Oregon Vacation: Swimming

Swimming is the girl's favorite part of vacation. Isn't it that way for most kids? When I was little and we'd go on family road trips, I remember my sisters and I begging my parents to let us stay at Motel 6 each night. Holiday Inn? Nope. Hilton? No way. Mariott? No thanks. Why? Because we knew that Motel 6 would have a swimming pool and we'd be able to swim before going to bed. Motel 6 never failed to have everything we wanted in a vacation: swimming. Fancy rooms and continental breakfasts were unimportant.

As with me and my sisters, my girls vacation to swim. Between trips to the pools, we did do a few other things. We visited the park one day.



And then we went to the pool.

Miriam, though petrified of our backyard wading pool, grudingly decided that floating in her "boat" in a semi-warm pool on a 88 degree day wasn't a bad deal.

Hannah favored the noodle float and bobbed around happily.

Emma was beyond thrilled that she could touch the bottom of the pool. She liked dancing in the water and riding around on Grandpa's back.

Here's Ryan's legs. The girls thought his underwater handstand was amazing.

Miriam's favorite pool was the baby pool. She could hold onto the side and move around on her own. She was moving so much that this was the best picture I could get of her.

More vacation pictures to come!

Oregon Vacation: The Deer Whisperer

For some reason, Miriam loved the couch on vacation. The kind of love that causes one to cry when taken from it kind of love. Her favorite thing to do on the couch was to look at books. Here she's reading Lion is Down in the Dumps - a Sweet Pickles book. I have vivid memories of reading Sweet Pickles books in my second grade classroom. I loved those books. Now that I've read all of them about 200 times to my kids, I don't love them quite so much. But they still love them and that makes me happy.

It's become a tradition that, when we're at Eagle Crest, the girls create a pretend grocery store on the back deck. They do this almost every day: buying things from each other, having the adults come buy things from them, arranging their products by size and color (Hannah - that's my girl!), and allowing Miriam to tote around a box or two.

Emma posing next to her grocery store. We had family pictures taken a few weeks ago and ever since then she's been really into posing.

Notice the deer in the grass behind Emma and Hannah? We saw soooo many deer on vacation. At least 3 deer per day, sometimes a lot more. Ryan and my Dad golfed on the course behind our condo and saw about 5 deer along the course. One particular evening, we weren't the only ones to spot the deer.

This other guy, who Ryan dubbed "The Deer Whisperer," saw the deer and decided to come out and feed it. From his hand. Though the deer liked the carrots he was getting, he didn't like the Whisperer. The deer was obviously nervous as the Whisperer tried to pet him, but apparently the carrots were too good to pass up.

Oregon Vacation: Driving and Arriving

My parents invited us to spend a week with them in Central Oregon. It's about a six hour drive from our house to the condo just outside of Redmond, Oregon. With our portable DVD player loaded, we set off over the mountains.


Emma was, by this point, already tired of her this car trip. Miriam and Hannah were still hanging in there.

As we got close to the Columbia River we noticed lots of these wind power-generating things. Windmills? Anyone know their proper name? Whatever their name, they were very cool. They must be fairly new because we didn't remember seeing them two years ago when we last drove this highway. They looked quite space age - especially because there were so many of them. Like hundreds in both Washington and Oregon.


Descending to the bridge over the Columbia River with Oregon to the left and Washington to the right.


Anyone else know the words to the Columbia River song?

Roll on, Columbia, roll on

Roll on, Columbia, roll on

Your power is turning our darkness to dawn

Roll on Columbia, roll on

Other great rivers give power to you

The Yakima, Snake, and the Klikitat too

That's all I can recall. Hmmm... maybe Google can help me....

Yes! My friend Wiki (via Google) is always there for me. Here's the complete lyrics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll_On,_Columbia,_Roll_On

I was close. Sort of. Thank you for humoring me.

Moving on.

As we continued into Oregon, the girls watched High School Musical 2 while Miriam cried. She stoped only for fruit snacks. We went through an entire box of fruit snacks on that drive. No, Miriam didn't eat them all, but more than I'd ever confess to my pediatrician.

Eventually we reached our destination: Eagle Crest! Here's the girls in their room. I thought I'd take a picture 'cause I knew the beds wouldn't look that neat for the rest of our stay.

Stay tuned for: swimming! the deer whisperer! girls in sand traps! pretend grocery stores! Sisters the city! Ryan doing a hand stand!

Food Storage

Just because I found it today (while surfing the web instead of posting photos of our vacation) and I thought it was amazing:

http://www.hotcouponworld.com/forums/stockpile-pictures/186939-crabtree122202s-stockpile-pictures.html

Yeah. Amazing, huh? Now THAT'S food storage. Be still my beating heart. Sure makes my 12 bottles of ketsup look pretty lame. By the way, Ashlee, do you know this Crabtree? If so, we need to talk.

Now to post pictures of vacation... after I read what Pioneer Woman's up to today.

Ryan's Birthday

This past Tuesday Ryan turned 34. To celebrate, we had Ryan's parents and grandparents over to dinner. As the birthday boy, he got to decide the dinner menu: flank steak, mashed potatoes, spinach salad, rolls, and blueberry pie. My parents stopped by later on to have pie and ice cream with us.



Miriam decided she liked flank steak. Wouldn't eat any watermelon and treated the mashed potatoes like playdough, but loooooved the steak. Go figure.

Ryan prefers pie to cake, so every year we make him his favorite: blueberry pie. It's nice that blueberries are in season and usually on sale around his birthday. Hannah and Emma usually hint very strongly that they'd rather be having birthday cake, but they eat some ice cream and are happy enough.

Happy birthday Ryan! We love you!

Too Hot to Blog

Don't worry blog readers - we survived the terrible 2009 Seattle heat wave! I'm now sitting in my 67 degree house and loving every minute of it. I'm most comfortable between 68 and 72 degrees and, I've learned, I'm the most uncomfortable, cranky, and close to insanity when it's 106 degrees. True, it wasn't 106 in my house, it was only 90-ish degrees in there. Could have been worse. So now we're back to overcast mornings with filtered sun in the afternoons. Highs in the 70s. Perfection if you ask me.

Before our blasted heat wave, we went to downtown Seattle for the annual Torchlight Parade. We thought it was a hot day - ha! Little did we know what was in store....

Here's Ryan and Miriam waiting for the parade to begin.

Emma and Hannah staked out their spots right along 4th Avenue. Hannah's showing off her gum. My kids get really excited about gum. Is this normal?

Here's my Dad and Mom with us before the parade started. My Mom drives downtown early on the morning of the parade to put down a tarp to save our spot. Thanks Mom!

It doesn't usually rain on hot days in Seattle. This night, however, we got sprinkled on a bit, but it passed quickly and it kind of felt good. Miriam loved her first parade and wasn't scared by it a bit. Hannah, on the other hand, was in tears after the infamous Seafair pirates came by and shot off their cannon. Emma liked the parade's princesses the best and wasn't too bothered by the rowdy pirates.

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!