Grundens

Here are the last of the photos from our trip up to the cabin last weekend. You'll notice the rain gear which the boys also wore for Halloween. Those pants are Grundens which is what commercial fishermen wear. I wish I had discovered them a few years ago because they have given us a new and wonderful sense of freedom in our rainy weather. Seriously, the boys last so much longer outside, they stay dry, warm, and clean. I love it! Also, I bought all three kids neck gaiters which have made a big difference as well and yesterday at REI we got waterproof gloves for them. Isn't it great? Now we can be outside and be comfortable all year long! I had a boyfriend a long time ago that said, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes."

Beck catches some air as he launches his stick.

The boys just can't stay out of the water!

Yogi and I are talking about something and it must be good!

Beautiful Ember.

Ember tries out a stick.

A Weekend Away

It's Sunday night, late and I should be in bed, but Chris and I wanted to get this done while the photos are still so fresh! We just returned from a weekend at the cabin. (It feels like I'm always writing that!). Another wonderful time. We spent one day at the Vancouver Aquarium and one day staying closer to home except for the trip to the beach in our rain gear.

The best part of the aquarium trip was that the place was not at all busy and we didn't get rained on. The worst part was when Chris handed me Ember so he could go use the bathroom. I'm not even sure why he was carrying her, but when he left for a few minutes, she went completely crazy screaming and writhing around. People were looking at us so I put her down and she did this weird sort of elbow crawl between two garbage cans still screaming. So I picked her back up. Chris returned and then she looked over at him, gripped me tighter and said Mama. I don't get toddlers. The rational part of me knows this is just a phase, she'll be fine, blah, blah, blah, but the emotional side of me always feels a little hurt when she's so fierce in her rejection of me. It passes and then we have all kinds of wonderful, sweet moments too. But when she wants to, she can be really awful.

Here are some shots from our aquarium trip:

Now, would you believe that out of all the fabulous sea animals we see at the aquarium - like Beluga whales and their small grey, comma shaped babies, like white-sided dolphins jumping in perfect unison, like bizarre gigantic river fish from the Amazon. Out of all the amazing things we see there, Beck and Yogi have decided their absolute favorite is the Garden Eel. These little guys are about the size of #2 pencil.


Beck and Yogi spent a long time giggling at these blue jellies.

I'm in there somewhere.

Beck watching the dolphins from below.

Yogi.

Ember.

Food

I never anticipated that food would be such an issue when I became a mom. It takes up so much time: breakfast, second breakfast, cleaning up from breakfast, snack packing, lunch (three ways), cleaning up from lunch, dinner planning and prep, dinner which is often met with, "I'm not eating that!" And then there's dinner clean-up, and loading and unloading the dishwasher. And the various food accidents that occur throughout the day. There's all that and then there's all the conversation around it, the whining, begging, refusing, complaining -- the negotiating!

So, I had to laugh the other day when the first words I heard for the day which came from Beck who was laying next to me in bed were,

"Let's start eating!"

Same Song, Second Verse

Time is flying by these days. Each morning I lay in bed and think, well here we go again! My planner is heavy with classes, field trips, new friends, dental appointments, leaf raking, home managment tasks and EMBER which I wrote in all caps since she is SO MUCH WORK right now.

She's learning to feed herself and is pretty determined to do it all by herself (!) so the floor, the table, her chair, and her clothes are all a disaster every time she eats. Today, after I had her all cleaned up, she found Beck's unfinished peanut butter and jelly sandwich and made a second giant smeared mess everywhere. It reminds me of a song we used to sing at camp: Same song, second verse, could get better, but it's gonna get worse!

I guess the most important news right now is that we've met so many wonderful, interesting, fun, and welcoming families in the homeschooling community. It's been a joy. I've planned a little gathering at my house with many of the new moms I'm getting to know and I'm really looking forward to it!

