discovery park

i've had a little cabin fever this week and know that the beautiful weather can only hold up so long, so this morning, i loaded everyone up in the car and we all drove out to ballard for a visit to discovery park. the trip started well when we got to see the drawbridge go up on the ballard bridge. the girls thought it was pretty amazing and loved watching the huge boat go past. 

i've only been to discovery park once (that i remember) and we got lost several times when i was there, so i really didn't have an accurate idea of what the park was like. i went when i was a teenager and wasn't paying attention to whether it was easy to hike around with kids, so i didn't really know what we were in for as far as that goes, either.  i put jonathan in the wrap, randy had diane in the backpack, and madeleine walked with us.

diane would not look at the camera for randy. she was too busy taking in the scenery.

finally got her.

we took randy's phone with us to take pictures and got to try out the new panorama feature on the camera. i have to admit, i'm pretty jealous of this feature. beautiful park.  

about a third of a mile into it, madeleine started complaining about being tired, so when we came up to a huge sandy area, randy wisely suggested that we maybe just call it good there and let the girls play for a long time. he's good about having realistic expectations of what family outings consist of at this stage in our life.

i really wanted to make it down to the waterfront, so he suggested that i just take jonathan and go on by myself while he stayed with the girls. i took him up on the offer and was glad he had made that call because the trail quickly turned into steeper climbs to get down to the water that would have been pretty miserable with madeleine. she's not the biggest trooper when it comes to hiking, especially when the other kids are getting rides.

jonathan slept through the trip down to the water. this is us down on the south beach. i didn't spend a ton of time there because i wanted to get back to randy (and was super sweaty at this point, being unable to remove the layers that i had so wisely put on in the morning), but someday i want to go back, maybe just randy and me, and see the lighthouse and more of the north beach. maybe the trail down from the north parking lot is more kid friendly. i could probably find this information on the internet...

anyway, more beach pictures:

i got back up to randy and we let the girls play a little bit longer before heading back to the car.

 

 

we told madeleine smile and she quickly struck some very dramatically serious poses for us.

she finally cracked though, and randy was quick with the camera.

we were all starving, so we decided to try out some sandwiches at paseo's. we drove just down the road and ate it at the shilshore bay marina. the pulled pork was amazing, and the sandwich rolls were especially good.

it was a beautiful morning and afternoon, spent with the people i love.

around here

this boy gets bigger every day. he is almost six months old. he drools a ton lately, so i suspect that some little teeth are on their way. i could be wrong though. i'm notoriously oblivious when it comes to my children teething. 

 

a couple of weeks ago madeleine and i stole away during naps to do some blackberry picking. we found some good looking bushes on the side of the road (blackberries are the weed of the northwest) and got to work.

madeleine wanted to take a picture too.

i took them home and made some jam and then also made some mini-pies to freeze in half-pint mason jars. in the past, i've made a berry pie each year, but randy eats one piece and i eat the rest of the pie all by myself. the frozen pies pace me a little bit better. i don't like the ratio of crust to filling quite as much, but they're still pretty delicious.

i needed just a few more berries, so all of us headed out the next day to pick a little bit more. this is my blueberries for sal girl. she thought it was hilarious that i kept calling her "sal."

jonathan just figured out how to really work the johnny jump-up in the last couple weeks and loves it. there's a video of him bouncing around at the end of the post.

these two are pictures from our date night. i generally don't mind breastfeeing my babies, but every once in a while it does cramp your style. having the baby tag along on date night limits you somewhat. at least he's cute.

this is madeleine last sunday, right before the primary program. she had her line all memorized and was ready to go, but they had an adult up there whispering the lines to all of madeleine's class. they're young, and i understand that it gets crazy up there, so it's not easy to keep track of who knows their line and everything, but i was a little sad when i saw that they weren't going to just let madeleine say it because she was excited about doing it all by herself. but then, she got up there and the line that they whispered to her wasn't even her line. madeleine just rolled with it and i just had to laugh.  she sang all of the songs really well, so that made me happy. 

diane is too young to be in the primary program, but wanted her picture taken too. unfortunately, she wouldn't stand still.

 

jonathan just recently found his feet. i love that stage. even if it does make changing diapers difficult.

 

more log boom

even though we try to get out and explore a little with our sunday evening outings, log boom park has turned into our go-to park when we don't have a lot of time or don't want to go too far but still need to get out. 

i think this was from a couple weeks ago and we were getting there just as the sun was setting. my iphone doesn't really do it justice, but it was beautiful. i love the water. 

 

these are from us doing happy and sad faces. mostly we were trying to document diane's frowny face. it's similar to her tiger face. very cute.

canning companions

after posting about canning last week, my cousin, who lives in portland, contacted me with some questions and i ended up convincing her to drive up and do her canning with me. so, last thursday and friday, we had lucy and her daughter, elna, stay with us and we turned 60 pounds of tomatoes into marinara sauce and canned it all.

it was a crazy couple days and my house wasn't exactly put together the whole time, but the kids were surprisingly resilient and lucy and i had a great time visiting. we may have to make it an annual tradition.

i got twenty-two pints and two quarts out of the whole thing, and lucy got twenty-six quarts and two pints. now both of us are stocked up for the year. 

it was so fun to have lucy visit and i'm trying to figure out when we can get down to portland and visit her next.

my three and me