Heat Wave

We arrived back from our vacation to a Seattle in the midst of a heat wave.  If you can call it that.....it got into the 90's for several days in a row.  I called it delightful.  (After living in Tallahassee, Oahu, Charleston and Durham, it's going to take a bit more than that to phase me, Mr. Weatherman......)  Of course, I talk big game, but I must admit that it never gets that hot down here in our little valley.  The trees keep our house nice and shaded and since the bottom half of our house is partially in the ground, The Treehouse stays relatively comfortable in the heat.  As a matter of fact, it was so nice in our valley, that on Monday, we decided not to leave it at all.  We took our "hike" in Yost Park and played in the creek to cool off.

However, we all knew it couldn't last.  On Tuesday, Mr. Weatherman told us that it might be the last day we reach ninety for the rest of the month of August.  Well, we couldn't let our last hot day simply pass us by could we?  I've been meaning to take the kids up to the Willis Tucker Spray Pad in Snohomish for a bit since everyone I've talked to loves it.  And I must say, it did not disappoint.  As you can see, Marsh and Josie had a great time running through the "prinklers".

And the added bonus to this trip is that Little Ms. Thing (who is SOOO diva-two lately it's not even funny...actually it is funny once you step back and realize you are in a battle of wits with a girl who still barely has any hair, but I digress), totally zonked out once we got home.  So much so, that I had to call it at about 4:30 and go in her room to wake her up (since the kids normally go to bed at 7:00-ish, a 4:30 nap is LATE).  And this is what I saw:

Oh, goodness.  She's still my angel baby.  I needed to see that.

(Side note:  Today after nap she informed me that the Miffy bunny, with the orange dress in the top center of the above picture, was the Mommy and that Froggy (stuffie numero uno and in her arms in the adove picture) and Ducky (not pictured) were the babies.  She had to stay in bed a bit after she woke up to finish playing.  Adorable.)

What I learned on my summer vacation.....

(Goodness, has it really been since July 29th that I have blogged? Dear me.....all our readers will abandon us!)

We just got back from our fabulous summer vacation to Eastern Washington in OUR TRAILER.  Oh my, I don't know how we camped without it.  And "camping" might be a stretch.  Will and I started referring to it as our moving hotel room.  But, oh, how we loved it.  And so did the kids.  It's like vacationing with just a piece of your own home.  The piece that has all the fun stuff you need (beds, fridge, games, bikes, comfy chairs, stove, potty, etc.) and not all the stuff you want to leave behind (to do lists, bills, budgets, house projects, laundry, cleaning toilets, etc.).

Here was our itinerary:
Sun- Indian Rock....er I mean, Lincoln Rock State Park (this is funny because I continually refer to it with gusto as Indian Rock....even to Park Rangers we met later on in the trip)
Mon, Tues- Steamboat Rock State Park, near the Grand Coulee Dam
Wed, Thurs- Riverside State Park, near Spokane
Fri, Sat- Potholes State Park, near nothing but a huge man made lake

And I think it would be boring to rehash all of our adventures ( must less WAY too much work for me), I'll share with you all what exactly I learned on my summer vacation.

1) We LOVE hook-ups.  We went straight there.  Wimps. I like not worrying about water or how long the battery will be charged.  Hey, let's not pretend we are roughing it here by any means.

2) We like grassy campgrounds.  Almost all of our campgrounds were on a body of water created  by some sort of dam.  Thus lots of irrigation water....thus, grass. Which is fabulous.  Because our two kids see sand  or dirt and they immediately start bathing in it like chinchillas. Seriously.

See that thing that looks like a dog by the green tent.  It's a deer.

3) The New Deal was wonderful for Eastern Washington.  Okay, for not those people who had already settled on the Columbia, per say, but for everyone else, FABULOUS.  Dams galore have made rolling farmlands out of the High Plains and pretty much every where else near the Columbia River.  And have made fabulous lakes for people to play on.  I'm pretty sure that's what FDR was going for.  "Someday, a man with a speed boat and a cooler full of Bud Light is going to thank you Civilian Conservation Corps! Keep up the good work."

4) If you are building a town from scratch, go ahead and start with brick.  It'll save you some time.  (I can't tell you how many town histories we read that said something like "After the Great Fire of 1903, the entire town burnt to the ground.  They rebuilt using brick to prevent future fires.")

5) Washington is WAY more than the picture us silly New Englanders get in our head.  We went from the Sound, to forests, to the Cascades, to the desert-y Coulees (AMAZING high walled canyons.....very similar to the Grand Canyon) to the High Plains (which really are HIGH and FLAT.....like Kansas but WAY above sea level) to a totally different kind of forest near Spokane and back to the dry farmlands.  We were all in awe.  Washington is a completely beautiful place.  (Clearly, Edmonds is still the best though.  I don't want you questioning my loyalties.)

My Birthday Hike to Steamboat Rock

6) We love Washington State Parks.  They rock our face off.  Really.  Clean, nicely managed, hook-ups.  I gave myself the mission of visiting each and every Washington State Park.  And then I looked at the map and saw how many there are just on the coast (like, more than 15 just in that small area).  We'll just do as many as we can given that......