Halloween 2009

And here they are (trick-or-treating at Infospace)! We had two perfectly dressed little fishermen and one beautiful garden fairy. The boys just added the authentic fishing nets to their new rain gear (purchased from a marine and fishing supply store)and they looked like they just got off a fishing boat. Ember didn't really know what we were doing, but she got right into it and had a great time carefully placing candy into her bucket. Later when she noticed the boys actually eating candy, she gave them the funniest look and starting making complaining noises like, "Hey, no fair! Where did they get that candy?!!" Funny!

Beck carved the small pumpkin all by himself and added the details on Yogi's pumpkin on the left. I carved Beck's (the one in the middle which had an impossibly hard rind on it. My wrist still hurts!) I used Beck's drawing as a guide.

Yogi and Beck just before neighborhood trick-or-treating.
Ember peeks out the mail slot while Beck and Yogi ask her for candy!


Trick-or-treating with Chris at work.

Halloween Pumpkins

I think we're experiencing Halloween inflation. We've already been to 2 Halloween parties, (and invited to a 3rd which we didn't attend), we've been trick or treating in costumes at Chris's work and already collected gobs of candy and it's just Halloween today!

We'll hit the neighborhood tonight and I'll post some photos of the kids in costume. Here are some shots of us carving pumpkins - the ones we got at that organic farm a few weeks ago. My right wrist is still throbbing in pain from carving Beck's pumpkin. The rind on that one was more like a layer of formica which made carving it almost impossible. Ouch.

Yogi's Night

This morning Yogi woke up and turned to me and we had this brief conversation:

Yogi: "Boy, that was a tiring night!"
Me: ???? What do you mean? Why was it so tiring?
Yogi: (Giving me an incredulous look...) Because I was so tired!

Mildew Be Gone!

I know this is very "Good Housekeeping" of me, but today I'm sharing a tip with you that worked a miracle on a very stubborn problem: mildew smell in the laundry.

A little background: a little over a year ago I washed a load of towels and then accidentally forgot about them. It's not like I left them sitting in the washer for days, but our washer and dryer share a small room with our furnace and when the furnace is running, the room gets quite toasty. So by the end of the day after washing the towels on hot and then having them sit there in that warm room, they smelled bad -a sour, musty, mildew smell. In the past I've actually thrown out towels or washcloths that end up smelling of mildew because I've never been able to get that awful smell out and there is nothing worse than drying off with a stinky towel. It's gross. But this time it was an entire load of towels -- our good matching towels in the right colors -- not just spare towels we might use for swimming.

So, over the course of the year, each time I use one of those towels I cringe from the smell and then kick myself for making such a stupid mistake. That is until a few weeks ago when I found this tip on the internet which I am now passing to you! It worked perfectly. Here's how you do it:

To Remove Mildew Smell from Towels:

The Vinegar Method
Put your towels in the washing machine, using the hottest water available. Add one or two cups of white vinegar. Do not add detergent, fabric softener, or any other products at this time. Run the washer.
Leave the towels in the washer and wash the same load again just as you would normally with laundry soap. Again, use the hottest water available. Don't use fabric softener or any other products.
Dry the load in the dryer using a high heat setting. Towels should be thoroughly dry when you pull them out. If they're not dry, put them back in, or move them immediately outside and hang them in the sunlight.

That's it. One time and problem solved!

Table-Scrap Tank

I almost forgot this darling little tank:


For building instructions see the link from this blog: MicroBricks

Microscale Legos

"Duck bot"

"Snail bot"


Lately we've gotten interested in Microscale lego construction. It's pretty amazing what people can do with just the tiniest bricks and these don't come as sets. You have to think them on your own. In case you're interested here are a few links:

the brothers brick

or this Lego Microscale Flikr group

And here are a few of my favorites we found on the internet:

Fall Days

Suddenly it's fall. Over the past few days we've had some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen in Seattle. Drenching, loud, rain. We even lost power for a few hours - not because it was windy, but somehow related to that rain, I'm betting.

