Day After

Dear Liza,

I hope you and your family had a wonderful, fun Thanksgiving filled with new experiences and friends.

I enjoyed being with Auntie Bridgett’s family. The small children are fun to be with until their inevitable melt downs around 5:00. Maddie and Jaxson, Aya, Kion, and Owen were good company, mostly. They shared toys, helped set tables and kept us grown ups out of trouble.

A new (to me) board game called Kids on Stage was a great hit. You roll dice, move pieces and draw cards. Each card gives you something you need to act out… a snake, a wristwatch, kicking a ball. It was perfect for the 18 months to 5 years old range of our crowd.

The small people’s parents are fun, too. Yukie works for Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and is always asking questions that make me ask myself questions, which is a very nice thing. Yesterday she asked me what I had learned about First Nations people in Portland while researching for my story, and I had to admit I didn’t know much. “Wouldn’t that be an interesting layer?” She asked. Well, of course it would be! Back to the Oregon Historical Society. Thanks, Yukie!

Michael, whose house we were at, has done wonderful work in his back yard. The yard faces a steep ravine, so we had always been a little nervous having the small people out there. But this year, with the kids being a bit bigger and a new set of paving stones and a nice fence, it was much less nerve-wracking. Auntie Bridgett was a very good kid watcher.