Tag: Neighborhood House

Lending a Helping Hand

helping-handDespite the fact that Daniel and I don’t hold by any particular religion, we do feel it is important to teach our children a sense of doing good by helping those in need.  So when I read about a few parishes getting together to collect over 140 tons of food (or money to purchase it), I jumped on the bandwagon and got my family to follow suit, putting religion aside completely.

This food is going to help those in need that are aided by Neighborhood House, SW Portland.  Apparently it’s an especially important time to help these people – just after the holiday season.  The parishes involved are: St. John Fisher, St. Clare and St. Thomas More.  Another thing that appealed to me was the fact that it’s not just Parish congregants who are involved but Jewish and Muslims too – so it’s totally not a religious-based thing which is important to me and Daniel. It has been going since 2007 but, given that according to Neighborhood House’s executive director Rick Nitti, the State of Oregon witnessed a 2 percent increase in poverty last year (as compared to nationwide figures that did not experience any escalation), this is a great year for us to start getting involved in such a project.

Hello American Pie

The weather in Portland has been a bit gruesome for a while. That definitely makes things a bit tougher with the kids as we have to find more indoor activities to do with them, especially over the weekend when there is no preschool.  Still, at least yesterday it was only drizzling – the rain wasn’t too bad – so we managed to do some stuff. 

Since I’d been reading last week about the cool event taking place at Baker & Spice in the Hillsdale neighborhood of Portland, I decided yesterday that we should brave the weather.  On both Saturday and Sunday, the store was celebrating its annual Pie Day, marking the store’s birthday!  How cool is that!  Each year they have Pie Day during which over the weekend, people can come along and eat as much pie as they want (or can!).  This year apparently the store is turning 7-years-old (so I had Jayden saying the whole time “but I want to be 7 too,” which kinda makes sense as the way he counts now he omits 5 and 6, so given that he’s 4, his next birthday – in his logic – would be 7. Still I digress.

I ordered a slice of Mocha Almond and Super Duper (mega-chocolatey) and by then, truly I was done.  Daniel of course has a way sterner stomach than me so he managed a slice of: Pink Cake, Black and White and Vanilla Dream.  And Jayden shared a slice of the store’s Birthday Cake with Ethan which they both really loved by the look of their faces when the plate was clean.  Since Jayden made my birthday cake with Daniel a few weeks ago, he’s talked about nothing else.

Anyway it was a fun afternoon and what made me feel a bit better about my gorging was learning that the store will be donating a quarter of its pie sales to Neighborhood House’s emergency food box program – an organization that “helps neighbors help themselves.” I thereafter explained the charitable organization to Jayden, and he was so cute, he asked if he could give them half of his cake too!  What an adorable child.  I love him so much.