Thursday, October 24, 2013

randy's parents visit


randy's parents came to visit a couple weeks ago for the weekend and i'm finally getting around to posting some pictures from the weekend.


 we met up with them in north bend at the riverbend cafe on friday afternoon for lunch. randy and his parents had been there before but i hadn't and it was fantastic. there was hardly anyone there, so we enjoyed a nice, quiet lunch with excellent food (their parsley fries were perhaps the best fries i've ever had).

not pictured are five hours of applesauce making. while randy was teaching lessons on friday afternoon, jeanie, bob, and i (but mostly jeanie and bob) canned about 40 pints and 21 quarts of applesauce. not much of a vacation, but jeanie insisted that she wanted to do it with me. it is so much easier to do it with experts and makes it much more enjoyable. i'm sure randy didn't mind missing out on the process.

on saturday morning, we headed out to golden gardens in ballard to see the puget sound. we had bundled up, but it was even colder and windier than we thought it would be, so we didn't last too long there. mostly, we walked out on the pier for a couple minutes and then walked back to the car. 



a panorama looking out toward the sound.


a panorama looking back at the land.



the fall colors were beautiful this weekend. our drive to and from north bend was especially enjoyable. i'll have to remember that next fall if we're looking for a scenic fall drive.


the girls were grouchy the whole time at golden gardens (it really was quite cold), but jonathan was thrilled about the whole experience.




after golden gardens, we decided to try out discovery park. we got a parking pass to drive down to the lighthouse and explored the beach for a while.









once again, jonathan was in heaven.



even though it was kind of cold (although not as bad as golden gardens), it was beautiful.









one more panorama (can you tell i like this feature on my phone?).





 the girls did better here and loved finding shells on the beach.



i didn't take any more pictures the rest of the weekend, but we enjoyed a dinner out without the kids to celebrate randy's 30th birthday and spent time together and with randy's aunt and uncle and cousin's family on sunday.

come back soon!

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

the farm at swan's trail


madeleine doesn't have school this week because of parent/teacher conferences, so one of the moms in her class arranged a "field trip" to a farm a little ways north of us. the farm was in a beautiful setting and the drive up there was beautiful - up highway 9 and then along an idyllic road that wound along the snohomish river, surrounded by farmland.

because we were a school group, we got a package deal for $6 per kid, which included a hay maze, the play area, petting the animals, a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch, a pumpkin to take home, and some ice cream.


at the end of the hay maze, which went through the barn and ended up in the loft, there was a big slide that the kids could go down. madeleine went through the maze several times. 


diane, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the hay maze. she parked it in the stroller and waited.


 she finally got out to look at some ducks with jonathan. he kept blowing raspberries at them, which is his generic animal sound right now (the elephant).




diane did finally decide to go through the maze, but when she got to the top was too scared to go down the slide, so i had to go in and get her. i predicted that that was exactly what would happen. 


rubber duck races in the play area. 




an obligatory (blurry) tractor picture of each of the kids. 

 



this was on the hay ride. we all got to sing a song about keeping our bottoms on the bales while it was in motion and then we were off.






 

jonathan's latest thing is giving hugs. he especially likes to do it when the girls are upset (which drives diane crazy). both of the girls were whining about how cold they were (we had left the coats back at the stroller, which i couldn't bring on the hayride), so jonathan kept trying to give them hugs. i told diane that if she stopped whining, jonathan would stop trying to make her feel better.


an attempt at a group shot.

 

searching for the perfect pumpkin. which took all of about two minutes and then we got to wait another twenty minutes in the cold for the tractor hayride to come back and pick us up. the girls were cold and whiny and jonathan was running wildly all over the pumpkin patch, tripping repeatedly and falling in the mud. as a side note, we were the only four people in our entire group (adults included) that were not wearing rain boots. we don't own any, except in jonathan's size, and i'm pretty sure that would have only contributed to more tripping.



more hugging. even though i tried to curb the whining because it was annoying, i can't really blame them too much. it was cold, i had forgotten their coats, and we waited for a long time in a muddy bog for a tractor to come and get us. i wasn't too thrilled at this point, either. 


as another aside (this post has more comments from me than usual. sorry), someone would look at my photos and think that i am incapable of paring them down because i will have two pictures (or more) that look pretty identical. you would think i should just pick the one that looks best, but if they have more than one kid in them, i think "i should keep this one for madeleine, and this one for diane." and so, i have lots of nearly identical photos on my computer. does anyone else do this? 


see? better of diane. but really, the only thing that is different is where their eyes are looking. 





standing in a sea of ten parents all trying to get a group shot. usually i'm tall enough in a group of moms that i can just stand in the back and still get the shot, but this was an unusually tall group of moms and there were several dads, who were also tall.


jonathan didn't get to pick a pumpkin (i didn't pay for him), but i kept thinking i was going to have to buy a broken one because he kept picking them up and throwing them like they were balls. thankfully, he is low to the ground and they were resilient pumpkins. 




after the hayride they got dreamsicles (because that's just what you want on a crisp, autumn day) and my kids were begging to go home at that point. i'm glad that my kids have about the same tolerance level for these things as i do. the sad thing is, randy actually loves pumpkin patches, farms, and corn mazes in the fall and if they had picked any other day of the week, he would have been able to come with us (making my life much easier), but wednesday happens to be the only day of the week he has early lessons. 


i did get one last shot of diane and jonathan as we were leaving. madeleine refused. 


and then there are times when i have nearly identical pictures of the same child. no good excuse here, i just thing they're both cute.  

 

 saying goodbye to the farm.


congrats on making it through my ramblings.