Dakota's Days

I have been lucky to be able to slow down and take some time with Dakota.  We have Tuesday and Wednesday mornings together.  We have no agenda and I have been following his lead on these days.  Lately, Dakota has been very interested in neighborhood walks.  So this week on Tuesday we went out walking.  He noticed that many houses were decorated for Halloween.  We observed and talked about all the different ways to decorate.  His favorite was definitely, SCARY.  He was super keen on getting home so we could decorate our house.  And for the next 3-5 days, he spent all his free time making scary things for our house.  He would get on a roll and make lots of one thing.  We started with fire. and then quickly moved on to ghosts and ghosts and more ghosts.  Then it was a shark in the ocean.  Then skeletons, bats, witches, dragons, clones, vampires, and finally spiders.  So our house as you can see from the pictures is REALLY SCARY!!!!

I was really most impressed by his concentration and determination.  He started out by asking how to draw the thing.  I would show him the essential parts of the scary thing and then he would draw it, cut it out, come get me to give him tape and then go tape it to the window.  And he would do this over and over and over again.   Then he would take a short break but come back with another idea.  "Oh mom, dragons are really scary, we need to draw some dragons."  "Okay," I would say and we would go look for some books with pictures of dragons then talk about how to draw a dragon by looking at what things were in the picture and then he would be off and running on dragon production. 

In addition to completely covering our house with SCARY things, he has a pen pal.  She lives next door.  Her name is Augusta Farnum.  It is the cutest thing.  Almost every day he writes her at least one letter,  sneaks over to her house (by himself), and then puts the letter in her mail slot in the door.   She is the mom at the house next door and every day that he sends her mail she diligently writes him a quick note and sneaks it over to our house.  Here he is mailing her a letter in reply to her sending a note about ants eating her apple.  She wondered where they were taking all the apple pieces.  He wrote back that they were probably taking them to their nest and drew a picture of ants and apple pieces in their nest. 

And here is a great photo of Dakota playing in our front garden.  I asked him to stand here with this amazing bush so I could capture his camouflage.   Oh, happy days with my sweet boy. 

Hiking in the Blue Mountains

This weekend we explored our own "backyard."   We had a great family day starting with Klicker's Pumpkin Patch. 

 Here we all are having fun picking our pumpkins and sliding down the giant slide.  What fun!

Then we headed to our closest mountains, the Blues (The Blue Mountains).  Up Mill Creek (the creek that runs by out house), we followed the road until it turned to dirt.  Then followed that up the mountain looking for a trailhead and a hike.  What we found was a surprisingly nice day in the mist where the sun would peak through and then the mist would come swirling back in.  Here are Dakota and Wren enjoying the misty day.

Here you can really see the mist that surrounded our hike.  We were all a little bit chilly not realizing that it would be quite so cold.  But we hiked to keep warm and got to munch on some wild blueberries along the way.

At the end of our hike we found this amazing tree completely covered with old man's beard. 

After the hike we headed back down the mountain to the Corn Maze.  A good maze with an underground tunnel and a bridge. Super fun!

31 Flavors and Stuart Update

Today the boys got their first taste of Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors.  It clearly does not live up to Clumpies standard which sets the bar so high, I am not sure how to begin to reach it except to start my own ice cream shop...hmmm... a thought...but not today. 

So here in Walla Walla, we have more limited choices.  And I am still working on discovering them.  Tonight we visited an old standby from my college days.  Baskin Robbins: home of the 31 flavors (48 really).  Of course because it was ice cream, the boys loved it.  And for me it was not bad. 

BUT:  Have you ever noticed that in some ice cream shops, when there is a flavor that does not get eaten very often, it sits around in the freezer catching little bits of the flavors of all the other (48) flavors in the freezer with it?  Well that was the main reason for my less than yummy experience.  Once I got in to the real scoop, the ice cream was okay.  Not a bad flavor and pretty good texture. 