Yogi is all better. There was one night last week, though, when he couldn't sleep so he found me and Chris and said his stomach felt "weird". And even though he didn't seem sick, we know enough to take any talk about sickness seriously and got him the vomit bucket and a hot water bottle. That's what really gave it away. He was so delighted about getting the hot water bottle, he had a hard time concealing his excitement. After a little while I went in to check on him, leaned down to give him a kiss and noticed that his face was totally hot and red. He smiled sheepishly and told me that he tried the hot water bottle out on his face! What a little nut!

Anyway, we had a nice week. It looks like we sold the subaru today.

Here are some photos of our field trip with some other homeschoolers to an organic farm. We picked apples and pumpkins, took a short hay ride, tried carmel apples and enjoyed the scenery!

Another Few Days Away

We spent most of this week at the cabin again. I just can't help it with this beautiful fall weather. My favorite weather, my favorite time of the year. The first night Yogi got an ear infection so we were up together for many hours and spent the next day at a walk-in clinic in Bellingham. Poor guy. Yogi's had a hard time lately! But the following day we spent back in Crescent Beach wandering the lovely paths on Blackie Spit.

Our time at the cabin is so valuable. It's the only place where the kids get to hear frogs and coyotes at night, where we watch pairs of bald eagles riding the thermals, and hear the strange honking/croaking of the Great Blue Herons as they criss-cross the sky throughout the day. Beck and Yogi even got to hold a little tree frog that they found on the deck. "It feels sticky!" And with the big sky setting we watch the cloud play and the sky colors change, notice the path of the moon and the beginnings of snowfall on the distant mountains. I felt a visceral response in my body as we arrived this time and I walked off my road trance in the fields. It's quiet there. And even with three kids there is a stillness that I can't seem to capture in our life here in the city.


Mom and Ember

We walked along this stream and kept seeing beaver logs. At the end of the walk we spotted their lodge!


In Dunsmuir Gardens...



On Blackie Spit

Our Treetop Adventure

As promised here are a few shots from our day trip to Capilano Suspension Bridge Park in West Vancouver. It was such a thrill!

The photo below was taken from the Treetop Adventure which I think is a relatively new part of the park. We talked a lot about the Ewok scenes from Star Wars because it seemed like just stumbled onto the set.

The Tears are Coming!

Oh my gosh. I'm feeling overwhelmed these days. We just returned from a few days at the cabin where we took advantage of our Nexus passes and day tripped in B.C. a couple of times. And then returned home to a messy house, a mountain of laundry, a computer that is so slooooow that I can't check the 141 emails in my inbox. Oh, and after the few days off, I'm trying to back into a routine with Beck's lessons - a situation that feels pretty fragile anyway. At one point today he said, "Mama, the tears are coming! I'm not sure why, but the tears are coming for real!!" Sigh. (This always brings up my own uncertainty about this path...Am I doing the right thing?!)

But the big news is that today we bought a new car - a new 8 seater Toyota Sienna mini van in Silver Shadow metallic. It smells good, it's roomy and wonderful, but I'm feeling a little guilty about it. It's true: we do need a new car and the mini van makes the most sense, but I'm on this frugality kick lately and after realizing that we can actually fit all three car seats in the back of our little Geo Prism (which gets great gas mileage, BTW) I'm wondering if we really needed so much extra room and luxury. The one nice thing is that we now we can take our little day trips and include extended family which comes up a lot.

So. That's it for now. I have photos so hopefully we'll put those up this weekend.

These Late Summer Days

Well, we're into our second week of homeschooling and for an update about that, head over to the organic learning project, but be advised: it's not feeling so organic these days!

I love these late summer days - still warm and crackling dry, but the light is different - the shadows more stretched out and it's quiet. Ahhhh. No more baseball games, no more summer sports camps in the field adjacent to our house. It's blissfully quiet and we're spending these long afternoons enjoying our home and the yard. The last two afternoons I've spent sewing while the boys play outside.

