Lake Wilderness

*** Before I begin this blog post, I must ask: does anyone else out there in blogland have trouble with Blogger's insert picture feature? Every time I upload the pictures, they come out in the opposite order of the way I uploaded them. Except then sometimes, I try to allow for this oddity and upload them in reverse order (I AM smarter than Blogger!), but then Blogger puts them in the exact order I uploaded them in. Huh? Does any one else have this problem? Does anyone know what I'm talking about for that matter? Ah, well. I feel better just having vented. Thank you. ***

Ryan wanted to take the girls on a hike this summer. He printed out a map of the Cougar Mountain trails and had planned to go there, but then we found out there was some bike ride/race there the day we wanted to hike.

Hmmm...

New hikers with short, slow legs + bike racers = bad idea.

So, Ryan suggested "hiking" around Lake Wilderness. The first part was wooded and the girls thought it was great.




Eventually the trail came out of the woods and wasn't shady.

New hikers with short, slow legs + hot sun, no shade = unhappy New Hikers.

Ryan said he thinks the Lake Wilderness trail is about 2 miles. Does anyone know for sure? I'd love to know. If it is a 2 mile trail, the girls were done hiking at exactly .75 miles. Hannah was a trooper and kept her complaints to a minimum. Emma made no attempts to hide her dissatisfaction with the situation, exclaiming, "I don't like hiking!" Note her sour expression in this picture.
Luckily, Ryan sang a rousing version of "Boom, boom ain't it great to be crazy" and saved us from a full on mutiny. Lesson learned: never doubt the power of a well-timed, totally nonsensical camp song. If I remember correctly, Ryan may have even tried to sing "The Bear in Tennis Shoes" song, but I was in no mood for providing his echo at that point.

Eventually, we got to a park so we could sit and the girls could play a bit. Emma, though crying, dragging her feet, and being "tired of WALKING!!!" was miraculously cured of all her ills.

Hot, tired family + park = perfectly happy family


On second thought, Miriam wasn't perfectly happy. She'd fallen asleep in the back pack just about the time the girls' hiking revolt began. She'd slept through the whining, but had woken up when Ryan sat down at the park.

Sleeping baby in back pack + sitting, non-walking Dad = awake baby


After the park, when we were almost back to the car, the girls took their shoes and socks off and walked through the water on the beach. We were all tired and ready to be done, but we're pretty sure we'll be able to talk the girls into going hiking again. Anyone know of any .75 mile hikes?

Giggle Girl

Miriam likes to mimic us and play the "can you say..." game. Tonight, she was especially giggly. Right at the beginning of the video she's saying "Dada." At the end, when she does the duck sound, you'll notice her look out the back window. She's looking for the ducks that live in the pond behind our house and regularly fly over our yard.

Two months later...

Hellooooooo out there in blog land!! Does anybody still check this blog for updates? Google Reader comes in really handy when you're checking blogs like this one, huh?

So, let's see... well, we moved. Here's the garage at our new house after we'd moved everyting in from our old house. It looked like this for one week because we moved it in before the houses actually closed. Once all the deals were closed, we moved the stuff from the garage into the house. That's what we get for agreeing to close on a Thursday. Lesson learned.

Oh, and because I'm sure you were all wondering: Hannah did ride the bus for the last two weeks of school. She loved it and didn't seem to get too bothered by my daily questions (interrogations) about who she sat with, what people were talking about, who got in trouble, etc. What can I say? I have bus issues.

So now we're all moved in. Not all unpacked, mind you, but moved in and comfortable. We love our house, our new neighborhood, new yard, everything. We already knew a lot of the kids in our new neighborhood from preschool and school. It's been so nice to just walk to so many different friends' houses for impromptu play dates. We have a community park we can walk to and even a little store within walking distance.

No one lived in our house for about a year, so the yard needed some major weeding when we moved in. There were weeds as tall as me. Seriously. I wish I'd taken "Before" pictures just to show the progress we've made. We're still working on the weeding and we've found some time to play outside. It was hot last week so Hannah and Emma played in the pool.

Notice Ryan in the background trying to get Miriam in the pool. Nothin' doing Dad. She may love the bath tub, but apparently that doesn't mean she loves all water.

Hannah was a little hyper.

Here's happy Miriam, a safe distance from the pool. Ever since we caught a tiny frog in our yard and put him in this bug habitat, Miriam's been fascinated with the habitat. Maybe she doesn't get that we released the frog back into the "wild" of our back yard....

On the morning of the Fourth of July, we went to the flag raising ceremony at our church building. I do love a good flag raising ceremony: peppy songs, patriotism, family, friends, and cinnamon rolls. Ryan and I stayed up late the night before making cinnamon rolls to bring and - yum - I'm glad we did.

That afternoon, we went to a local park and played at the playground and had a picnic dinner. We watched seaplanes take off and land, herons fly by, and kayakers float on Lake Washington. It was a beautiful day capped off by a fireworks display above Lake Washington.
Here's part of the crew that was there: Grandpa and Grandma Mattson, Ryan, Hannah, Me, Emma, Miriam, and Grandma Carlson. In the eveing, we were joined by a lot of friends from church so the girls had lots of playmates. They had so much fun running around with their friends that the fireworks were almost an afterthought. Hannah watched them intently, with her hands covering her ears. Emma watched the fireworks a bit, but was more interested in socializing with her friends.

To keep busy this summer (ha!) Hannah and Emma are taking swimming lessons. They both have face in the water issues, but I can tell they're trying hard to get over their fears. We're trying to get back into the habit of attending the library's weekly storytimes. Surprisingly, at the last storytime we attended, Hannah announced that she was too old for storytime. Choking back tears, I said, "Okay, you can just look for books to check out then." Allright... so I didn't really cry, but I was sad. She's always loved storytime, but it is really intended for preschoolers, so I understand why she feels that way. *Sniff*

That's all for now! Happy summer!