The perfect tree, the perfect day.

We went on the big tree hunt today. Found a lovely little farm out toward Estacada. The house is just lovely now. Our first Christmas in the new house.

Disney weekend!

We decided to surprise the kids this fall with a family trip to the
Magic Kingdom, so we found some good deals and cashed in some airline
miles and surprised them after school Thursday. It's been a great trip
so far. More soon.

Fooling around at OMSI

Well, Nigel and I were going to go see a movie this afternoon while
the girls were in Salem. But after we checked out the movies and
trailers online, the best option was Sea Monsters at OMSI's Omnimax
theater. It was pretty great.

On the way out, we stopped in the science playground, and Nigel
spotted this air-tube thing and exclaimed "That's the one I've been
talking about for YEARS!"

So we played.

Brilliance is simple

Nigel drew this today and titled it. If a picture speaks a thousand
words, then I have already said too much. It speaks volumes alone.

Last weekend of summer

We spent our last weekend of summer lazily visiting friends and family. Isaac and I got away for a night together to the sleepy town of McMinnville, very fun. Lily caught up with her Salem friends. Here's a picture of Lily and Shanti climbing trees. We later went to the Hixson home for dinner with her other friends, Telicia, Eva and Ziggy. A nice weekend and a great way to welcome fall.

10th Anniversary

A decade has now come and gone since we said "I do." They have been 10 amazing years, and it's hard to imagine how the next 10 could possibly be as much fun. A little luck and a lot of love have helped make this a great marriage and friendship. We celebrated by going out for a fantastic greek dinner down the street. A bottle of wine and lots of olive oil later, we sat at our little candlelit table feeling warm and fuzzy and every bit as giddy as we did September 19, 1997. Cheers.

Morning walk with the boy

Went to get coffee with Nigel this morning. He asked if I wanted to go
for a run, so we got our shoes on and coats and hit the sidewalk.
Grand Central was bustling as usual, and we had coffee, and he ate a
chocolate croissant. On the way back, we stopped by a free table of
stuff from somebody's garage sale, and he got a little red plastic
fire boat, which propelled itself noisily home through the air. A good
walk, to be sure.

Sent from my iPhone

Breakfast at Bob's Red Mill

We all piled in the Beetle this morning and headed to Milwaukie,
Oregon (5 minutes from Sellwood) for breakfast at the world famous
Bob's Red Mill (http://www.bobsredmill.com/).

The life insurance sign was a weird and cool thing to see. My dad
used to be an organic farmer who grew oats and sold them wholesale to
food co-ops. Now he is a Farmers agent selling life insurance. I'm
sure the folks at Bob's have no idea how uncannily relevant their ad
slogan is.

Check out the mill, mill around the store, sow your interest in
healthy foods, and then reap the benefits with a hot breakfast of
buckwheat pancakes, eggs, steel cut oatmeal, multi-grain waffles,
spelt biscuits.Good times. A gem of a find.

Big shoes to fill

Lily thought she should try on her uncle's size 16 shoes. Nice look Drizella.

Tape Faces!

Kids and I had a little after-dinner fun with a roll of scotch tape. We even scared ourselves!

rock climbing to beat the heat

It's 101 degrees out today, but not in here. The kids are taking a rock climbing class this summer at REI downtown, and today's their very first day. Here, Lily's making it to the top of the wall and ringing the bell on her first try! She's quite good at it, cause she's built so long and strong.

Cool night

Lovely picture of the city tonight. Stopped off my bike on the way home to cool my feet. It may be a toxic river, but it's a pretty river.

Waiting for the Hawthorne Bridge

The bridge is up. Lovely day to look over the river, though.

Best shots from Canada

Here's a Flickr slideshow of some of the best shots of our 8-day sojourn to Vernon B.C. and points along the way. Enjoy!

Nigel learns to RIDE!

