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).