Montreal Day #5

We've been out and about in Montreal and having a good time. The weather has cooperated and it has not been too hot, even though yesterday we got caught in a major thunderstorm and had to wait it out at a bus stop for about 15 minutes before we could sprint to the Metro stop!

A la metro

Asleep. I took this photo to show his bruised lower lip. He hit the coffee table hard yesterday and his lip was humongous...now it's just purple in the middle :)

Montreal has two large open-air markets. One of them is called Jean-Talon and we went yesterday, ate some crepes and got some delicious fresh fruit (strawberries and nectarines).

O.J.

We got the kids a bottle of orange juice to share at the market yesterday. Once they were almost finished, Dae told them not to worry, that he would buy them another one. I piped in and told them that one bottle was probably enough. Leelee proceeded to look at the two of us and say "Baba is taller than you, so he knows". Ha! (Dae insisted I document this statement in the blog!)

I kept reading so many reviews about Olive + Gormando restaraunt. It's just around the corner from our apartment so we went there on Wednesday and there was a huge line so we came back today and there was again a huge line. So we put our names in and went back to relax for half an hour at our place, then came back and got seated right away. The sandwiches were delicious, as were the baked goods, soup, salad and drinks.

Looking in at Leelee at our table

Waiting patiently for food. Olin's chewing on one of our numbers.

Constantly packed with a line out the door. You can see Dae in the pastry line on the right

We took a bike ride along the old Port near our house. It's a 2-person peddler with a space in the front for kids with buckles. Perfect! Dae and I were pretty much tuckered out after 20 minutes of peddling. Ha! The kids loved it.

The view from up front

This is a photo of our apartment building below. Our unit occupies the second story. The owner has a cool photo online of the building from 100 years ago - the building was/is called Maison de Berthelet. There is an ice cream shop called Muki on the first floor which is both a blessing and curse! (Leelee asks for ice cream every time we approach our building. Fortunately, the ice cream there is really good quality and an interesting note: the regular ice cream costs $3 per scoop while the pistachio costs $6 per scoop! The ice cream worker said it was something about the ingredients? Anyway, Pistachio is always my favorite but I think for double the price I will stick with chocolate :)

Bonsecours Market. A pretty building along the Old Port.

Out like a light.

Montreal: Day #3

It would not be an international Lee trip if somebody did not get sick (see posts from Korea and China, June 2010). Last Friday Leelee threw up at Nanny's house, but nobody else had caught the bug. Olin apparently was saving his nausea for plane ride #1 on Tuesday, from Pasco to Minneapolis, where he was crying and upset until he threw up in the plane upon landing, all over his outfit and into Dae's cupped hands. So he arrived in Minnesota naked except for a diaper and we had to scour the Minneapolis airport mall for a suitable outfit for the poor little guy. Thankfully he fell asleep during the 3 hour layover and woke up, crabby, for flight #2 from Minneapolis to Montreal. That night and the next day the entire family was making multiple trips to the bathroom. Yikes. I'd reckon that as a family unit we've probably lost a cumulative 10 pounds, give or take a pound.

I'm happy to report it's Day #3 and we're recovering. Meanwhile, Montreal is a neat city. All French speaking, or I'd say 90%, and really cool old-time architecture. I didn't realize Montreal was founded in the 1600's.

At the Old Port (Port Vieux)

Rue St. Paul Ouest, home of tons of cute shops and restaurants.

Place Jacques-Cartier

Notre Dame (of Montreal)

Amphi-bus! Lots of fun.

Bubble tea in Chinatown

Schwartz's Deli in Plateau Mont-Royal. Absolutely, positively delicious smoked meat!

Twins at Schwartz's

Nutella faces

Unicycler at the Science Center

Fun at the science center

Measuring Olin's brain activity

Can you see the bubble surrounding them?

A comfy seat of nails

Early Birthday

Kelly treated me to an early birthday celebration consisting of "Happy Hour" at her neighbor's house on the river (with a gorgeous view), apps, drinks and gifts. It was really nice.

Love this necklace. There is a Faith charm, each of the boys' birth stones, a wine glass (hehe) and an airplane for our love of travel.

We got to go to the Richland Farmers' Market yesterday since I didn't work. The kids enjoyed putting the white raspberries on their fingertips and Olin was totally grubbing on the strawberries.

Leelee likes to color and now does a very good job of drawing within the lines.

Leelee sometimes says things I'd rather him not say, like "I don't like her. Her face doesn't look good". Or "that house doesn't look good".  Yesterday he told me "Mom, when you smile, your face looks good". ha! I'll take it. As opposed to when I don't smile, I guess...

Jumper

Five days later and he's doing running jumps off the diving board! All he needed was a little encouragement from some friends:

These kids are such little rascals sometimes. What's it take to get a kid to eat the peels?

Dae Turns 37

Happy Birthday to Dae who turned 37 on Saturday!!! Or, as Leelee informed his cousins "My mom said it's my dad's birthday today! He's 65."

We had a jam-packed weekend in Portland. Ev and Jeff babysat for us quite a bit on Saturday while we  toured the Street of Dreams (dreamy!) and went to a Timbers game that night (we won 2-1!). During the day we visited the Port of Portland's annual event where Ev was volunteering, had Korean take-out dinner and of course a BR cake.

Port of Portland:

Coin-making with the kids' initials

Timbers!!!

This next video showcases how Olin kicks up his leg during readings of the Pig & Pancake book:

This next video is Leelee jumping off the diving board last week at swim lessons. He makes a cute little yell while he's jumping.

Emerging from the slide...

New House (#2)

We have a new new house! haha! In the last 24 hours, I walked through this new listing, liked it a lot, had Dae come back and walk through it later on yesterday, he loved it, we put in an offer last night (along with two other people - eek) and got the house today! Sooooo excited!

So, behind our change of heart: This house is quite a bit bigger than the 'old' new house (4200 square feet vs. 2700), has a basement area which is a mother-in-law area (non-scary basement, bedroom and full bath), 4 other bedrooms upstairs which are all bigger than the old house, located on a cul-de-sac, and about 1/2 block from the bike bath. The owners are the nicest people and are parents of two people I went to high school with. They are building a house in Pasco but construction has yet to start, so what I think we're going to do is rent the house back to them for about 6 months while they finish construction. Ends up a win-win since we are in a contract until February anyway, and we'd have to break our lease if we wanted out earlier.

Anyway, it's been a whirlwind and we still have to get out of our other house. We will end up losing our earnest money (and a lot of time!) but I think we know, without a doubt, that this new house is the one.

And some other photos from the past couple days:

He had set up this little barricade for his nap.
I didn't even know he was behind it until I looked :)

A little burger shack for dinner.