Well, he's been playing with it for a few weeks, but tonight cemented the deal, and our Nigelboy finally locked in the ultimate kid-skill of learning to ride a bike: starting, riding, and stopping on his own. He rode two blocks without stopping, and our camera phones were there to capture it LIVE and bring it to YOU!

Portland beach

Digging for stuff on the Sellwood beach.

Green bags in the grocery stores

So this Canadian Superstore has this green shopping cab initiative. For 99 cents, you can buy this bag made of recycled pop bottles and reduce the number of plastic bags going into the landfills. Great idea.

Canadian Fred Meyer

Canada breakfast

We're out for breakfast in Vernon, B.C. Nigel likes his orange juice.

Chicago Trippin!

Elissa and I cashed in some Alaska Air miles to go back to Chicago for a couple of days last week, to see Vanessa's play (directed by Paul Holmquist) called The Constant Wife. We had a great whirlwind time, eating Chicago pizza, walking around, seeing Vanessa's studio, and hanging out.

Four kids at AC Gilbert

We recently had a blast of a day with our nephews. First pancakes and syrup at Busick Court -- then workin' off the sugar at the AC Gilbert Discovery Village!

Trip to Alaska - DAY 1

Well, sports fans, after two years of Isaac traveling north on his own, the entire szyfam clan made it to Alaska last night to catch a bit of the northern wind and see the excitement around Anchorage in the week leading up to the Iditarod (The Last Great Race).

Alaska trip 2/27/07 8:50 PM

Monday, we picked up Lily early from her school in Salem, and then we raced up to Portland to attend the open house for their new elementary in Sellwood neighborhood. You'll see photos of that. Then we took the 9:25 direct flight from Portland to Anchorage, and all slept in to catch up from the late night of transit.

I worked downtown today at the office, while Elissa and the kids explored the finer points of the downtown, including the Imaginarium (which is much like our A.C. Gilbert Discovery Village in Salem), and the frozen pond rink next to the performing arts center downtown. Also, a carnival down by the waterfront that was apparently deserted (even Alaskans don't like to ride ferris wheels when it's 4 degrees Fahrenheit outside).

We had dinner at the Glacier Brew House with our friend Cory and then headed back to the hotel to warm up and turn in. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. One fish two fish frozen fish blue fish.

Click the picture above to view the album of photos from today-

Wednesday: Isaac worked. Kids and Elissa spent most of the day getting lost in Anchorage. At day's end, with kids tired, Mom bought a durable city map and took the kids to a movie. Enough site-seeing! Sushi for dinner with Isaac was a real treat. Sushi in Alaska is FRESH.

Thursday: Cruised the city with new map in hand. Had breakfast at the Captain Cook Hotel. They offered the kids reindeer sausage, but the smart children declined, knowing that would surely put them on Santa's naughty list. Isaac took the family to the Moose's Tooth Pizza. It was the best pizza and beer we've had in a long time. The kids loved the pesto pizza with kalamata olives and artichoke. Mmmm. After that we drove to Girdwood, a lovely ski resort about an hour south of Anchorage. Hot air balloons were just lifting off over the ski lifts and frozen inlet. Amazing. From Girdwood it was back to Anchorage for dinner with some nice friends of Isaac's. We had a lovely dinner and it was nice to hang with the locals!

Friday: The kids and I drove over to the museum, but when we got in we were informed that the generators were out so it was closed. It was -15 with windchill, so we dashed in a little boutique across the street where Lily found a great little outfit for the Musher's Banquet. Isaac and Lily were honored to attend the Musher's Banquet, which is the big gathering the night before the Iditarod start. All the mushers and their families, as well as race sponsors, gather together and the mushers are given their race numbers. The better you did last year, the better your positioning to get a good number. Lily and Isaac were seated at the table with the GCI executives and David Monson-the husband of Susan Butcher. Susan was the second woman to win the Iditarod, and went on to win it 3 more times in her career. She died of leukemia last year, and many of the Iditarod ceremonies this year were dedicated in her honor. Her young daughter rode the first sled out of the starting line to the cheers of thousands the following morning. Being in Alaska this year, you realize just how much Susan will be missed up there.

