Haven’t been taking too many photos lately, but here’s a few to let you all know what we’ve been up to. I guess I haven’t been through the pictures in a while, because some of these are from several weeks ago.
We’ve been camping a couple more times recently…this photo is from a trip we took with Dawn and Doyle and Kadin to Silver Falls State Park. We finally got Milo his own camp chair and he loves it.
Sitting around our little campfire.
Next morning we fit in a short hike to see one of the falls the park is named for. you can see the trail we took down below that goes back behind the waterfall.
Anna and Kadin took some pit stops to explore some little caves along the way.
Anna and I on the hike.
Two weekends ago (or was it three?) we participated in a really great event called the sunday parkways. Apparently they’ve put several of these on throughout the summer in various neighborhoods, but this was the one for SE Portland. The city closed off a huge 13-mile loop of streets to all vehicle traffic and everyone came out with bikes and wagons and strollers and unicycles to ride around. There were events going on in several of the city parks along the loop, so you could stop and get some food or play in the park etc. It also coincided with the Hawthorne street fair, so it was quite an event. We met up with a group of friends and spent most of the day riding around and hanging out in the parks.
Aside from the fact that you could tell it seriously impacted traffic flows where the loop crossed the main thoroughfares, it still seemed like it flowed pretty smoothly. There were an army of volunteers manning intersections, and I saw no fewer than 30 police officers controlling traffic, so I’m sure it wasn’t cheap or easy to pull off, but it sure was nice to see so many bikes out and about.
The kids had lots of fun (Anna sustained a hula hooping injury), and fell asleep right at the end of the ride.
We also had Grandpa and Grandma Newman in town a couple weekends ago and had a very nice visit. Anna of course always loves to have any visitors, but especially grandparents, so she kept both Grandpa and Grandma pretty busy most of the trip. Milo was also pretty excited to have them around to show off for.
We didn’t have the camera out much while they were in town apparently, but one thing we did get some photos of while they were in town was the 13th annual portland adult soapbox derby. I’ve been hearing about this event for years, but have never actually made it out to see it…so we figured we had to try and make it out this year. Similar to the sunday parkways event, it seemed like half of portland (the crazy half) turned out.
The rules for the soapbox derby are that the car has to cost less than $300 to make, be entirely gravity powered, and must have brakes of some sort…there’s probably some other rules, but that’s the bulk of it. People get pretty creative with their cars. Some are built for speed, some go more for style. Wish we had gotten more photos, but there are a ton of them around the internet for anyone curious. This Lego car was pretty sweet.
This ratmobile (at least we think it was a rat) was one of our favorites.
The flintstone car looked pretty neat…I don’t think it did too well it the timed trials though.
We talked about entering a car next year…we’ll see if anything materializes on that…
One last set of photos from this past weekend. I took Anna on her first fishing trip. She was pretty excited about it.
We went out on Saturday morning to Oxbow Park on the Sandy River. Anna insisted that we stay and fish for the whole day. I had called a fisherman friend to see where I might stand a chance of catching something. The Sandy was kind of a longshot he said, not much running in there yet but if we got anything it’d probably end up being something like a bigger steelhead or an early coho just starting up river. Still it seemed like a nice place to spend the day, so we stopped and got a few spinners and set out for the river. We got a nice spot on the beach and ended up having it pretty much to ourselves all day. I didn’t really want to put a hook on Anna’s line just yet, so I put some sinkers on the end and a bobber and then I’d cast and let her reel it in. We put a spinner on my rod and fished the heck out of that one spot where we sat all day. Probably not very good technique, but we did have fun. Not so much as a bite (we did catch a leaf though).
We took a lot of breaks, played on some the play equipment there at the park. Had a nice picnic lunch. Took a short hike. Sat by the river and told some stories. Waded in the river a bit. Saw a few inner tubes and kayaks going down river but that was about it. It was a pretty nice quiet day by the river.
That’s about all the photos we’ve got for now. This Labor Day weekend was pretty rainy and we didn’t do too much. Anna is excited to start back up at her preschool tomorrow. We’ve been doing a lot of food preservation canning, freezing, pickling etc. Milo is really starting to walk everywhere now and is getting into everything. Will post some more photos soon. In the meantime, here’s a funny video of Anna spinning Milo around in one of our kitchen stools. I don’t know the story behind this video at all but I thought it was pretty funny.
Got a bunch more pictures here, hot off the presses. Some of our recent summer excitement and adventures.
