My Nemesis

About a year ago I started an ambitious project.
This project has daunted me. It has made my hands ache. And my head ache. Yet I can't completely give up on it. A couple of times I have shoved it in a bag and stuffed in the back of a closet, hoping it would disappear. But it calls to me, and demands to be finished. So I drag it out and work a little more.

Piece by piece, until the next time my hands and head hurt too much to go on.

For just one day.....

I'd like to live life like Rowan does.

I'd leap with wild abandon.

I'd curl up on the couch reading "Junie B. Jones" books and giggle at the funny parts.

I'd ride my bike around the neighborhood while singing silly made up songs, and not care who heard me.

And I'd rejoice at the fact that who was going to win the Candyland game was my biggest concern of the day.

Then and Now

In my mind my kids and their cousins will always be this sweet little group of kids. Playing and laughing and messing up Grandma's house.

But lately they've started looking awfully grown up. Three of them are teenagers. One of them is leaving for college soon. And I don't like it. Not one little bit.

It happened SO fast!

Seattle in a Day

Lately I've been in the mood to "go somewhere different and see something new". Paul had the wonderful idea to make a quick trip up to Seattle. There is so much to see in do in Seattle. We barely scratched the surface with our day trip.
Our day got off to a cold and foggy start. We could barely see the top of the Space Needle. We walked around the Seattle Center grounds for a bit, but the boys had donuts on the brain so we headed for Pike Place Market.


We decided to take the monorail, which got us within a few blocks of the market. During the ride Fuller entertained me by pretending to be afraid of the monorail


We stopped for a family pic on way to Pike Place Market.


-PIKE PLACE MARKET

We saw the most amazing flowers, for unbelievable low prices.


And beautiful veggies!


But the boys were most interested in the donuts. There is a little stand there that makes mouthwatering little fresh donuts. Here they are ordering their first dozen donuts. By the end of the day they ate almost 4 dozen (they are small after all).


MMmmmm....hot, fresh donuts!


While we were there Grayson and Rowan both got their fortunes from this machine. They had recently watched "BIG", so I think they were expecting something a little more exciting.


- Original STARBUCKS
We're not coffee drinkers, but couldn't resist stopping to see the FIRST Starbucks.


- SEATTLE'S GUM WALL

Pretty much the boys' favorite sight, and my worst nightmare.

While at Pike Place I asked the information guy for directions to the waterfront. He sent us past Seattle's grossest attraction, and told us to be sure to stop and see it.

It was amazing, and gross.



-OLYMPIC SCULPTURE PARK

After a lovely and quite long walk down the waterfront we made it to the Olympic Sculpture Park.
Where we posed with giant eyeballs,


enjoyed the beautiful sunshine that had come out,


and got a good workout on our way up.


The "Giant type writer eraser" was one of the items to help start our conversation of "what IS art?"


Then these three made their own lovely sculpture.





Then there was this bit of art- basically large hunks of rusty metal that Paul got scolded for touching. Not sure what damage Paul's fingers could do that years of rain, sun, snow and pooping birds hasn't, but they seemed very strict about the no touching rule.


- LUNCH AT DICK'S
Yum, yum, yum! (Thanks for the recommendation Washington friends!)

-Our last stop in Seattle was Archie McPhee, which sells a truly amazing selection of weird things. Rowan was most impressed by the odd variety of mints you can buy. They have flavors like garlic, bacon, nacho cheese, onion ring and ranch flavored mints. But in the end he decided he didn't want to waste his money on something that might be gross. He opted for coconut mints and a 75 cent monkey finger puppet. Paul bought all of the boys (himself included) potato guns. We'll see how long those last before I have to confiscate them.


Fuller spent most of his time at the store tormenting me with this demonic doll. The stuff of nightmares for sure!


It was a fantastic day all around! We forgot to visit Bruce Lee's grave, and didn't see any of the museums, zoo or aquarium. I guess we'll have to take another trip there soon!

Cub Scout Day Camp

A place for "manly" pursuits!

This past week Grayson and I had an opportunity to have all kinds of fun together at cub scout day camp. We had a great group of 11 boys go to camp this year. They got along so well, and had a blast together. The only downside was that the mosquitoes were horrible.

BB guns and archery were of course the favorite activities, but the boys also had fun making walking sticks, building birdhouses, working with leather and doing many other crafts.

They also had plenty of active time for tug of war, kick ball, and MANY impromptu games of "Capture the Flag". I think they would have been very happy to just run around and play "Capture the Flag" all day long.



Fuller came to camp with us for two of the days as a helper. I so appreciated him! But I think he got a little tired of taking kids to the bathroom.

It was wonderful to see my boys working together though!

Next year Rowan will be old enough to go too!

One way to keep cool- really big water balloons

A Family Bike Ride

After 13 plus years of waiting, we've finally reached the point where everyone in our family can ride their bike well enough for us to go on some "real" bike rides.

We wanted to go on a ride that was as free of cars as possible. Fuller said he knew a "GREAT" 5 mile round trip course that they ran during track season. Our first mistake was trusting his opinion. Our second was not asking questions about the path. It was a lovely, car free ride, but it had some serious hills to go up and down.
We have since come to realize that Rowan is very afraid of riding downhill and his little legs have a hard time making it uphill. I got to spend a chunk of our ride walking my bike beside Rowan and giving him a pep talk. Tears were shed, but we persevered.


When we hit the midway point of our ride we were rewarded with a lovely stretch of river to enjoy. We rested up while watching kite boarders, and tried not to think about the fact that we were now going to have to go back up and down those same hills to get home.

I'm looking forward to many more of these family adventures, but next time we'll hopefully be on flatter ground.