Fun Destinations

Tonight the girls and I set out on an adventure into PDX east side, in search of a new place for us to "chill." We love discovering new places to eat and play, and it seems the combinations are few and far between. Tonight we tried out a place called Old Wives' Tales, which touted good Portland style cuisine and a separate place for children to run and play. It was just the three of us so we decided it would be worth the venture across town to scope it out. When we arrived, the girls plunged headlong into the brightly painted "kid room" squealing with delight. As I sat and looked over the menu, which was pages and pages full of variety and promise, I was encouraged that we might have made a good discovery. As is often the case with new places that offer 406 menu options, it takes me a little time to choose, but the girls ordered their "natural turkey franks," "slice of applewood smoked bacon" and "gluten-free plain brown basmati rice" with hardly any deliberation and then disappeared back into the play area with their new found friends. When our server next appeared (to deliver their meals), he promised to return in just a moment to take my order. The girls quickly ate their dinner while discussing their adventures and ran off again. As I sat watching my server take orders, seat customers, and clear tables I wondered if the Greek Sandwich I hoped to order would be worth the wait. The girls came back to the table to finish off their meals, and as they put the last bites into their mouths, our server appeared unceremoniously offering that he was ready to take my order…. Boy! I am still wondering if that Greek Sandwich was all it promised to be.

Finding a healthy combination of kid friendly environment, good food and service worth paying for can be a tall order. I have been working on a list for a couple years and as you might agree, It seems pretty short still. Please feel free to use what I have found and PLEASE!, let me know what I am missing.


View Kid Friendly Places to Eat and Play in a larger map

The husband said "What?"

I heard a speaker once say that she blogs because if she didn’t the weight of her words would crush her husband! She said many more and wonderful things that day, but for some reason that statement stuck with me (anyone who knows me is saying to themselves right now, “imagine that!”) I am a full time wife/mom/educator/character coach/social calendar coordinator/...and often more. I have chosen those things with delight and commitment. I am beginning to realize that as those things blend and collide, so do my thoughts - most remaining twisted wreckage until the days end.

I don’t delude myself into thinking that others are interested in my daily musings but I have come to believe that if I can assemble these ideas somewhere tangible, I might be able to unload the burden of a “complete thought,” without crushing anyone else in the process.

In the spirit of an invented parable - which proposes the word budget for women is two times that of their male counterpart - I named this blog “30000 Words.”

A joke to highlight my point:

A husband looking through the paper came upon a study that said women use more words than men. Excited to prove to his wife that he had been right all along when he accused her of talking too much, he showed her the study results. It read "Men use about 15,000 words per day, but women use 30,000".

The wife thought for a while, then finally she said to her husband "It's because we have to repeat everything we say."

The husband said "What?"