Here’s one from Milo’s first backpacking trip. A short section of the Lewis River called, aptly enough, the Lewis River Trail. It’s up outside of Cougar, WA, SE of Mt. St. Helens. A very nice walk in the woods. We got an excellent camping spot right on a beautiful, calm bend in the river. Got all set up, spent the afternoon swimming, had a nice dinner, turned in early and then found out Milo was just coming down with a fever that turned out to be a weeklong crazy virus! Not fun! But in retrospect, it was memorable if nothing else, and I think Milo really did enjoy his first backpacking trip.
More excitement…Anna’s fourth birthday! To say she was excited would be an understatement. She’s four and wants everyone to know it. We had a nice day…Nicki stayed home from work to have birthday breakfast, then I took the kids to the children’s museum. We spent most of the morning/early afternoon out there which suited both Anna and Milo just fine.
Anna and Kadin had their birthday party at Mt. Scott Park (same place as last year at both kids’ request). A bunch of their friends showed up and a good time was had by all. Once the cake came out the kids were all business. Here they are right before they blew out the candles.
Anna of course was very excited to open her presents and cards. She got many (but thankfully not too many) very, very thoughtful and wonderful gifts from her wonderful friends and family. Nicki and I got her and Kadin matching little hopping things. Anna wants everyone to know that she blew hers up with the pump all by herself! (she is four now you know).
Another bit of excitement…Nicki’s soccer team, “The Muddies” won their division, with a 10-0-2 record! Nicki is having quite a bit of fun with this team, and it seems like a really great group of folks. Since the soccer season has ended, Nicki recently started on a futsal team for the fall. That team is doing quite well too!
We had some very hot weather…the garden suffered, but has since rebounded. We just had our first big tomato harvest. Nicki froze 12 quarts on Sunday! We also picked a huge bucket of basil, a bunch of onions, some other stuff too. We cleared a spot of some spring stuff to make way for the winter garden. We’re working our way up to a four season garden to wean ourselves our (admittedly awesome) CSA share.
A big cabbage! We harvested some things early that could have really gone a little longer, but we needed the space for our winter garden. We’ll plant some more cabbages in a few weeks.
Milo likes himself some tomato! Our little boy is becoming quite the eater!
A couple photos from a city park in Vancouver, WA, just down the street from where I work. Nicki brought the kids up one day last week for a lunch picnic, which was such a treat for me ( I think the kids had fun too). There’s a little fountain where kids are always splashing around. Milo and Anna both dove right in fully clothed.
Here’s some more funny photos from that day.
And just to round out the post, a recent video of the kids running around in the living room. Anna just learned how to do somersaults, and Milo is definitely trying to figure it out for himself.
August is over half over but depending on the day it still feels like there’s a lot of summer left. Hope you are enjoying yours wherever you might be!
Summer’s in full swing here in Portland. The garden is growing like crazy, and the sun has been shining. There’s so much going on, I don’t reckon I’ll be spending a lot of time updating the blog these next few months…but I do still hope to put some pictures up now and then when I have a chance.
We’ve had a few nice hiking/camping trips these past couple of weeks. This photo was from a bridge over the little North Fork of the Santiam River…out near Opal Creek. We camped out there a couple of weeks ago, and spent an entire day hiking and playing on the river.
Milo and I on the river.
Anna and I crossing a bridge on our hike down the river.
We hiked about a mile downriver with the intention of finding a crossing to where we were meeting up with some of the other folks we were camping with. It took a while to find a suitable crossing, but we managed to find a place where the river got pretty wide and shallow, and we could cross. The water was pretty cold as you would imagine. In this picture I had already carried Anna across to the other side…we didn’t make her cross on her own.
Milo was in his element in the rocks down by the water. He sat happily for long stretches of time…picking up and tasting or throwing rocks mostly. It was a really nice trip.
Over 4th of July weekend we headed north to the foothills of Mt. Rainier. Nicki and I used to work out of Packwood, Washington, a tiny town at the southeast corner of Mt. Rainier National Park. We used to get put up in a little dive of a motel or camp out for a week off of some Forest Service Road while we were doing wildlife/botany surveys. We saw a lot of pretty remote parts of the forest up there, and the whole area feels (At least to me) a bit like an old hometown.
