwasher. Nothing serious but I take it as a sign that I am not meant to do dishes.

* - Upon watching beach volleyball last week, many of us in the family noticed a Norwegian player named Ingrid Torlen. Torlen was our family name in Norway prior to immigration to the US where it became Torland. My dad was particularly interested and looked her up on the internet. Turns out she is from the same town in Norway that our ancestors hale from. Odds are pretty good that she's a distant relative of sorts. Pretty cool.