LIVE! For 3 Days Only: Cousin Craig!

Day 1: Big Family Dinner at YaYa and Papa Ron's house!

My Aunt Janene and cousin's Carrie and Craig were in town this week from Illinios. Regular blog readers will know Craig from the weekly "cousin craig" comments. Since they live in Illinois, we don't see them very often so it was nice that they decided to come out this year for a visit.

We all congregatated at my parent's house Thursday. Below is Janene and my aunt Lucie.
Here is Janene with Aunt Annette:
My cousin Curt and his wife Dee joined us for the dinner. Yup, that's YaYa in the background...

Mom was on better behavoir in this picture and kept her bunny-ear fingers where they belong...here she is with her big sis Annette.

My cousin Brian is showing off his new tattoo...Annette had her share of comments about it. I'm sure that's why he came wearing a sleeveless shirt...he knows his Aunt Annette...

I'm not sure what Siena was doing but she was having a good time doing it.

After being stung by a bee a few weeks ago, Siena has developed a fairly rational fear of the insects. Here's Papa Ron protecting her from the scary bee's with a fly swatter.

Aaahh, there's the Craigster on the left. He was a picture-taking maniac all week.

Somehow Siena got her hands on the fly swatter. This is not a good thing. If you never thought a fly swatter could be used as a weapon, just give it to Siena.

Walt and Janene...

Cousin Carrie, YaYa, and Janene enjoying dessert.

My kids ate so much sugar at this event that by the end of the evening they were running around in circles and performing Riverdance. They didn't finally settle down until after 9 when we got home.

Day 2: The Oregon Zoo.

The Oregon Zoo was founded in 1887, making it the oldest North American zoo west of the Mississippi. The first zoo site was near where the reservoirs in Washington Park are now. The zoo became world famous in 1962 when the Asian elephant "Packy" was born. He was the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere in 44 years and is (as of 2006) the largest Asian elephant in the United States at 10.5 ft (3.2 m) tall and 13,500 lbs (6,100 kg). A total of 28 more calves have been born at the Oregon Zoo, including 7 sired by Packy, making it the most successful zoo elephant breeding program in the world.

The trio of Janene, Carrie, and Craig had breakfast for the second day in a row at the Original Pancake House. We would have joined them as that is definitly the best breakfast restaurant in town, but as it is so good, the wait is pretty long to get in usually which is a situation our toddlers don't do great in at this age. For any unfamiliar with this restaurant though, just check out their web site at www.originalpancakehouse.com which features pictures of their specialties...the Apple Pancake and the Dutch Baby....ohhh its good stuff.

Anyway, zoo. I thought it was cool to see the top and bottom of a duck swimming so I included it here.

Here's the kids, Luis and Craig comparing their heights to those of bears. Luis and Craig might have a fighting chance with the sun bears and black bears but that's about it.

A new baby elephant was born about a week ago and we got to see him. Unfortunately he was a little camera shy and hid behind his mom as we tried to catch a picture. He's a cute little guy about 365lbs currenly and has been named Samudra.

Here's my own little babies sitting on a baby elephant statue.

The happy zoo-goers: Carrie, Craig, Luis, and Janene.

We saw some cool animals. Here's a rhino.

And a gazelle-thing. Yeah, yeah, I didn't memorize all the animal names. These were pretty little thangs though so I took a picture of him.

And a zebra...

The kids behind some bars checking out the zebras...

And the giraffe...

Even at the zoo there is a car, albeit a stripped-down safari Land Rover. The kids were thrilled. Siena took the wheel...And Mason manned the rear.

One of the best exhibits at the zoo were the lorikeets which would land on your hand if you had a cup of fruit nectar. That's me with one on my hand.

Mason got to feed one.

So did Siena.

Day 3: Pittock Mansion

The Pittock Mansion was originally built as a private mansion for The Oregonian editor Henry Pittock and his wife, completed in 1914. The mansion opened to the public in 1965, and has been a community landmark ever since. Roughly 80,000 people visit the Pittock Mansion each year, and we were a few of them.

YaYa decided to join us and volunteered to take the back seat with the kids...

Here is an exterior shot of the Mansion:

Mom and Mason in the dining room:

The kids weren't so much into the tour and the history of the house but they had a good time running around the grounds.

Here's mom outside the Guest House.

The gardens and the view from the mansion are incredible. Here's Siena by some of the flowers. Nothing like her chocolate-covered face next to a bunch of roses...

Here's the view of downtown from the garden. The tall building in the middle is my former place of employment.

Craig and the ladies were heading back to Illinios today. It was nice seeing them and being able to carry on a verbal conversation rather than our usual email conversations for a change.

On an unrelated note, how about those Ducks yesterday? If only our fantasy team could pull out a miracle this week...

Bean Town Blah

So I flew to Boston on Sunday. As in Massachusetts. The good news was that it was a non-stop flight. The bad news was that I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to catch the flight and got stuck in the dreaded middle seat.

The middle seat was as bad as could be. The gentlemen next to me, though amicable, were of above-average size and therefore not only took up their entire seats but ballooned over into mine. Not only did I have no arm rest on either side, I was literally shoulder to shoulder with these men the whole way.

After 5.5 rather unrestful hours, we landed. My travel companion from Mentor was Emily and we made our way to our rental car which we ensured came equipped with GPS. Neither of us were at all familiar with the fine city of Boston. We departed the Hertz parking lot with grand visions of a late Sunday afternoon purusing the greater Boston tourist attractions. Instead, the blasted GPS lady led us the wrong way down one-way streets and in the same loop around Boston Commons 3 times. After seeing the same Dunkin Donuts establishement for the third time, we scrapped the whole tourist idea and proceeded to dinner and our hotel in Marlboro.

The rest of the trip consisted of due diligence work at Mentor's newly acquired company's US operations and a flight back to Portland that night. Instead of sharing the sortid details of that, I thought I'd leave you all with my 1 day waking hour impression of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

1) It looked exactly like Oregon but with less ranch style houses.
2) For every 1,000 residents, there are a minimum of 4 pizza establishments.
3) For every 1,000 residents, there are a minimum of 5 Dunkin Donuts establishments.
4) The turnpike toll booths would get pretty annoying pretty fast.
5) The architecture in Boston is cool.
6) Who would build a hotel over a freeway?!?
7) The Boston accent requires a translation guide.
8) Did I mention the toll booths were annoying?!?
9) Honking is encouraged.
10) Why are they a "commonwealth"? Isn't statehood good enough?

Really though, Boston seemed like a great city and one that I really do hope to go back and spend more time in someday. The rest of the state was likewise beautiful and I can see why people from there are proud.

I wouldn't recommend flying there one day and back the next though. Not only did we have the same flight crew coming back, my a$$ is still sore from sitting that long.

Sorry, no pictures this week. Deal with it. Its been a long week.

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.