We set up camp in a campground just outside the Park boundary, and the whole weekend was just great. We were camped on the Cowlitz River, right at its headwaters. Ohanapecosh Creek comes down off of Mt. Rainier and merges with a few smaller creeks right where we were camped to form the Cowlitz.
Anna and Milo at the campsite. We spent some time Friday evening building little pinecone/stick/moss/lichen houses for the fairies, the elves, the gnomes, the dwarves, the squirrels, the deer, the bear…probably some others too. We had a little village built by the end of the weekend.
Anna and I taking a swim at Rimrock lake, a big alpine lake up past White Pass. The water was chilly, but much warmer than any of the rivers.
Saturday we drove up into the Park, and took a couple mile hike up to Silver Falls, and then beyond that to the “Grove of the Patriarchs”, a remnant piece of old growth with some gigantic old western red-cedar and Doug-firs. The sun was shining, and it was just a perfect day.
While we walked I introduced Anna to one of life’s greatest pleasures…dipping one’s hands and face, or even one’s entire head, into an ice cold mountain stream on a hot day. Anna thought this sounded crazy until she saw me demonstrate and then she was all about trying it out. We stopped several times along the way, whenever we were able to get close enough to the water to stop and splash some water on our faces.
Here we are after another cooling off session.
Nicki and Milo on the hike up past Silver Falls.
Just to get a few more photos in here…this past weekend we were down in Veneta for the Oregon Country Fair!
I didn’t end up getting a lot of “fair-ey” photos this time around, but a good time was had by all as always.
It was Milo’s second fair, and Anna’s fourth! We were there with a big crew of friends and their kids and we spent all day Friday from sun-up to sundown in full-on fair mode. The weather was spectacular and we couldn’t have had a nicer time.
As has been tradition these past few years, we went into fair on Friday, then spent all day Saturday camped out at the nearby reservoir. The kids got good and rested after the long day at the fair on Friday, so they had plenty of energy to run around and be crazy all day Saturday.
There was some sidewalk chalking going on for a while, which ended in Anna decorating her and Milo’s faces with the chalk as well.
The kids also made some delicious looking leaf and mud tacos on the grill. yummm.
We spent the afternoon playing games and just goofing around. Milo played with his friend Lilly quite a bit, and Anna ran around with the older girls and Niko. Anna and I went for a brief swim in the late afternoon which was a lot of fun. Sunday it started pouring rain as we were finishing packing up, which made for some hurried goodbyes.
I think we are staying in town this weekend…work in the yard or do some gardening maybe. We’re planning Milo’s first backpacking trip, which is a fun thing to look forward to. So long for now.
It’s hard to believe, but our little boy turned one year old this week!
We had a little get-together in the backyard with a bunch of his baby/kid friends on Sunday, a couple days before his actual birthday.
I think he enjoyed it thoroughly.
The birthday boy.
Nicki, my mom, Anna, and I all collaborated on making this awesome owl cake. It’s got dried pineapple slices for eyes, chopped chocolate for wings, two cashews for a beak, and a bunch of slivered almond “feathers” (that took a while). It turned out really well I think! Of course, Milo didn’t eat this cake. We made him his very own oat flour/applesauce/apple juice cake.
Here he is having his first bites.
I think he liked it!
The owl cake was a hit, especially with the kids.
My mom was in town for the week, and Anna was pretty happy about that. They went on a lot of walks together, and Anna made Grandma play “baby” a lot. Grandma did a good job of wearing her out most days.
Nicki took the day off for Milo’s birthday, so we spent the morning opening presents. Anna helped him of course. We didn’t get too many pictures of the process…this all happened before breakfast and you can see Anna rolling around on the ground in the background. Still, Milo and Anna had some fun opening presents. His grandpa Newman made him this great wooden dog with moving legs and feet and everything, wish I wish we had gotten a better picture of…
Nicki sewed him this cute little owl, and my mom helped Anna stuff it and sew it shut. Anna liked the stuffing part, but kind of lost steam with the sewing, so my mom finished it up.
In keeping with tradition, we also got him his first drum. We got Anna a drum as her first birthday gift, and she really liked it. Milo has been a drummer at heart since day 1, so it was a pretty easy choice to get him one. Anna and I went to the local music shop and picked him out a good one. He’s pretty excited about it as you can see.
For the rest of his birthday, we took Milo on a few short hikes out in the gorge. We saw the big log jam at Oneonta Gorge, hiked up to the top of Horsetail FAlls, and had a picnic by Wahkeena Falls.
