Portland and Back

Time to show some pictures from Portland.

While waiting for Dave to get his haircut, Julia and I admired the park statues.

We spent a good deal of time in the 104 degree salt water pool. How I love that pool! Ever since we've come back, Julia has asked to go "smmimmn"

she was a big fan of saying "wan, fourr, jump!" and then she'd leap, whether or not we were ready to catch her. Attempts to teach her other numbers between one and four were not absorbed.

I got her a bubble wand, and we had a lovely late afternoon of nice beer, appetizers, bubbles and pointing out all the passing helicopters, of which there were many.

"hotter!" (Helicopter)

We had a lovely few days. Julia was ever so pleased to see Dave again, though she was fickle in showing it. (She preferred to hold my hand while going down the stairs, ect) but I could tell that she was pretty happy to have us all together again. The entire day before we saw Dave she would comment with great regularity "Da-ey?" and wait to be reassured that yes, that night we'd see Daddy. Whenever he was out of sight, she'd need to be reassured that he'd be back in a minute. We stayed at the Edgefield McMinamins hotel, on the eastern edge of Portland. It's full of interesting paintings and lovely gardens and they have a fantastic soaking pool. We ate in the restaurant, had an afternoon beer on the porch, went swimming often, and walked the grounds. Other parts of the trip were spent getting Dave a new suit, going to the playground, driving around Portland a bit, going to Powell's Bookstore, and checking out a potential fixer-upper farmhouse. We left the morning of Dave's interview, so I could make it back for class that evening. The interview went well, but we heard a few days later that they gave the position to the internal candidate. That made us pretty bummed out, especially considering the financial investment it takes for us to get Dave from Alaska to an interview! Even worse, a few days after that, we learned that he also did not get the position he interviewed for in Pelican, Alaska. So we are 0 for 2, and back to the stage of sending more applications out and waiting for responses. It's a hard place to be in mentally, since the rejection letters arrive with appalling frequency, but we're working on staying optimistic. Despite the rejections, I'm happy he had the interview opportunities for the experience and so we could have a few days together. In just over a month the school year will be over up there, and then he'll come join us down here!

and to end with, a video of Julia's not-so-impressive counting skills.