Snowy Times Begin

And so begins our winter fun!  Down here in Walla Walla, folks have been giving us mixed reports.  For example, one neighbor told me that "he built an igloo last year," while another friend said that, "we really just get ice build up on the roads"...."Oh maybe 8-10 inches some years but it never really stays around," says another neighbor.  Altogether it really sounded like a cold icy grey winter without the fun of lots of real snow.  Well not to worry we have found the solution to the wishy-washy reports.  Go UP!  Just about 50 minutes away up into the Blue Mountains we found at least 2 feet of snow and 3 Sno-Parks with sledding hills, cross country trails and pure snow fun.  We were practicing for skiing which hopefully starts next weekend.  After a two trial runs, everyone was having fun in the snow and everyone was warm enough to stay out for over 3 hours of snow play.

Keys to success: Lots of Hot Chocolate in the Thermos.  Lots of snacks. And complete coverage for all body parts especially for Dakota. Stuart sewed him a neck gaiter which covered his face where the goggles did not.  This and the insulated snow boots were essential.

100th Birthday and Philadelphia

We went to Philadelphia over the first weekend of November to celebrate Stuart's Grandmother's 100th birthday.  She is really an amazing woman.  We flew in a day early so we could go visit the historical sites in the old city. Wren is going to study the "founding of our country" this year in school, so this visit made a perfect field study for him.  To summarize our visit and his learning he made a movie.  

After Philadelphia, we headed out to Pottstown for the birthday celebration.  Here is Stuart with his grandma, G. G.

An amazing thing to have all your descendents in one room.  This is the birthday dinner-100...WOW!

 Here are a couple of the great photos that captures the crazy cousin chaos (the good kind of course).

Dakota is Writing!

Dakota has started writing.  He wants to write so he ask me to write it and then he copies it!

Saddle Mountain

We drove up a steep rocky 2 mph road to find this view.  This photo is taken looking west from the foothills of the Blue Mountains.  We are looking down on Walla Walla Valley.  And the town of Walla Walla is in the middle of this photo. 

We hiked up the ridge line through the tall grasses to enjoy lunch and a great game of hide and seek.

The light was beautiful and inspired both Stuart and I to try some more artsy photos. 

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!