A visit to Portland

We went for a long weekend to visit Frank's Dad and help out a bit around the house.

I took an obligatory picture of the Portland Airport Carpet.

Frank knew going in that he would have a few projects to do: his dad had mentioned wanting to power wash the driveway and he has been slowly going through things after Janice's death so we knew there were some jobs around that we would need to do.  I went in assuming that my main function would be to cook. Perhaps make some freezer meals for after we leave and also just feed everyone. As anyone who knows me knows, cooking is not my favorite.  But I was willing to sacrifice for a few days. HA!

I ended up spending a good deal of time going through and organizing pictures. I actually love looking at old pictures so this was not a problem.  The only thing I don't love is the occasional bug I would come across or be surprised by.  ugh.  I didn't do a serious organization of the photos but sorted them into new boxes for Janice's sisters and daughter to go through to take what they want.  I also left with a stack of pictures.
I found old letters and other cool things.  Here are a few that I loved:

Janice's old bible with an inscription from her Lutheran Sunday School teacher.

Janice's childhood glasses (I think? Could be someone else's I suppose). 

They were still in perfect condition and in a cute case. Look how small they are!

Locks of Janice's hair from when she was a child!

Old report cards. Janice was a great student!

Here is a gift from Frank to his parents on their "silver" anniversary.

It is a very Frank sort of gift.

Looks like a broken bracelet but it was real silver. HA! Gave me a good laugh.

These looked handy and I was amazed they had been saved all these years.

I should have tried them out...

There were a number of diaries that belonged to Janice.

I didn't read them all but I got a kick out of one from when she was young that said nearly the same thing every single day: Went to school. Had fun. Played with Lorraine.

Frank's dad said he wanted to get his garage cleaned out a bit and to bring his deep freeze into the house rather than keeping it out in the garage where it is harder for him to get to. The only thing standing in the way was the old family organ which was in the spot where the freezer should go. We called some junk places and looked online at the likelihood of being able to give the organ away and it wasn't looking good. At one point grandaddy said that he didn't want to pay someone to haul it away as he would rather take a sledge hammer to  the thing. Well, my husband is a man of action, so within minutes he had that organ in the yard and was attacking it with said sledge hammer.

We got the freezer unloaded, moved and reloaded without too much difficulty. We cleaned out a bunch of stuff from the garage so grandaddy could walk through more easily.  Frank went up to the neighbor who was out working in his garage and managed to give him several tools, some storage shelves and a table. He was happy and so were we!

After all of the cleaning out we decided to take a trip to the dump rather than have grandaddy try to slowly add this pile of stuff to his weekly trash (we did have the remains of an organ after all and Portland's trash bins are super small). That turned out to be a really good idea and it only cost us like $25 to haul away a car full of stuff.  I do have some guilt over just throwing stuff away so I was glad to see that we could divide stuff into recycling piles and they also have workers there going through and pulling out obvious recyclables. We also made a trip to DI.

We did some cooking but also ordered pizza one night so that was nice. Frank made two pies: blueberry and fresh peach pie. I made the guts and he is in charge of the crust. They were both super tasty.  I made a roast one day and a meatloaf with real mashed potatoes...but I can't remember now what else I made. I didn't slave constantly in the kitchen like I had imagined but I did cook quite a bit. Frank's dad didn't really want any freezer meals so that saved me a bit.

The pie tasted better than it looks in this picture:

Frank and I ate SO BAD the whole time. Sweets and bread and pie and ice cream (two trips to Dairy Queen!).  I was saying to Frank's dad that I promise we don't usually eat this bad...he was skeptical. I don't know what overcame us, honestly, but we ate like fiends the whole time.

Diana, Frank's sister, was out of town while we were there so we didn't get to see her but we will just have to make another trip out soon to see everyone!