Oregon Archives - The Ten Thousand Hour Mama

What can I do for gun reform? 5 steps you can take today

March 5, 2018catherinemryan

I haven’t been quiet about commonsense gun reform on this blog. The mass shooting in Parkland, Florida two weeks ago is heartbreaking—and, shockingly, commonplace in our country. It is appalling that there is so little political will to do anything about it. I find myself asking, what can I do for gun reform?

Chances are, you want tighter gun control too, as does most of the country. According to a poll taken on February 20:

97% of Americans want universal background checks
67% of Americans want a nationwide ban on assault-style rifles, like the one used in the Parkland shooting
83% of Americans want a mandatory waiting period to buy a gun

Want to turn these commonsense reforms into reality? Still wondering what you can do for gun reform? Read on. Read more →

Moms’ weekend in Hood River, Oregon: Wine, beer, hiking + laughter

February 26, 2018catherinemryan

One weekend. Eight moms. Two hikes. Plenty of wine and good food. An absurd amount of snacks. Our Moms’ Weekend trip to Hood River added up to a fun, restorative trip we won’t soon forget.

The eight of us have been friends since we were in moms’ group together, when our kids were babies. In some cases, we’ve known each other since our littles were just weeks old. Now that our kids are toddlers, many of us get together every week for homeschool preschool.

We keep in close touch—but even though we hang out often, we seldom get the chance to truly connect. After all, it’s hard to have a sustained conversation when kids are running sprints in the house, asking for more goldfish crackers and getting into fistfights over Paw Patrol toys.

We needed a Moms’ Weekend.

We planned our Moms’ Weekend in Hood River for months, putting it on the calendar so everyone could plan around it. We chose a house in Hood River, decided who would cook which meal and scoped out fun things to do.

When you have eight moms planning a trip, it’s going to be organized—and awesome.

Once we set out, leaving our families behind (except for one mom who brought her second baby—squee!), we also shed responsibilities. We didn’t have schedules or anywhere to be. We had a wide-open Moms’ Weekend in Hood River with some of our closest friends. It was primed to be epic.

Finding your people, finding your place: Coworking and community

January 18, 2018catherinemryan

I have been a paying business member of The Perlene, the all-women social club and feminist coworking space in Portland, Oregon, since last summer. This post was not paid, sponsored or solicited. I wrote it entirely on my own because I think it’s crucial to support women and mothers to find your people wherever they may be.

Last summer, I found myself in a great place in my career as a freelance writer: I was working consistently. I was writing inspiring stories about nonprofits doing great things and kids changing the world through technology. I was publishing stories in magazines and web sites like Cosmo, Real Simple, Scary Mommy and Travel Portland. The problem: I was lonely.

I worked by myself at my home office, and it wasn’t uncommon that I’d get to bedtime and realize I didn’t step outside that day. I talked to folks over the phone but rarely had face-to-face conversations with people outside my family. And I found my productivity dwindling.

I remembered the good feeling I had getting a ton done while working with a colleague at WeWork in Portland. But the community—or lack thereof—was a turnoff. I didn’t feel like I’d find my people among all the tech bros working on four giant monitors.

A little googling led me to a new space that sounded more my speed: The Perlene, Portland’s feminist social club and coworking space. I had the feeling I would find my people here. Read more →

New Year gratitude: Starting 2017 right

January 2, 2018January 5, 2018catherinemryan

Thinking back on 2017, I remember a lot of anxiety, frustration and fear about the direction our country is headed. I was ready to say goodbye to the year with relief—then we spent the final days of the year at the coast. There’s something about the ocean’s rhythms that put me at peace, and apparently the trip gave me a healthy dose of perspective, too. I wanted to welcome 2018, then, with some New Year gratitude.

I pulled together 12 of my favorite moments from 2017 in this recap post. I had such a blast looking through photos and remembering these moments. I kept laughing out loud at my family’s shenanigans.

New Year gratitude exercises are becoming a bit of a tradition around here, apparently. I wrote a post about what I was grateful for in 2016 and listed 50 things I’m grateful for at the end of 2015—it’s wonderful to look back on those posts!

No one can know what the future will bring, but we’ll do our best to make 2018 just as memorable as last year—and to continue New Year gratitude throughout the next 12 months, too. Read more →

Portland’s The Grotto with kids: Outdoor Christmas fun

December 7, 2017December 6, 2017catherinemryan

This week we checked off a Portland bucket list activity: Visiting Portland’s The Grotto with kids. The families from Kiwi’s homeschool preschool planned a p.m. field trip to see the Christmas lights there, and since I didn’t exactly know what was in store, this Portland Christmas activity gave me so much more than I expected!

Visiting The Grotto with kids is a painless, fun outdoor activity to get in the Christmas spirit in Portland.

If you’re looking for a family activity in Portland that’s

inexpensive
easy for little kids and entertaining for older kids, too
not stressful

then I recommend visiting The Grotto with the whole family. (I didn’t receive compensation or free entry for this post; I just really enjoyed our visit and am glad we finally went to see the Christmas lights there!)

Family Christmas activities in Portland: The Grotto with kids Read more →

5 steps to get the best holiday family photo: Wisdom from the pros

October 23, 2017January 20, 2018catherinemryan

5 tips from professional photographers: How to get the best holiday family photo for this year's Christmas cards. Ten Thousand Hour Mama

Last year, when I scheduled a holiday family photo shoot, I did close to zero prep—I was busy enough wrangling a photo-adverse husband and two headstrong kids to consider how to make the photos actually look good. The best family photographers do the bulk of that for you, but a little preparation doesn’t hurt to get the best holiday family photo to put on your Christmas or New Year card this year.

