Tag: Portland

Walk for ALS

ALSIt’s incredible how many stories I hear these days of people being diagnosed with ALS – Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – or more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Just two weeks ago our good friend James (who is only 28 himself)’s mom was diagnosed. She’s just 63. And then my friend Sally –whose mom passed away from the disease many years ago – heard the dreadful news that her sister now has it. And she’s not even 40. It’s awful. And so scary.

I guess it was all of this that inspired us to take both the kids on the ALS walk in town. We walked three miles to raise money for research into ALS. Despite the depressing nature of the cause, the event was beautiful. We covered Tom McCall Waterfront Park, Steel Bridge, Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade and Hawthorne Bridge. Kids were tired by the end but nothing too crazy.

I think the walk brought in close to $25,000. So that’s good. But seriously, what a terrible, terrible disease. I pray a cure is discovered soon.

Portland’s Wild Arts Festival

I was so excited for the weekend.  I’d been looking forward to the Wild Arts Festival for weeks!  But I had no idea just how crowded it would be.  I later found out that it was due to the 6×6 Wild Art Project that caused the crowd to “flock” (excuse the pun) to the scene.

It was pretty cool actually.  Especially since the decorated tiles were done by local artists.  There was a book signing and silent auction, all hosted by the Audubon Society of Portland. Jayden – who’s very into nature – really enjoyed it; everything there was somehow connected to nature.

Daniel loved the education birds as a couple of them made a comfortable landing spot in his arm.  Ethan got a real kick out of watching that and yelped in delight!  They were so mellow; it was cool.

Even though it was more crowded than I originally anticipated, I’m glad we made this a family day out.  It was something so different from our usual Friday activities: fun, interesting and educational all at the same time!

New Place to Eat

Daniel has been reading these blogs recently in the hope of finding new eateries that we both might enjoy.  So he discovered one on all the great things in the world – aka Portland – and found a really funny-named restaurant Shut Up and Eat that he said we have to try. After I’d stopped chuckling at the title, I took a brief look at the menu and thought how me and the boys could devour one of the meatball subs – which is Pan-fried beef, veal and pork meatballs with red gravy and provolone.  Daniel said he could eat one of those alone!  There’s a lot of variety on the menu but the general idea seems to be very hearty meals. The prices look reasonable as well so we’re for sure going to try it – as a family – sometime soon.