Saturday: Race day! We woke up to snow blanketing the streets of Anchorage and 1200-1500 barking dogs. Really incredible. Isaac's friend Jim scored us some all-access passes so we could go right up to the dogs and mushers and see how they were preparing. Everything was fenced off for the safety of the mushers/animals. We felt very lucky and special. We were right there by the dogs as they yelped and jumped, excited to get going! There were trailers packed with dogs and gear, and thousands of people dressed in every type of dead animal you can imagine trying to stay warm. I myself was wishing I had brought my flask. Hot cocoa is cold in 30 seconds out there- at least alcohol doesn't freeze.

After the race started, we headed up north a couple of hours to a lake where Isaac's friends PJ and Jeff live. They live on a tiny island (3 houses on it,) and we had a great dinner with friends. On the way back across the lake (yes, you drive ON the lake,) we spun out and wrecked our rental Chevy Malibu (no great loss....sorry Chevy fans.) So we missed our plane and had to stay at PJ's for the night.

Sunday: Isaac headed up 75 miles north of the lake on a snowmobile with about 100 other GCI folks and telecom execs to see the mushers come through during the night up the frozen lake. The kids and I borrowed PJ's car and headed back to Anchorage. Found out we couldn't fly home until Tuesday! Well....more fun for us!

Monday/Tueday: Spend both of these days lounging a bit. Saw a movie, ordered room service, shopped, swam at the pool downstairs. Not a bad life. Who wants to live in a 4 star hotel with Elissa for the rest of their life? Any takers?

In summary, we had a great, COLD, exciting trip. Saw 3 bald eagles, 1500 sled dogs, 14 moose, and lots of ice! Pretty fun. I'd do it again anytime.

--Elissa

Silly Cousins

We got to keep Christa and Mike's boys, Spencer (6) and Hayden (3) for the weekend. Silliness ensued. We made up 4 beds in the living room and heard giggling out there until 11pm. The next day we did breakfast out, the children's museum, errands AND Costco with the 4 kids! Exhausting but fun!

We're moving!

Yep, back to Portland for the Szymanczyk family. Salem has been a great town for the past 4 years, and we've made some great new friends here and had amazing times with Grandma and Grandpa, but the city beckons us home.

We are buying a great little house in SE Portland in the Sellwood neighborhood, and move in toward the end of April. Here is a shot of Lily dancing in the new house during the home inspection. We're buying it from a fantastic family that is picking up and moving back to Maine to be near family. The whole process has been lovely, and we feel very lucky to say the least. Come May, we welcome you all to come by for a visit. Stay an hour, stay a week! We'll be ready.

Dinner/Breakfast with the Hixson Family

Headed to our friends' house for a great dinner recently, and had so much fun we stayed the night and had breakfast too! Fun, fun! The kids thought it was a real hoot. Here are some of the gang after breakfast. A little dancing, as well as a little musical fun. That's Telicia and Isaac on violin and Todd on guitar. What you can't see is the moms rockin' out.

Christmas in Eugene

We had a great time celebrating the holidays with Isaac's family this year. If you don't know the whole family we have (clockwise from back left:) Isaac's brother Lucien and his fiancee Sara, Lily, Nigel, Elissa, Isaac's sister India, Isaac, Isaac's sister Vanessa and her husband Paul, Nana (Candace's mom Virginia,) and Isaac's parents Mike and Candace.

Nana treated us all to a great italian meal out, then we all returned for gifts and merry-making. This is the whole gang, nobody missing. This only happens every couple of years, so we have to capture the moment!

Fast dog at the frisbee park

Here's some old footage I found on my computer while cleaning things off, so I put it together into a mini-movie for all the Thompson fans out there. Leave a comment and let us know what you think!