our spring trip, post 6: Portland friends

Here are the friends we got to visit in Portland.

First up was the Kurtz family. I hadn't seen Jeff and Christi since college, where Christi and I quickly found we had a mutual appreciation of spastic and cornball humor, and where Jeff and Jason (along with Steve W.) lived together for a semester in a haunted house. It was good to recall those days. J&K are certainly passing the baton of old-fashioned silliness on to their three energetic and hilarious boys. We met at the Spaghetti Factory for lunch, where Max, Caden, and Milo engaged Zoralee in a balloon-swapping game of undeciphered rules. Little Milo evidently takes balloons everywhere he goes. Presch. Then we took some form of public transportation (a trolley on wires?) deeper into town for coffee and to sit a spell in Powell's Books. Portland all the way, baby.

Boo hiss that I didn't get more pics of Cam and Jeff. Tell you what; just look at the little boys and minus out their mother's face. Now combine them into one person and add 25-30 years. Tuh duh - it's Jeff.

(last pic by Jeff)

We then got to spend a couple of hours with Autumn, Rhett, and Mezmur. I went to school with Autumn and Dan too, though we've gotten to know each other much better through blogging than we did sitting a couple rows apart in choir. Mez and Zoralee were just as happy to be in their own individual play worlds, so I didn't catch any good pictures together. But you can see Mez and Rhett in all of their cuteness over at Autumn's blog. Here was one fleeting moment of affection.

Later that evening, we had delicious tortilla soup with Steve, Darla, and baby Annie, along with Dayn, Mandi, and Daylan. Again, not many pictures, but here is Steve showing Z the decorative birds, and Darla being fuzzy because she's managing two wigglers at once.

One of the evening highlights was Steve and Daylan talking about which Wendel Berry books they've read and what they thought of them. Steve got a gleamy dreamy face and went about the house plucking books from shelves, opening them for a few seconds to fully illustrate that in this book, in this exact book, are some amazing words about U.S. involvement in the middle east wars or about plant growing being a holy endeavor, or in this collection of stories, we are invited to imagine what true forgiveness might look like. That'll inspire a gal like me to put a Wendel Berry book or two on hold over at the library.

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This trip was for Z and me a tour of sickness - we literally caught a new cold, with symptom variations, at each of the three towns we visited - so we didn't get to see as many of our Portland pals as we'd planned. Huge bummer. There are baby thighs I've yet to squeeze, and papa and mama necks I haven't hugged in so long.

But we hope to be back soon!