More Life In Portland Lately

After a couple of months in Coeur d'Alene, we've been spending some time in Portland lately visiting my family and getting ready for a slightly crazy road trip to North Dakota. There has been a lot going on in a short period of time, so I thought it was timely to do another installment of "Life in Portland Lately" (you can check out the original post here).

Scott and I went for a walk around downtown Portland the other day so that he could take pictures of old signs. Old signs are a new obsession of his. When Scott gets focused on something, he gets really focused on it. Fortunately for him, there are a lot of really interesting old signs in Portland, like the one above from the old Guild Theatre on SW 9th Street. Last time I was in Portland, my mom and I saw lots and lots of fire trucks in vicinity. We walked over to see what was going on and check out the firefighters. My mom has a thing for firefighters. She's probably going to kill me for having put that in the blog. Oops. Anyways, if you want to see more of Scott's pictures of old signs, you can check out the Pinterest board I made for him. I don't even think he knows what Pinterest is, but now he has a board.

We've been shopping up a storm getting ready for our road trip from Oregon to North Dakota. Because we got rid of pretty much all of our stuff in New Zealand, we've had to start from scratch in terms of camping gear. New sleeping bags, a tent, a butane stove, a cooler, dishes etc. Theoretically, we'll save tons of money by camping rather than staying at motels. Of course, it is autumn now and the rain, snow and cold weather might just make camping a drag. It is quite possible that I'll do a fair bit of whining along the way. Good thing that Scott is used to that by now. In some ways, it will be like living on our boat. No fridge, uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, laundromats and less frequent showers.

It feels a little bit like we've gone back to school. Scott "helped" one of my 12-year old nieces with her homework the other night. I'm not sure how much help he was, but he seemed to enjoy it. Not so sure about my niece! It was a kick seeing the Junior Scholastic magazine that they read. Takes me back to when I was in school. My nieces seem to know much more about current events than I do. Perhaps I should subscribe to Junior Scholastic too. We also paid a visit to the girls' school. Nothing like being surrounded by giggling 12 and 13 year old kids to make you feel positively ancient. 

What's been happening lately where you are?