I walked Anna across the stream at Oneonta Gorge. The water is still icy cold.
Nicki and Milo at the bottom of Horsetail Falls.
Nicki knew about this great picnic spot across the road from Wahkeena Falls. It’s tucked away from the road, and I think most people don’t really know it’s there. We had this great big shady park all to ourselves. We spread out our blanket and had a very nice picnic, and then spent another hour or so running around the park, climbing on trees, etc.
And that’s the story of Milo’s first birthday!
Here’s a little video of him playing with another of his presents…a riding toy, which I can’t figure out quite what to call. It looks like it wants to be called a tricycle, I want to call it a tricycle, but it’s got four wheels. He’s really liking it, whatever it is! You can also hear how much he’s talking these days, and how close he seems to be to walking. The little boy is growing up fast!
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a chance to put up any posts from my guitar and mandolin projects for the year. The main reason, in the interest of cutting to the chase, is that for a couple of months there I had almost no motivation whatsoever to work on them (thankfully, my lack of motivation coincided precisely with a complete and utter lack of time, so I suppose I could blame it on that). I suppose it was just one of those things, as with any creative pursuit, that just happens periodically. I had a couple minor setbacks with both projects, and it was just enough to make me get to feeling lazy and uninspired about it.
That said though, this past Saturday I had the opportunity to witness and participate in something very special that nearly instantaneously had me excited about building again. It was an auction of the tonewood collection of the late John Sullivan. John was a very well known and respected luthier here in Portland, who passed away a couple of years ago. I never got a chance to meet him, unfortunately, and I didn’t really become acquainted with his work until I started in to building myself. Still, in the past few years as I’ve become more familiar with his work, and as I came to discover that I’ve been hearing his instruments for years in the hands of several of my favorite musicians, he’s become somewhat of an inspiration to me. So it was pretty exciting to find out, late last week, that an auction was being held to sell some of the wood that he had collected over the years.
It turned out the auction was being held right around the corner from our house at the old Day Music building. I rode the bike down there not knowing quite what to expect. It turned out to be an intimate affair. Most of the builder-types there, maybe 20 or so of them, seemed to know each other. There were also a handful of musicians there playing, several of them playing instruments that John had built. I met John’s wife and she was very friendly, introducing me to some people and eventually helping me find a few pieces of wood I could afford. I had my eye on some red spruce mandolin tops, but they were all in lots of 10, and even though I tried to talk myself into it, I couldn’t put down the cash for the whole box. In the end they decided to take the wood that hadn’t sold and split up the big boxes so I was able to buy a few individual pieces.
Here is what I ended up getting. One red spruce mandolin top, three old one-piece sitka spruce mandolin/violin tops, and three red spruce flat top guitar tops.
Here’s a close up of one of those one-piece sitka tops. The wood is really dark, so I think it was split quite a while ago. John had marked it out with a template for a viola, as it’s a good sized piece. I don’t know that I’ll ever try my hand at a viola, but you never know. This would make a great mandolin top as well.
Another view of that same piece. By the time all was said and done I had spent several hours there at the auction, checking out wood, talking to and meeting other builders, listening to music etc. It was great. Plus, having this connection, however tenuous, to a luthier who’s work I really look up to and respect has been the catalyst I needed to get me inspired to want to get back into the shop. I loaded up my little stack of wood in the bike trailer, buckled it in, and rode home with little wedges of spruce clanging around like marimba bars at every bump. I’m sure I won’t get an opportunity to build with any of this wood for a while, but when I do finally get a chance, I hope I can do them some justice.
So with my newfound inspiration, I spent a little time last night getting the shop all cleaned up and organized (the first step I always seem to need to take prior to any big push of work, plus I needed to make room for the new wood). After I had everything pretty well back in its place, I laid everything out and took stock of where I was at on both projects. Anna’s guitar is really fairly far along. I stopped just prior to doing the binding, because one of the pieces of binding I was going to use ended up breaking right in the middle. The body is all glued up though, and the neck is roughly carved. I’ll probably try to get the neck all finished up, then do the binding and the fretboard.
The mandolin project has really been challenging. I’ve got the neck mostly finished, though the scroll work is going to need a lot of sanding. I’ve got both the top and back plates carved on the outside, but haven’t started shaping the insides yet. There is still a lot of carving work to be done. I tried my hand at bending the sides, but it didn’t go very well. I know I just need to just get some new sides cut and keep trying until I get it right, but it was so frustrating the first time. Wood just doesn’t like to bend like that. Still, it’ll happen in time.