(Looking back at 2016’s images, I laugh so hard at all the drama Kiwi caused! Poor bug was really ready for her nap.)

If you have holiday family photos on the horizon and want to capture your family at its best, look no further. I asked five of the best Portland family photographers to offer their wisdom with these 5 tips to get the holiday family portrait you’ve dreamed of.

5 tips from professional photographers: How to get the best holiday family photo for this year's Christmas cards. Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more →

Portland hike to the Witch’s Castle with kids

September 20, 2017September 19, 2017catherinemryan

Lately Peeper has been on a mystery/spooky story kick—a predilection I could attribute to my own childhood love of scary stuff but is mostly due to her Grandpa Shempy’s long made-up mysteries about something called the Monkey’s Paw. So when I had a free morning and the kids miraculously ate their breakfast on time and without protest, I decided to try hiking Portland’s Witch’s Castle with the kids.

Hiking Portland Oregon's witch's castle with kids is a fun outdoor activity when you travel as a family - or if you live here in the Northwest! Ten Thousand Hour Mama

I originally heard of Portland’s Witch’s Castle in Forest Park from my blogging friend Renee. She wrote about hiking to the castle with her teens, and I’ve wanted to do it myself ever since then—but with my littler kids, of course.

Since the day’s forecast called for some rain, I wanted to choose a forested hike so we wouldn’t get totally drenched if it did drizzle. Forest Park, with its immense Douglas firs, provides quite a bit of shelter from the Oregon rain—but as luck would have it, the skies stayed mostly clear. (Thanks, weather!)

Rain or no rain, though, the hike was gorgeous—and the Witch’s Castle lived up to its spooky, and awesome, reputation!

Embracing a child’s joy in the rain

September 11, 2017January 20, 2018catherinemryan

“Raining!” Kiwi shouted, her face beaming and shower-splattered. “Raining! Raining!”

As she ran, her joy in the rain was contagious. “It’s raining!” I echoed, laughing.

It rained this weekend—barely, but anything to quench our burning state’s thirst is welcome. As huge swaths of Oregon burned this summer, we played indoors, asked school to cancel outdoor recess, canceled trips. The inconveniences we endured from smoke-filled air are nothing in comparison to the communities ravaged by forest fire.

So as we skipped and stomped in the shallowest of puddles, the rain felt healing—like the most welcome weather in the world.

It's a welcome change to embrace a child's joy in the rain when the weather brings relief for the summer wildfires in Oregon. Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more →

Mama truth photography: Beauty in the everyday crazy

August 28, 2017catherinemryan

The morning Portland family photographer Ashley of Weeno Photography was scheduled to come to our house for a Mama Truth Session, I nearly called it off. Eric had been out of town for days. It took me two hours to get the girls to sleep the night before. And then they woke up at 5. But I didn’t cancel. Instead, I thought to myself, “Ashley is about to get more truth than she bargained for.”

Lately, the girls have been challenging. They’re chronically tired and we have been struggling to ensure they get more rest. They fight over ridiculous things (“I want the yellow bowl.” “No mine lellow!”). Kiwi cries and throws epic tantrums that we can do nothing to soothe.

So I’m not entirely sure why I thought I wanted a Mama Truth Session, where photographer Ashley LaMattino-Perlberg comes to your house to hang out for a few hours and captures whatever happens, from making a snack to soothing a booboo.

I think it was our initial contact. “The beauty in the everyday is always there,” she said. “And yet it’s so hard to see it ourselves. That’s why these sessions are so important!” Her words resonated deep within me. And it turns out she is so right.

I’m so grateful we did a Mama Truth photography session, which Ashley did for free for my family. The photos are beautiful, yes. Even more, though, the photographs showed me the beauty of my everyday life with my kids. And get this: Below, you can enter a giveaway for a chance to win half-off a Mama Truth Session with Weeno Photography. And anyone who mentions this blog post by the end of October will get $100 off a Mama Truth family photography session. Read on to find out more and enter!

We received a free family photography session in exchange for a blog post. As always, all opinions are my own. Read more →

Kids’ mini mural crawl in North Portland, Oregon

August 18, 2017August 18, 2017catherinemryan

This summer I’ve fallen in love with street art. I think it started when two blogging friends and I hit up some of our favorite murals in Southeast Portland, Oregon. Lisa from This Beautiful Day, Jenni from A Well Crafted Party and I caught up (and goofed off) in front of some of the city’s most dramatic street art. Just about every chance I’ve gotten since then, I’ve made detours and special trips to visit Portland murals—and have been bringing my kids along, too. One of my favorite trips was a mini mural crawl in North Portland that both kids joined me for.

This mural crawl for kids was one of the most fun family activities I’ve done recently, partly because it was even more enjoyable for me than it was for the girls. (Pretty sure I’m not alone in planning 99% of our family activities around what the under-5 set wants to do—but not this time!) That said, Peeper and Kiwi really got into the kid-friendly mural crawl in North Portland. (See the photos for proof!)

Part of the fun was the novelty of the family activity: We’d never done something quite like this. Peeper loved directing me and Kiwi so she could take a photo. (She has a good eye, doesn’t she?) Plus, the girls were fascinated by street art. Their wide eyes seemed to say, “Wait, you mean artists can paint giant pictures outside? I thought you said we couldn’t paint on walls!”

Uh-oh, I might live to regret this Portland, Oregon mural crawl. Oh well, it was worth it!