The Saturday Market

On Saturdays in the Spring and Summer by the Willamette River, which runs through Portland seperating the East (where we are) from the West (where downtown Portland is), there is a sort of arts and crafts festival, where people come together to sell baby slings, rocks painted to look like Oregon landmarks and homemade didgeridoos.

There's also festival foods, so Swedish and Boo each had their first taste of Elephant Ears. The wetnaps afterward were also a huge hit.

Anyway, we had a "Portland Moment," which I captured on our Flip and will share with you now.




If you're having trouble soaking all of that in, I'll explain that clip. It is a man riding in circles on a unicycle playing the bagpipes. Of course, he is wearing what can only be called a "Cargo Kilt" and a t-shirt that says "Keep Portland Weird." This sort of thing is called a "Portland Moment."

Another example of a Portland Moment is when we realized that one of the Boo's male teachers is named "Thimble."

Hearing that someone is named "Thimble" always leads to the following sort of conversation:

Me: Thimble?
Other person: Yes.
Me: Really? Thimble?
Other person: Yes. Thimble.
Me: Like, Thimble. As in the thimble thing?
Other person: THIMBLE. Yes.
Me: Wow. Thimble. Thhhhhimble. Thimble. Thim. Bull. Thimble.

That last little bit is my repeating the word over and over again in different ways to make my brain understand the fact that there is a human being named Thimble. Anyway, I met Thimble and he's a good guy and I think his name might suit him, but that may just be because he jumped in front of a huge needle to save me from being poked.

Anyway, Shelton gets bored while shopping for didgeridoos, so she likes to run and play in the park:

And Hughston likes to try to figure out why anyone would voluntarily listen to bagpipe music:


And I try to compose a lovely picture with cherry blossoms in the foreground and young people laying around enjoying their youngness in the fuzzy background and it turns out almost perfect except I didn't notice one little twig hanging down that blocks the girl sitting up and ruins the whole shot.