For now, it’s summertime and I’d be kidding myself if I thought I’d be spending a bunch of time working on any instrument projects. But if I can manage a night or two a week it’ll be enough to keep me practiced, and learning, and excited, and I guess that’s what it’s really all about anyway.
Hi everyone. I wanted to post some pictures from our fun memorial day adventures, but realized that we had a bunch of other photos I haven’t put up yet so I’ll post a bunch of them real quick-like here.
For one thing, we had a really nice Mother’s Day brunch here at our place with a bunch of friends and food. I never did get any pictures of that though, as our camera was (and is) on the fritz. We’ve since borrowed a camera and have been using that as a backup until we get around to sorting out our camera woes, but no pictures of the fun Mother’s Day brunch (if anyone has any good ones feel free to email some over!).
A couple weeks ago, Nicki’s friend Michelle came out and stayed with us, and for part of her trip Nicki took her and the kids out to the coast.
They went to Beverly beach, outside of Newport, OR, and stayed in a yurt. To hear Anna tell it, it sounded like a fun time.
They also went to the aquarium.
It rained torrents the first night they were gone, but then they had some sunshine, and I think they spent some time beachcombing…
…which is starting to be one of Anna’s favorite pastimes.
I had some free time in town, and a day off from work so I started building a fence for our front yard. I did the bulk of the hard work in one long day. Dug all the holes and got all the material. I dd the bulk of the actual cutting of the rails and setting the posts over the course of the next two days. It was a pretty fun project all in all.
It came out looking pretty good too. Everyone really likes the fence. I mean everyone. People stop their cars and yell out “nice fence!”. The UPS man says nice fence. The mail man. The neighbor kids. Random pedestrians. All like the fence. It’s a pretty nice fence. It really ties the yard together.
Anna was pretty happy to have Michelle to hang out with. They spent several sunny afternoons painting in the backyard. Anna would get covered in paint and then run through the sprinkler to wash off.
Milo has been enjoying the nice weather.
We made some popsicles and he and Anna have been enjoying them on these warm late spring afternoons.
This past weekend we went on quite an adventure. I had some more free Mariner’s tickets from work, so we drove up to Seattle for the game. It being Memorial Day weekend we decided to make a full weekend out of it and stop and visit some friends nearby as well. The game was fun. We got out of town late and traffic being what it is on Friday before Memorial Day, we pulled into Seattle with less than an hour before game time. Still the kids did great, made it through to the seventh inning stretch, and then we headed out. The game ended up going to 12 innings, and the M’s pulled it off in the end.
Next morning we headed out early. We had reservations on a 12:00 ferry leaving from the south tip of Whidbey Island across the sound to Port Townsend. We left early with the hopes of finding a nice bakery or something on the island, and having a leisurely morning with plenty of time to catch the ferry. The kids slept while we drove, but woke up as we came into Oak Harbor. We inquired about a local bakery, but were told that there wasn’t really anything in town. The kids were getting restless and the situation was getting tense, so we pulled off the street at random and came across this beautiful little city park. We played and climbed on these big old oak trees for a while and then proceeded on.
Our last hope for sustenance before we hit the ferry terminal was the idyllic town of Coupeville, WA, where we were told there was a nice little place to get fresh bread. When we got there we noticed the locals were all setting up for a parade.
Here’s it is, the “knead and feed” in coupeville. Stop there if you are ever in the neighborhood. We got coffee and scones and a loaf of fresh wheat bread that was really great. We ate quickly. We only had a little bitof time to catch our ferry, and we wanted to catch a little bit of the parade.
The parade! It was really cool. We watched the first few cars go by and then we headed for the car because we were really cutting it close to be in time to catch the ferry. We got the kids into the car and started to head back out of town…except…that…the only road out of town had a huge parade going down the middle of it.
So we were trapped, and on some level we resigned ourselves to missing the ferry. We watched the whole parade which got done just in time for us to almost, but not quite, make the ferry. Oh well.
Thankfully, this particular ferry terminal was in a state park with a pretty nice beach right at the loading area. We killed an hour and a half pretty quickly just laying on the beach goofing off.
Waiting for the ferry.
Milo waiting for the ferry.
Milo climbing on some driftwood while waiting for the ferry. The boy is getting strong and adventurous.
