Father's Day Weekend

I had a good, relaxing Father's Day weekend.

Friday afternoon started off with a little shopping (man-style shopping), if you can believe it. We still had a few camping items we needed to purchase, so we headed to a few of the local sports stores. Noah fell asleep on the way up, as he had not taken a nap yet, so I decided to try the GI Joes on McLoughlin first… that wasn't such a good idea. The shelves were rather sparse, and they didn't have any good stuff on sale. Noah woke up because we stopped, and he didn't like sitting in the rush hour traffic as we made our way from McLoughlin down to the Clackamas Promenade. Luckily, I was able to take an old truck driving "smuggler's route" to get around the I-205 parking lot, and we arrived at Gart Sports before the temper of our 2-year-old became fully involved.

Gart Sports is quite large and well stocked, but poorly managed. All of the employees just hang around in the front of the store, BS'ing with each other. I was able to find what I was looking for without their help, but it would have gone quicker if someone was actually manning the camping section. So, the remainder of our garage sale money went towards a 10'x10' canopy, a folding picnic table, and a battery powered lamp. Now we should be stocked up on camping gear for a while…

The next stop was Mervyn's, to find me a pair of cargo pants. Steph had seen them in an add, and thought they would be a good Father's Day gift for me. So, I actually tried on a couple pairs before finding a perfectly sized pair of Levis' cargo pants… and they were on sale, too. I have to admit, they will actually be handy to have when we go camping next weekend.

On the way home, we stopped at Noah's favorite fast food restaurant, Carl's Jr. He likes the "Chicken Stars and French Fries", while Stephanie and I like the not-very-good-for-you Western Bacon Burgers… yummmmmmmm…

Saturday morning I actually got to sleep in until 8:00. I brewed my coffee and sat with Noah and watch cartoons for an hour or so. Then I made my way out to the garage to organize some shelves, dig out and test our camp-stove and our portable grill, and to check out the portable picnic table we had just purchased… I think our new camping gear should all come in very handy.

Once everyone was dressed and ready to venture out, we headed to the local berry stand for a flat of fresh Oregon strawberries… strawberries that are RED all the way through the center like they should be! Once we got home, Steph started in on the most important task, making a Gala Strawberry Pie, while I crushed strawberries and mixed them with pectin and sugar for some freezer jam. Noah and his friend Jake (a 5-year-old neighbor) played with trucks and trains, and munched on fresh berries while we worked. At one point Jake asked what we were making (he is always asking what we're doing) and then declared that he had never had strawberry jam before… what a shame!

I made a pot of baked beans and grilled some kosher hot dogs for dinner, but we weren't able to eat outside because of a rain shower. Things had dried out enough after dinner that we could head outside to play a little baseball with Noey. He uses a big orange plastic bat to try and hit the sponge baseball that we toss to him. He manages to make contact about 25% of the time, but most important, he has fun doing it. At one point he tried on a mitt from Steph's childhood, but he kept wanting to throw the ball with the mitt hand, and usually just ended up tossing the whole thing, mitt and all.

Sunday morning I peeked into Noah's room and was greeted by big blue eyes and a sweet smile. He was playing with "green combine" and "yellow combine" in his bed. I swooped him up and we went out to the kitchen for waffles, Bob the Builder and then Thomas the Tank Engine (our Sunday tradition). I usually make him eat his breakfast before watching these shows, but Steph let him turn on the TV prematurely. So, I ended up sitting on the couch with him and feeding him his waffle. I didn't really mind… it was kind of a nice start to Father's Day.

After church, we had some leftovers followed by strawberry pie… oh was it ever delicious. Noah watched the US Open Golf Championship with me for a while, but then he wanted to go outside and swing his own (plastic) golf clubs. He was so cute out there (and the weather was so nice) that I couldn't resist taking my own pitching wedge and practice ball outside to do some swinging with him. We popped inside periodically to see if Tiger was going to make another comeback… he made a valiant effort, but he couldn't quite catch the eventual winner, Michael Campbell. I have to admit, it was nice to see a relative unknown get the victory.

We headed off for the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes game under sunny skies, but came home under thunder and lightning. The game was fun, the Volcanoes won, but Noah is a little young to really enjoy a baseball game. But, we will have to try again… maybe next year though.

The rain was just starting to come down as we left the ballpark, but we had been watching the light show in the distance for some time. I figured it was far enough east to miss our house in Molalla, but on our way home, a warning announcement came over the radio with a forecast of quarter-sized hail and winds up to 70 mph… and it would hit Molalla at around 7:45. Of course by that time the clock read 7:48, so we figured we weren't going to make it home in time to rescue the dogs from all the thunder. We just hoped that they wouldn't freak out and bust through the fence trying to escape the thunder and lightning. As we ascended into the darkening mass, we were greeted by a beautiful array of lightning strikes -- some vertical strikes in the distance, and some spreading out overhead like the Mississippi delta. We could count 6 or 8 seconds between strike and thunder for most of them, but there were a few that were around 2 seconds… and that made for some loud thunder, even in the pickup.

We made it home to find the dogs safe in the back yard, huddling between the shed and the fence… the best spot they could have possibly chosen. We didn't see any signs of hail or wind damage, but it seemed that the strongest part of the storm was to the east of us, towards the hills. The puppies seemed very pleased to be out of the rain and the noise. I sat in the living room and watched the rest of the light show against a strange, orange sky before making my way into the kitchen for another piece of strawberry pie before bed.

It was a good Father's Day weekend…

Posted by jethro at June 20, 2005 11:19 AM | TrackBack