Jack Archives - Ellie Clements

Pictures from Q2 2020

The second quarter of 2020 has been… different! We’ve been in lockdown for most of it because of COVID-19, so we haven’t had much opportunity to get out and do much.

We’ve been making the most of our time at home though. Both Ellie and Jack have helped me to till and reseed the lawn, Ellie has been busy doing remote learning, and we’ve ventured out of the house a handful of times.

The end of 2019 and into 2020

Once again, I’ve fallen behind with putting Ellie’s pictures online, so enjoy this little selection from late 2019 and early 2020.

Christmas 2019

For Christmas this year, Ellie got a nice little array of gifts.

She had asked for lots of books, since she’s really getting into chapter books at school.

Hands down her favourite gift was something that Santa got for her. Ever since going hiking with Daddy, she’s wanted a hiking backpack with a bladder in it for drinking water on the go. Well, Santa delivered and Ellie was over the moon.

Our first family camping trip

This summer, we finally had the equipment and the support to do what we’ve wanted to do since moving to Portland: go camping.

We were invited by some friends to go car camping with a whole bunch of families, which sounded ideal because there would be plenty of confident hands assisting us, and lots of other children for the kids to play with.

So, off we went. We went to Barview Jetty Campground on the Oregon coast, which was flush with the amenities that would make Martina in particular comfortable, such as running water, flush toilets and hot showers.

A surprise in the trunk

After leaving my trunk open to take some things inside, I came back in to find these two fools hiding out in my trunk!

Lilac Days

We had heard about this small lilac garden in Washington, about an hour away from us, that had the most beautiful display of lilacs, so we took a trip up to see them and we weren’t disappointed.

The kids humoured us as us adults walked around, but they made the most of it too, and enjoyed smelling the lilacs, not to mention that we got some adorable pictures of the kids.

Visiting the Cherry Blossoms in Portland

We live in the PNW because we love everything about it, and we live that reality out. At every opportunity, we’re out seeing all of the beautiful sites around us.

For whatever reason, in the first two springs here, we didn’t get a chance to make it down to Tom McCall Waterfront Park to see the cherry blossom trees blooming in early spring, but we didn’t make that mistake this year.

We have a lot of cherry blossom trees here in Portland and they’re just a beautiful adornment to an already beautiful city.

Building a snowman up on Mt Hood

Since we went up to Mt Hood a few times this winter to go sledding and tubing, we also took the opportunity to build ourselves a snowman. It was actually quite hard to build, because the snow was very dry and pwdery, so it didn’t hold together too well (which is why he looks so emaciated!).

Monster Jam [VIDEO]

Ever since Jack has been on the scene, the interest in monster trucks in our house has gone through the roof.

So to treat the kids, we took them to see Monster Jam at the Moda Center. The kids definitely needed their ear protection (the sound really reverberates inside the arena), but they had a great time watching them do their tricks.

Family pictures 2018

After we discovered Jess and Jon at Cascade Photography last year and fell in love with the great job they did on our family photos last year, we asked them to come back and do some more photos for us this year.

Fall is a perfect time for family photos in Portland because the leaves are beautiful and colourful and of course we can include those pictures on our Christmas cards.