The ferry came and we zipped across the channel in about 20 minutes or so. It was a nice ride, and a beautiful day.
Here’s a view of Port Townsend from the ferry as it pulled in. Our friends Owen and Molly and their new baby Fern live near Port Townsend and we stopped in to see them.
Here’s Anna and Milo meeting Fern.
We spent the rest of our weekend camped out in nearby Fort Flagler state park, hanging out, and checking out the local beaches. Anna really liked these beaches with their coarse sand and tons of shells. As we were walking to the beach, she would generally walk up until the very first hint of any sand or shells, then immediately sit down, take off her hat and shoes and start filling them up with sand. That was as far as she ever made it most of the time.
She did like to venture down to the water occasionally though.
We took one last walk on the beach Monday morning and said our goodbyes to our friends. A great end to a great trip (thanks Owen and Molly!)
It was one of those rare trips that was just so nice on so many levels, and that was made all the more interesting and fun because of the weird unplanned setbacks. I think we could have stayed an extra week or two up there on the peninsula. (And maybe we should have, because then we got stuck in a 10 or 15 mile long back up on 101 heading south which slowed us to a crawl for over an hour with the car running on fumes and nearly overheating…but I’m trying to forget that part of the trip.)
Well, I think that catches you up on our adventures of late. Next weekend we are off to…you guessed it, the beach! This time with Anna’s school. Should be fun. Then we will rest…or work in the garden or something.
Well it seems I haven’t updated the blog in forever again. I’ve got somewhat of an excuse this time…our camera just went on the fritz and we’ve had all of our pictures locked up on the memory card with no good way to get them off. I finally broke down and bought a cheap little card reader so we could get the pictures off, but it looks like we’re without a camera for a while again…
Recently we’ve been working at some pretty big garden/yard projects. We dug up the scraggly shrubs that have been planted in front of our house, tilled up a bunch of the grass and started in on a sketched out vision of what we hope our front yard will one day look like. We’ve been throwing around ideas since we bought the place, but we had been waiting until the exterior painting was done before moving forward with anything. We brought in a bunch of soil and laid out a big front bed and a perimeter of plantable space around the entire front yard. Our plan is to put up a half size fence like a split rail around the whole yard and one day to have all or most of the yard in plants.
We got a really nice bunch of native plants for the front bed. Red flowering currants, snowberry, clustered rose, kinnickinnick, and wild strawberries.
This picture doesn’t do it much justice at all, but it’s about how things look right now. We got two apple trees and a dwarf fig tree which you can see at the right of the photo. You can see the soil we laid out along the future fenceline. The idea is to have the herb garden moved to the southwest corner, and to hopefully fit one more larger tree at the northwest corner of the yard. The fence will really make the yard a lot more defined and will be really nice…when I finally get around to designing/building it.
We also constructed a ramshackle planting bed from a bunch of old bricks and rounds of wood that have been taking up space in our driveway for years. It turned out pretty good. We just tonight went over to our friend Sally’s house and picked up some wayward raspberry canes that had escaped their planting box. We brought about 10 little plants home and stuck them in the ground. With any luck, by about this time next year we’ll be rolling in raspberries!
In the midst of our big landscaping/gardening adventures I had a birthday. Turned 32. It was fun. The most exciting part was that we took a trip out to an awesome native plant nursery (Bosky Dell), and we spent a nice morning browsing plants and scheming up what could work with our plan. I also ran into an old friend/classmate from my botany days at Portland State, which was pretty cool, and we ended up getting a great tour of the property from the woman who owns the nursery. Had some friends over for a nice dinner and Nicki and I even went out later that night. This picture is of Anna posing next to my birthday presents. She has made it known that she must participate in the opening of any present no matter what.
Anna’s school had a mayday party/potluck that was a lot of fun. Anna had been singing the songs for weeks, and was pretty excited for it.
We also went to Westwind, our annual pilgrimage to the coast for a weekend of cooking and camping and music and all kinds of other stuff. You can read back in the archives about past years if you got the notion. Nicki and I have been going for 6 years I think…this was Anna’s 4th year, and Milo’s 1st. We always rendevous at the Otis Cafe before heading in to Westwind, and you should too if you ever get out that way.
Anna was very excited for Westwind, and was in her element pretty much the whole time.
She made good friends with Pete another friend of ours who was out there with the kitchen crew.
One popular game was making “cupcakes” by filling her shoes with sand over and over.