Here are some funny pictures of us at the ice cream shop.

 And just in case you are wondering if Stuart is liking his job...see below.  This is just another day in the outdoor program office.  Two students on the left, Stuart in the green, and Lish, his partner in the "Stuart and Lish show."  This is a trial run of the new goggles used for learning to kayak roll in the pool.  Oh happy days!

Lucky Day: Airplane Ride with George the Pilot

On their way back to Napa, George and Linda, stopped here for an overnight.  In the morning, we all got a treat.  Airplane ride!  Wren was in the co-pilot seat with Stuart, Dakota, and Heidi in the back.  George took us up into the air and Wren did a little flying while we were up there.  We headed up to the Blue Mountains for a big loop and then down to the Columbia River to the Wallula gap.  We all were super excited to get the aerial view of our new home. 

Wren and George getting ready for take off!

Dakota looking down on Walla Walla.

Blue Mountains

Wren in just finishing his flying!

Dakota and Heidi listening to the air traffic control tower talk to us about landing.

Salmon River

The Salmon River is in Idaho about a 3 1/2 hour drive from our house to the put in.  We were scouting this for our future visitors and enjoying a weekend away from Walla Walla. 

The Salmon River is a rare undammed river for most of it's beautiful river miles.  Wild and Scenic they call this type of river.  It is as all rivers should be.

We left Friday afternoon around 4:30, arriving at the put-in at 8:30 having had dinner on the road.  It was dark but with headlamps we managed to unload and rig much of the boat.  This included pumping up the raft, attaching the oar rig, as well as putting in the cooler, and dry boxes.  Off to bed by 10:30.  Up early, 6:30 AM, with a very excited family.  Packed up our dry bags, finished loading and rigging the raft and off we went!

 We had 2 days on the river to go a total of 10.9 miles which allowed us to stop at every beach or rock the boys were curious about.  So here was a steep sandy hill which occupied their energy for most of 30 minutes...up...down...up...down...climb up...slide down on the belly...head first, feet first....fun fun fun!

 Further downstream, we found a note on the river map that mentioned some petroglyphs on river right.  We stopped and found them.  Beautiful but not quite like the ones we have seen in the Southwest. 

After that, I have to just giggle at myself (reflective giggle as hindsight is 20/20).  Let me start by saying that gear boats are not kayaks.  Gear boats are heavy and both move and respond slowly to given commands.  So despite my best effort, the gear boat did not do what I told it to do.  (Now I have done a bit of rowing in the past but not a lot, mostly kayaking.)    So, I was taking this experience as a learning experience.  Seize the day so to speak.  Out into the swift current I rowed expecting the raft to behave like a big kayak.  But no.  Around we spun and headed right toward the rock wall I was trying to avoid but into which all the water flowed.  The giggle part is that this was really a mellow class 2 rapid but my anxiety level for those few (very safe) moments was at class 6.  Silliness and all was just fine in the end.  We bumped into the rock wall, bounced back into the current and headed downstream.  All was well.

 After a few more rapids, lunch and lots of river fun, we arrived at camp.  The camp was a sweet little spot with an awesome sand hill which Dakota and Wren must have gone up and down 100 times.  Sand was ground into every part of their bodies.  (2 days later I pulled sand out of Dakota's ears).

We love multi-day rafting trips for many reasons.
Time in the wilderness setting
River Travel
Birds
White Sand Beaches
Time without the distractions of life
Time with each other
Views
and last but not least
River Kitchens and Cooking
because you can take everything you want.  We had the deluxe set up.  Two burner coleman stove, table to avoid sand contamination, fresh salsa made on the river, plates, bowls, forks and spoons...DELUXE.

  

Stuart in the kitchen with a view.

 Dakota eating burritos!  Side note: the necklace is from a "gem" he picked out at the gem and mineral show.

And then the tent time! The boys are liking having their own tent.  They were so cute, snuggled in to their beds reading and playing cards.

