Belated Boys Weekend Update

Grady and I had a very busy weekend with Ali and Clara travelling to attend Grandma/Great-Grandma McAllister's memorial service.  We'll all miss Polly a lot, and I'm grateful she was able to make a couple of trips to Portland to meet Grady and see our house.

While sorry to not be with the rest of the family, it was really fun getting to hang out so much with Grady.  He really is a cool little guy!  Here are some phone pictures I took of our many activities.

This picture is actually from a couple of weeks ago, but I still had it on my phone and think it's worth showing.  Grady loves to walk through puddles, and puddles don't get much better than this one in front of our house when it rains!

The weekend's forecast called for what is near-apocalyptic weather in Portland:  sunny with temperatures in the upper 70's!  Whaaaat???  We excitedly got out of the house early (I was wearing shorts) only to be reminded that things don't really start warming up until late afternoon here.  Our trip to the playground was cut short after Grady went down the wet slide one time and soaked through his pants.

It's only 50 degrees out here!

 A little later in the day the sunshine finally did arrive and we ventured out to Sellwood.  We stopped at the new running shoe store in the neighborhood, and Grady helped me shop by trying on every pair of shoes that I did.  Afterwards, we went to Sellwood Park where Grady continued to practice his new ladder climbing skills.

After nap, we made trip to catch Grady's favorite band at my favorite Portland pizza shop:  The Alphabeticians had a 4:30p show at Mississippi Pizza in North Portland.  Here is Grady enjoying the music while chowing down on some delicious pizza with a huge bottle of apple juice.  Since his chair was a little low and the juice bottle so big, he needed some assistance every time he wanted a drink:  "Daddy help you, juice!"

After the show, we headed straight to the Children's Museum for a special nighttime event that we received some free tickets for.  I had only been there once before but Grady knows it like the back of his hand and led me through all of his favorite spots.

In the miniature children's theater.

Look at the size of that Lite Brite!

Doing a little hydrodynamic research.

Hard at work transferring and funneling water.

Grady's first rock wall!

What a busy Saturday!  It was up and at 'em on Sunday morning for a special Earth Day event at the preschool house of Grady's daycare.  I had a fun time operating some power tools with the other dads in helping to build a couple of new garden boxes in addition to doing some gardening.  Grady had a fun time hanging out with his friends as well as helping with weeding.

Meticulously weeding.

Enjoying a refreshing popsicle!

We both needed a good cleaning-up after spending the morning working outside.  Grady is fully aware of how cute he looks when donning one of his fancy towels post bath, and this time he specifically asked to show Clara.

Show Clara!

The rest of the Sunday afternoon was spent relaxing at home - we were pooped!  But between the beautiful weather and our busy schedule it was a really fun weekend for both of us.