Milo liked playing in the sand too, but we had a tough time keeping it out of his mouth.
Walking to the beach with our homemade kite.
Digging on the beach.
On Anna’s first or second year we took a really cute picture of her sitting at the window in the main lodge looking out at the ocean with her reflection in the window. We were trying to recreate it with Anna and Milo, but it proved difficult. This one just seemed funny.
Nicki and Anna took a long walk on the beach on Saturday. The weather was supposed to be all wind and rain, but it was really pretty nice the whole weekend.
Lots of beach time for Anna.
Anna was also wanting to do her share in the kitchen. She likes to cut butter at home when we make biscuits, so she was pretty happy to be given the butter cutting job.
And here’s one rare shot we actually managed to get of (nearly) the whole kitchen crew. Working hard making salad rolls for dinner Saturday night.
Unfortunately, this was where our camera suddenly stopped working, so we didn’t get any more pictures the rest of the weekend. The lens is stuck out and won’t move. It’s the exact same thing that happened to our last camera, and apparently is a common problem with that make/model of camera. It’s out of warranty, so I’m going to try and see what I can do to fix it, but more than likely we’ll be looking for another camera sometime soon. Until then, here’s a video we took of Anna running circles around the Westwind lodge while a little impromptu band plays in the background. Enjoy!
I just downloaded 220 or more pictures off the camera. I think they’ve been on there pretty much since the last time I updated the blog. Here’s a few of the best ones…
This was way back in late March. Nicki took Anna and Milo on a picnic to Woodstock Park.
Coming home from the picnic. Anna wanted to try and share the stroller with Milo. Looks like they figured out a way to make it work.
Another sunny day in late March. Anna getting a chance to take her bike for a spin in the sunshine.
A few days later we were here: Jawbone Flats, OR. Population 5 or so (and a few dogs). This is an old mining town located in what is now the Opal Creek Ancient Forest Preserve in the Oregon Cascades. It’s one of the few (as I understand it) lower-elevation stands of real old-growth western hemlock forest left in the state. The forest was preserved in the late 1980′s/early 1990′s by the friends of Opal Creek who from what I understand underwent a pretty difficult legislative battle to get the stand of forest preserved. Some more of the story can be found here.
I used to come to Opal Creek with a Forest Ecology class back in the early part of the century (heh). Nicki and I also made a few trips up there on our own over the years. Now some friends of ours are involved with the Friends of Opal Creek, and they invited us to come visit them. They live up there year round, including all winter long doing stuff like keeping the hydroelectric system running, shoveling snow off roofs, fun stuff like that. I think they got snowed in for several weeks this year. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want their job, but I think I’ve romanticized it somewhat…it look like hard work.
The snow had started to melt when we got there, but by the next morning several inches had fallen. No sound but the roar of the creek(s).
Some remnants from Jawbone’s heyday I imagine.
We got a few nice walks in during the snow.
Here’s a short video of Anna on a walk we took down the entrance road. It was sunny when we left, then it snowed, then it rained. Earlier in the day it had snowed half a foot, by afternoon it was gone. Spring in the Cascade mountains.
This past week my parents were in town. Anna and Milo sure enjoyed having their grandparents around, and I think the feeling was mutual.
For one thing we had a few days of perfect spring weather. We took the opportunity to get out in the yard and set to getting our garden spaces in order. We needed to move the chickens to make way for our spring garden, and our future garden expansion plans. The chickens couldn’t have been happier, as they are now thoroughly enjoying their new patch of grass.
Anna helped out a little bit. In the end though, she ended up wanting to play inside, so she went inside and set up some hugely elaborate game in the living room while we all worked in the yard. You could tell she was happy to have the whole house to herself and to be left alone to do her own thing. We were taking turns going in to check on her, and pretty soon when she heard the sound of someone coming in the back door, she started just yelling out “I’m fine!”.
We got a lot done in 2 short days of work. Got the whole chicken coop and fence moved and a big garden of spring veggies planted. When it starts to get a little warmer, we’ll plant the summer stuff in the other remaining half of the garden, and then we’ll fill in late summer and fall/winter crops as the spring stuff starts to die off. As much work as it is to move the coop and fence, it’s definitely worth it because the chickens make such good garden bed preparers.
The weather turned a bit to the cooler, rainier side for the rest of grandma and grandpa’s visit, and as a result we weren’t out and about taking pictures as much. One of the days I was at work, everyone else went on this hike up in Forest Park.
