Short and Sweet Camping Trip

I recently felt a sudden need to show Susanna the stars and tried to throw together a short backpacking trip. But I didn't give Scott enough notice to arrange his experiments such that he could accompany us, so we found a pretty little nook in the Skykomish National Forest right by Skykomish spent a night there, right by our little car.

As you can see from the little photographs on the right, we didn't have a very open site, but there was a little chink of sky on one side, so we could, after all, show Susanna the stars.

We also tried to light a campfire (Scott has forbade me from going into any detail about that on our blog, so I'll leave it at that).

While Scott was tending our marvelous fire and I was washing dishes, Susanna found the chocolate, and was eating her way through our smore supplies. Scott, ever quick, snapped this photo of her.

The next day, we went for a hike to nearby Barclay Lake.

In these photographs on the left, Susanna is reading the trailhead sign to us.

The photograph to the right captures essential Susanna-- singing and jabbering away constantly.

It was such a joy to experience Susanna's happiness and exuberance! (even though it meant getting no sleep that night) She squealed and did somersaults in the tent, she enthusiastically pointed out the ferns, waterfalls, dogs, and everything else she was saw on our hike, and she counted the stars.

My days with Susanna

I sometimes feel like I spend most of my time planning, preparing, eating/feeding, and cleaning up meals and snacks, but we do other things sometimes, and here is a look at what shows up in our schedule every week.

Playgroup. Twice a week three me and two neighbor mothers take turns hosting a playgroup with our three two-year-olds. I'm not going to post a photograph of the three of them together (even though they are adorable), but here's a photograph of Susanna playing with a drum the kids made at a recent playgroup at our place.

The gym. I work one three hour shift per week at a nearby exercise gym (which give me, among other things, free admission to a semi-weekly spinning class), Susanna (of course) comes along. There's no photograph of that, but it's not a terribly exciting thing to see.


Vegetable Box. Once a week we go to Laurelhurst park to play on the playground equipment and collect our box of produce from Full Circle Farm. Susanna loves seeing what we get in the "vegetable box" every week.

The photo of her pulling the pepper out was taken this spring. The photograph on the bottom, is her taking a water break while playing at the park.


Library. One day a week in the afternoon we head to the library. I love libraries for many reasons, but one that comes to mind now is that I have a serious weekness for books and so the ability to borrow a book for free is a life saver for the Hale bank account. You get three photographs of the library because Scott loves the one of her showing me her books but I prefer the one of her reading them on the curb in the parking lot. It's probably because he wasn't there to see her set her book down and get to work as soon as she found a suitable place for it (it was really fun to see). And by the way, Amelia Bedelia has inspired me and I'm going to make a lemon merengue pie on Sunday.

Usually, one afternoon a week we also ride our bikes to Matthew's Beach (well I ride and Susanna sings and reads in the trailer). Unfortunately, I don't have a photograph of the latter, but here's a post about once when the whole family went last summer.

And last, but not least, we are still going to the Union Bay Natural Area (click here for more information), and we make it over at least once a week (whenever our schedule permits).

Doesn't this sound fun? I love my day job (and I'm not talking about the gym day care thing).

A froggy party for our two-year-old

Susanna is two years old now! She was actually two years old when did the last post as well (she turned two on August 21st while we were in England) but we finally had a party for her today. When I first mentioned to her that we were going to have a party she immediately suggested we have a "froggy party." And so we did. We had lunch, made froggy visor hats, played musical lily pads, did a few rounds of ring-around-the-rosie, and then had cake and ice cream.

I'm pretty proud of the froggy cake I made, so I'll give you another view of it.

And here's cute Susanna smiling for the camera before the party.

The party was very fun. And we are so grateful for our sweet Susanna; what a joy she is!

My new eco-friendly haircut

I've gotten a few requests for a photograph of my new haircut. I was planning to post one from the birthday party but, alas, there aren't really any where you can actually see me. But here's one (on the right) that Susanna took before the party.

I don't feel like the person in that photograph looks very much like me, so here's another one taken a few days ago on our deck.

I realize that you can't see all of my hair in this photograph, but this will have to do for now.

I got the haircut in Salt Lake City, on the way back from England (I went there to pick up Susanna). Scott flew straight back to Seattle so he wasn't around and I didn't warn him; I thought the surprise would be fun. I think it backfired because when he came to pick us up from the airport, he couldn't find us even though we were there (maybe he was looking for someone with long hair). I even saw him a few times but before I could gather Susanna and get his attention, he was gone. When we finally did find each other Susanna explained the situation, telling daddy that she was back from Grandma's, and mommy and daddy were back from the long long trip to England, and that mommy's hair broke.

(Eco friendly because showers take 1/3 the time).