Things really have changed for us. The boys play so well together and literally spend hours creating various set-ups and scenarios with their legos and all kinds of random stuff they decide to use. One day I see them "driving" my crocs across the room with a load of mini-figs on board and then like today Yogi kept coming up to me and calling me "boss" which cracked me up even though I'm not sure what the story was! We've been having some issues with our aging Subaru and for a few days the mini-figs kept having urgent conversations involving the "engine light!" coming on. It interesting to see how driven they are to play like this.

And so I've had a little more time to keep up with the housework, laundry, and even get some sewing done. Speaking of sewing,I've made two new kinds of bags. The first is a free pattern I got from Quilting Arts Magazine. I love the size and shape of the bag, but I had a very hard time trying to sew the sports zipper around the curve. The directions for that part said, "attach zipper" which wasn't too helpful! I made it as a present for a good friend so if you're Lisa, keep your eyes closed because here's a photo of it!

And the other bag is a pattern I found from a crafter blog called happythings. Now, I love this pattern because it's super simple, quick, and turned out perfect on my first try. I lined my drawstring bags with soft flannel so when the kids open them up and stick their hand in, it's yummy soft. These bags will hold sets of "story chips" which I've been working on lately. You can see them in the photos which we'll post in the next few days.

Other than that, Chris is making progress on our table. The legs are done. He used 6" x6" beams and they're pretty beefy. He also bought some cherry wood to make a contrasting border.

Blackie Spit

Here are a few more shots from the last weekend at the cabin. The first three are from Blackie Spit in Crescent Beach. See, I told you the weather was lovely!

The Work Table

You will never guess what's sitting in our garage right now. It all started when I asked Chris if he could build us a large work table for the basement. It would be really handy for all of our projects and for the kids and for those BIG art set-ups. Our basement space is so large and pretty empty. It just seemed like the right thing for the space.

Soooooo, Chris checks Craig's List and 12 hours later we have a 10 foot long, 4 foot wide piece of old bowling alley lane sitting in our garage. Apparently there are specialized crews for breaking down old bowling alleys and they salvage the heavy wooden lanes and try to sell them to local people who then list them on Craig's List and sell them to people like Chris! It's made out of 2" thick pieces of vertical grain Yellow Pine. This will be a massive table! We'll post photos as it develops.

Last Weekend

The blacksmith at the Heritage Museum made this in front of us and gave it to us to take home.
All three kids wanted a closer look at the various items in the Chinese Herbal Medicine Shop!
Beck and Chris in evening light.
Me and the boys out in the field.
Running in the field.

Easel Painting

Go on over to The Organic Learning Project for photos of the boys painting on the new easel that Chris built. And if you've been following our basement fireplace project, you can have a peek at the final result in the background!

Summer Weekend

We just got back last night from a long weekend spent at the cabin. And thanks to our nexus passes we were able to bypass the typical 3 hour summer wait lines and cruise right into Canada for some fun day trips. This time we visited a living history museum in Burnaby which was surprisingly un-crowded, spent a day walking on Blackie Spit where we got some nice sightings of a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers hammering away on an old snag and soaked up some street music with a side of fries in White Rock. We were lucky to have perfect, balmy summer weather. The kids were happy, we were relaxed. It was lovely all around.

Of course, the day I spent getting organized and packing for the weekend almost killed me. All in a day I:

1. Put in 3 loads of laundy and folded 5
2. Baked bread
3. Opened all the mail and paid bills
4. Sewed 3 bibs with snaps (used the Amy Karol pattern in Bend the Rules Sewing - which I highly recommend!)
5. Packed for myself and 3 kids
6. Made a big batch of macaroni salad
7. Took care of the kids!

Hopefully tonight we'll get some photos of our adventures up here. Stay tuned!