We all dyed easter eggs Saturday night, and they turned out great this year. We used a bunch of yellow onion skins for the red dye, red cabbage for blue, and watercress and turmeric for yellow. We let them sit out overnight, the colors came through really well. Grandma and grandpa flew back early Sunday morning, so we had to do our morning egg hunt without them. Nicki had made Anna and Milo little easter baskets with a few special treats and handmade gifts, and they were both pretty excited.
Well, that wraps up the photo tour. Hope all’s well with you wherever you might be.
Well I’m finally getting around to downloading our photos for the past month or so. I know that at least a few of you people who read the blog have told me that you check in regularly, and end up waiting and waiting for new posts. Trust me I feel your pain. I evensometimes check in to see if there’s a new post up yet. Just haven’t been making the time for it like I used to I guess. Still, we’ve been keeping busy as usual.
We had Nicki’s folks here for a nice week long visit, and somehow ended up taking exactly one picture the whole time they were here. It’s a good one thankfully. We had a really nice time and Anna and Milo certainly enjoyed their time with Grandma and Grandpa. Anna in particular enjoyed having two new playmates to introduce all of her games to.
We’ve been back at the park quite a bit, enjoying the nice (and not-so-nice) spring weather. Nicki took a bunch of nice photos of the kids one day.
Anna and Milo on the swingset.
Milo really digs the swings.
Anna likes ‘em too.
We recently roasted the world’s largest squash. It was from our CSA..not sure the variety. It was sort of turban shaped, and barely fit in the oven cut in half. It was delicious.
Anna’s friend Nora is in town from Montana for a few days. We went to a party this past Saturday and they had a lot of fun together. There were tons of boys as usual, so Anna was pretty excited to have a girlfriend in the house.
Action photo.
Jamboree.
Anna’s school class put on a “gnome tea party” yesterday. The kids had helped to sew their felt hats and dye their capes, they’d learned songs and made gnome cakes. Anna had been talking about getting ready for it for weeks. We were instructed to wait in the yard and to let the gnomes come find us. They came out singing and Anna was first out the door.
A gnome photo.
I had to get back to work quickly after the gnome party, but Anna still had her gnome hat and cape on when I got home at the end of the day.
And finally, some somewhat recent footage of Milo crawling for you out-of-towners. This is actually a few weeks old…he’s much quicker now.
I had a feeling the blog was overdue for an update once again, so I’ll put up a few recent photos. I’ve got Milo sleeping in my arms tonight, and typing one-handed, so you’ll have to forgive any typos or stilted dialogue.
We’re still getting used to chasing Milo around the house. He’s been crawling now for a few weeks, and he gets around pretty well now. He’s starting to push up onto hands and feet a lot and also starting to pull himself up onto chairs and things too. He’s pretty happy to be able to get around I think.
He’s been playing the piano some. Bangs on it pretty good.
Another piano shot. He really likes all the instruments, and has a little bouncy kind of dance that he does. Usually he wants to just grab at the guitar and banjo if I’ve got them out, but once in a while he and Anna will just get into doing their own thing and I’ll play for them for 5 or 10 minutes.
He’s eating a little more, but not voraciously like Anna did at his age. We gave him some frozen blueberries the other night. He made some sour/bitter faces for a while but I think he liked them in the end. Mostly I think he likes the texture and being able to eat with his hands.
We’ve had our annual February spring fake out of nice weather. It happens every year without fail. I think we hit 65 or thereabouts for a day or two. We took some walks and were pointing out signs of spring. Sunshine, blue sky, crocuses in bloom, buds opening on trees…it was great.
Walking to the park.
Of course, the rains and cold quickly returned. That’s alright though, we can use the rain and it’s still nice to know that spring is nearly here.
We’ll just find ways to entertain ourselves inside in the meantime. Here’s Milo, apparently pretty happy about sitting in a clothes basket.
Anna building some tall block towers in our windowsill this afternoon.
We’ll that’s all the pictures I have for now…I did want to try and see if I can get a video to upload…trying this new method, which will hopefully be easier and more successful than I’ve been in the past. I chose this video to upload kind of randomly. It’s Milo, not really doing much of anything. I had started filming figuring that something exciting might happen, and then he just got really interested in his toys suddenly and didn’t move for a long time. Still, he gives a couple of big smiles, so it seemed worthy of a post. Hope it works.
