Busy Saturday

As Miss Lily here is explaining, Sunday was a very quiet day around the Fire Direction Center. We slept in, watched the Tour, did some minor housework and then Mojo and Peeper went to the pool while Daddy napped and mowed the lawn. Dinner. Bedtime. Mojo and I played strip-dominoes (we have the rules, in case anyone's interested...) and then off to la-la land.

Ah, but Saturday!

Saturday was another country heard from.

First, we went to see Millicent & Floyd's 1899 House. If you have been following their great blog Different Dirt you know that they are pulling their beautiful old Victorian back together after a disastrous fire.

Well, here it is. Note the sideyard is looking summer-lush. When we visited in February things looked a lot less promising. But everything except the back yard is looking great in July

Peeper had a lot of trouble using the porta-loo, even after we described to him that this was the restoration crew's way of really restoring the 1899 House to 1899, complete with period plumbing.

Here's the back of the house. The fire started here, and this exterior wall was the most badly damaged. Look closely at the lovely shingle work. The restoration is going to match the original almost exactly.

I don't remember where we heard this - Millicent may have told us - but the granite basement walls? Came to Portland as sailing ship ballast (granite is NOT found in Oregon west of the Blue Mountains or north of the Klamaths).

Here's the east front, very little damaged in the fire. Just to give you an idea of the original grace of the house.

From there, we went to Heidi's for an adoptive-family get together. This is Heidi of the "Village" in Kelli's Waiting for Sprout. She has a lovely little home near the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Portland. We foregathered there to meet the other parents in our original adoption travel group, eat and talk.

Kelli herself was an object of great fascination for the Peep. I should note that all the following pictures are his. He did a great job with the camera, but his real interest was Kelli. When I downloaded the pictures I found - actual count - fourteen pictures of Kelli. Most looked just like this.

Except this one. I like the expressive hands.

Portrait of the Artist as a Rude Boy. Not sure what the fingers were doing and I'm not sure I want to know.

Heidi's backyard with part of the little group. Ironically, this being our first travel group get-together, about half the group has found alternatives to standard China adoption through the Special Needs/Waiting Child lists.

Peep the auteur. Nice atmosphere shot of Heidi's backyard. I should note that her baby room (linked to her name above through Kelli's posting at WFS) really IS gorgeous, the kind of thing we'd love to do if we had more time, more money and less Peeper. Beautiful colors, a lovely crib, cute furniture...nice, Heidi!

In fact, her entire house is gracious and inviting. We had a very good time just socializing, and the Peeper was a terrific little boy and very polite. I think that Kelli's delicious marionberry preserves must have had some Ritalin in them or something.

Heidi utterly knocked us out with her cooking. After the outstanding buffet we had her homemade apple pie and ice cream and in this shot the Peep pays tribute to his favorite part of the afternoon.

Although the excitement surrounding the extermination of the yellowjackets in the eaves of the house next door was first-class, too.

Well, there we are. A little blurry, but outstanding job of scrapbook photography by Little "Danny Moder" Pea. Thanks to Heidi for being such a good hostess and to Kelli for being such a femme fatale for one four-year-old.

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Off to work.