catch up on school, field trip, father's day

So, I realized I have been a slacker on my blog. We had Austin's last day of preschool. We went to a park and the kids sang for all of us. Austin hid behind his Mickey Mouse the whole time, but I do love how he is just his own person.Austin with his teacher, Miss Connie.
Austin is such a fun, sensitive, happy little guy. He always makes us laugh. I had taken Talia's clothes off to feed her dinner that night and Austin put on her clothes and started dancing around in them.
Isabelle got an award at school for telling the truth.
We went on a walking tour of Portland. It was fun to learn more about "Stumptown" or "Mudtown", as they used to call it.

These are "Benson Bubblers." The main guy who logged in Portland, way back, put these in so he wouldn't have drunk employees. I think they are fun, constantly bubbling.
There are lots of brass animals around downtown Portland.They used to paint all of the buildings white, to make it brighter and sunnier. Now many are reflective, to do the same thing.There are words in the bricks around on the sidewalks. The kids got to do some rubbings of the phrases around town.In the early 1900's it was not in to have brick showing on buildings, so they covered the buildings in iron and made beautiful designs. Why don't we have style like this now?
Our tour guide gave all the kids magnets so they could tell which buildings were covered in metal and which ones weren't.We saw some fun fountains. (At this point the kids were getting pretty tired.)This is the famous "Portlandia" statue. I guess she was only put in, in the 1980's. She is suppose to be welcoming visitors to Portland. I think it looks more like she is about to pick up this onion ring from across the street....

Now, Father's Day

First, we woke Rob up with breakfast in bed and presents.

That night for dinner, I did something I almost thought I would never do: I cooked Salmon.
Rob requested it for his Father's Day dinner, so what could I do? So, I made salmon, artichoke, biscuits, and rice.
The salmon wasn't the best, but I tried another recipe the next night and it was way better! For dessert, Talia will model the French Silk Pie I made.She is in chocolate dreamland. It was that good. I loved pairing it with strawberries as well. :)