A Nailbitingly Divine Yodeller

We bought some cherries and apricots at a roadside stand in western Montana. Mostly we didn’t eat them in the car, but when we did, I asked Andy to hand me the pits and stems for disposal.

Andy: Don’t throw my pits away!

Me: No? What would you like me to do with them?

Andy: Keep them! Until we get home. I mean our original home. I want to use them for an art project. I’m keeping everything I find in nature or in food for an art project.

Me: I’m not going to keep them until we get home. They would get all grody.

Andy: That’s what I need! I’m going to make a picture of a dead body. So I need grody things!

We spent most of Wednesday just seeing the Portland sights.

Andy fancied up one of the beaver statues with a dinosaur mask he had gotten at the zoo the previous day. I hope Jay will do a blog post about the zoo visit; I can’t, since I didn’t get to go. Stupid conference.

I was determined to drag the whole family to Mill Ends Park, the smallest park in the world. And here we are — standing behind it.

Playing in the fountain. Fortunately he didn’t get soaked, since we had all the extra clothes packed away in the car.

Gelato break across the street from Powell’s, where Andy got four new books: two about Batman, one about Spider-Man, and one about the Transformers. He also picked out one for Addison — about bees, although he’s been freaking about bees this entire trip, to the point of not wanting to go anywhere that we might see flowers.

Andy accompanied me to the Oregon Convention Center on the first day of my conference. He didn’t stay for any of the programs (Grandma Cheryl took him back to the hotel on the Max), though he claimed they wouldn’t be boring for him.

Andy and Grandma Cheryl accompanied me to the AALL Family Social Hour, held at the Oregon Children’s Museum.  They should have called it the AALL Child Labor Camp.

The first thing to greet us inside the Children’s Museum was an alligator (or possibly crocodile) in need of dental work.

The next thing we saw was plumbing in need of repair. The place was falling apart, I tell ya!

Andy thought he’d better check out Grandma Cheryl’s heart, just in case.

Then we came across an area that required major construction work. (At least the museum provided the shovels and hard hats.)

Next Andy had to cook the dinner, which he didn’t even get to eat.

A little civil engineering!

And finally, the chance to “relax” by writing, directing, and starring in a play to entertain the parent class!

Once again we got the honor of being part of a family reunion, one week it was Oregon reunion, this time it was the Wall Walla Washington family.

I (Jay) took the picture to capture the moment.

Andy: Have you ever read Moosestache?

Server at the Melting Pot in Portland: No, I never have.

Andy: Well, maybe you could come to my house. I live far away, in Minnesota. My house is at [tells the number but not the street or city]. You could come over and…do you have a dad?

Server: Yep.

Andy: Well then you’d have to ask your dad if it’s okay for you to come over for a sleepover. And if he says okay, then you can come over and at bedtime we’ll read Moosestache!

Jay, Andy, and I were walking around downtown Portland, and Jay and I were talking about how we might get to Powell’s bookstore.

Andy: I have a map inside my brain! So just follow me!

The one thing Andy wanted to do on this trip was visit the beach, and I’m happy to say we did it on…what day was it? This is what happens when your blog postings get delayed by trivialities like “conferences.”

Although the forecast claimed temps would be in the 70s (hence the shorts and t-shirt), the wind was strong and the water was freezing.

The sand, however, wasn’t too cold (or too hot). Luckily Grandma Cheryl held onto the bucket and shovel we bought on our earlier (Feb. 2006) visit to the same beach, when the sand was by far the biggest attraction.

The sand was still the biggest attraction, but with one difference from 2 1/2 years ago: this time he played mostly  with wet sand. This wasn’t the freezing ocean water, though; it was the relatively warm water of a stream of runoff water en route to the ocean. The older boy in the photo was methodically building dams to block the water’s path to the ocean — and they worked, for a while. Andy and the younger boy “helped” — or at least mostly didn’t knock down the dams.

After the other boys went on their respective ways, Andy continued moving sand from one place to another for about an hour. He got his first sunburn.

We arrived in Portland on Wednesday, just in time for a family reunion! The whole famn damily was there, as we Osgoods are fond of saying.

Andy giving cousin Addison one of many hugs. Grandma Cheryl has a photo nearly identical to this one.

Nick playing pickle with Zeb and Andy. Andy has shown little interest in baseball until he saw Zeb having all the fun with Nick.

Andy’s second cousin, first cousin once removed, uncle, first cousin, mother, and self.

“Shake your booty!” — Aunt Jenni.

The reunion took place on the eve of Joe & Cheryl’s shared birthday!

The whole famn damily — except photographer Boompa, who took this picture.

The whole famn damily — except photographer Jay, who took this picture.

Some highlights from our only full day at Yellowstone:

Boiling mud pots dot the landscape.

And since our camera doesn’t record smells, we’ll let you infer the aroma from this photo.

Flopsy the earmuff accompanied us for the obligatory viewing of Old Faithful.

Snow in July! Andy lobbed snowballs at me and at Jay — guess which one of us was safely in the car.

Andy pretending to be the bear that scratched the bark off this tree. We saw several real bears too, but fortunately I don’t have any pictures of Andy with a bear.