 Camp in the morning.

 We all slept well at night despite a few rain showers that woke us up briefly.  The morning was relaxing and lovely. After a yummy breakfast of hash browns and eggs, we packed up camp, packed up the raft and headed down stream.  We only had about 3 miles to the take-out where we had paid for shuttle service to bring our car.  We loaded up the borrowed mini-van, ate some lunch, and headed for home.  We got back in a land speed record  of 3 1/2 hours (because of no stops or traffic not because of speeding).

Reflection: The pack/unpack for this trip took 10 hours all together.  Plus 7 1/2 hours of driving.  That makes for 17 1/2 hours of work for...  hmmm....38 hours of pure pleasure... Definitely worth the work.  And next time it would go quicker.  But the other reflection is that for 2-3 hours more effort, we could easily have spent 7 days on the river.  So next time we are planning for a long trip.

Linda, George and the perfect night

My mom's cousins, Linda and George, stopped by on Sunday night for a quick overnight.   George is a pilot, so they landed their little Cessna at the airport here in Walla Walla.  A quick, "we've landed!" call and off I go to pick them up.  The airport is about 7 minutes from the house.  In the we've landed call they asked what kind of car I drove because they had a lot of stuff.  I wondered to myself what they could have that was so big for just staying overnight.

When I got to the plane...WOW!  VEGGIES.  67 ears of corn, 3 boxes of tomatoes, and 2 gallons of green beans.  Plus their luggage and best of all George's accordion.  Home we went with a car full of veggies.  We processed and ate at least 47 ears of corn in the last 2 days. YUM.  Lot's went in the freezer for winter soups and lot's went to our bellies!

Sunday Dinner = locavore feast
Grilled Zucchini and Summer Squash (From our garden)
Garlic, Sesame, Ginger Green Beans (Beans from Linda and George's Garden and Garlic from our garden in Tennessee, harvested before we left)
Salt Potatoes (From Welcome Table Farm)
Cucumber, Tomato Basil Salad (From our garden and Welcome Table Farm)
Grilled Corn (From Linda and George's Garden)

Dessert
Blueberry Peach Crisp (Blueberries picked at local U-Pick farm, Peaches from an orchard that comes to the farmer's market each week from about 1 hour away)
Homemade Ice Cream (From local milk and cream)

Here is the dinner scene with George playing accordion in the background.  We spent a lovely afternoon cooking together in the kitchen enjoying the garden bounty.  After an amazing summer meal, George pulled out his accordion and serenaded us for the next 3 hours while we ate dessert, cleaned up the kitchen and put the boys to bed.  I felt like I was taken to a little french alps farm for the evening. 

This morning we got up and sent the boys to school.  Stuart had worked all weekend so he took the morning off and did a downtown walk with Linda, George, and I.  We stopped at the Walla Walla Bread Company for second breakfast of croissants and bread pudding.  Getting back to the house around 9:30 we loaded up the car and headed for the airplane.  Off they went, headed up to Couer d' Alane, ID to visit with some more cousins.  


Here we are in the bakery.

Here we are stopped on our walk to look at a cool way of using old wine barrel stays as a wall/bar.  Plus our reflection in the mirror behind the counter made a neat picture.

Grandma, Grandpa and Soccer

 Off to the game.  Soccer season has started and if I had any hesitation about being labeled a "soccer mom"  I think that I better throw those out because the league here is all about soccer momming.  And it is full on.  So, we are fully embracing the experience.   Wren is playing in the U12 league and having a great time.  He is playing with full enthusiasm for the game as well as during practice. My Mom and Peter arrived on Friday to stay for a long weekend and have been enjoying getting to know Walla Walla.  We enjoyed watching the soccer game while sitting in the shade of a little tree visiting.  Lovely morning.  After the game we headed down to the farmer's market to pick up some veggies.  Lots of yummy farmer's dinners this weekend.