7) We need to pick only a couple of places to camp per vacation.  We did accomplish our goal of really getting to see Eastern Washington, but toward the end we were getting really tired.  We have now established a 3 night minimum for the Roberts Family.

8) Small cities are the best for traveling with little kids.  We had a blast in Spokane.  (Yes, we went on our family vacation to Spokane. Doesn't everyone?)  In Riverfront Park, they some amusement rides, a fountain the kids could play in, a sky tram to look at the Falls, a train ride around the park, and a carousel.  Now, yes, it was all a bit cheese, but for a 4 and 2 year old, it was the best day ever.  Ending in Popsicles.  And then we got to go back to our campsite ON THE RIVER.  Yes, it was marvelous. We highly recommend Spokane.  Next stop: Walla Walla! Yakima! Tacoma! The possibilities are endless....well not really, but we can always move onto the forgotten small cities of other states.

Our fabulous day at Riverfront Park

9) Everyone should eat ice cream for dinner one night per year.  I started my 32nd year off right by gorging my self on an ice cream sundae and doing laundry so I could have clean underwear.  Does life get any better? I highly doubt it.

They even shared ice cream.  It was a birthday miracle. (Please ignore empty Sundae bowl.  No, I did NOT eat all that ice cream.  That would be completely un-ladylike.)

10) Everyone should also see where their electricity comes from.....especially if it's from a really cool hydroelectric plant made possible by an enormous dam.

11) End with a bang and know when to call it quits.  On Saturday at Potholes, Will rented us a little fishing boat to see the lake.  We picnicked on one of the numerous sand dune-y islands created from the hills on the land that was flooded by the reservoir.  It was so much fun.  As a matter of fact, when you ask the kids what their favorite part was, they both say "The Boat" (well, Josie says "helping Daddy drive the boat").  But at the end of that day we came back to the trailer and knew it was time to go home.  We packed up despite the fact we had reservations for one more night and we were in Edmonds by 9:00.  And we had all of Sunday to recoup before the work week began.  Perfection.

Josie was so tired that she slept in my arms the entire boat ride there and then slept on Daddy for the first part of the picnic.

12) Blog in bits throughout vacation.  This long blog thing is exhausting.  I'm tired. Are you? 

I promise to be more consistent from here on out........how many times have I said that?

Blessing in Disguise

This may very well be a blessing in disguise!  I forgot how easy it is to blog using my little net book.  I don't like downloading pictures to it because I don't want to clog up it's tiny memory, so I wasn't using it as much. But DUH, I can just connect it to our portable hard drive.  In any case, I just took this of the kids and can blog right away while they play by themselves in peace.  (Yeah right, M's "sitting on my lap" right now asking about a million questions. He really wants to see himself on the computer. Vanity thy name is Marshall.....)

In any case, I wanted to show you what I'm talking about when I say M's body shaped has changed and his activity level is WAY up....

He's also still an outrageous ham.  He's got a song for EVERYTHING.  Look for him at the Tony's in 20 years.

And check out the Jo-ster.  Listen to what we've been working on......

Pee Pee in the Pot-TAY!

Maybe we should start a family band?  (For those of you with weak bladder control like myself, please sit down, because the end might make you pee your pants.....)

As you can see, while the activity level has increased, coordination is still something we are working on.

Technical Difficulties

Dear Blog Readers,

We are currently having major techinical difficulties with our desktop computer resulting in a stop on blog entries until we fix this situation (by buying a new computer......next month.  Because this month WE WILL BE OUT OF CREDIT CARD DEBT!!!!!! So we will revel in that for a month before we go back into it and buy a new computer. :))  Basically we installed Windows 7 and our old computer decided to break in weird and unusual ways.  (Feel free to start chanting, "I told you so!" right now, Uncle Joe.)

I just want you to know that although I am reveling in the lazy days of summer, there is another reason why blog posts have been infrequent.

love
Official Cat Herder of the Roberts Family Inc.

Better wear your safety helmet......

It's a dangerous world out there.  Josie insisted I wear my safety helmet while cooking the other night.  You know, just in case......

 And just so you think that I am feeding my kids healthy food all the time (since I am making kale chips with my saftey helmet on.....and, while they sound weird, they were DELICIOUS.....Thanks for the advice Erin!), I'll show you what I concocted for breakfast the other day with our leftover brown rice.

Brown rice, milk, raisins, walnuts, cinnamon, maple syrup, and vanilla. SOOOOOO good.  Thanks Bethenny.  Who knew you were actually a chef? (Although I'm not sure getting videos of yourself posted on the internet making breakfast realistically qualifies you as a chef, but we'll go with it.) And yes Mom Roberts, we are finally using REAL maple syrup.  After reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, I am really trying to eliminate corn syrup and use as much "real food" as possible.  After all these years.....I know...I know.....mmm....now I am hungry for something sweet.  I better get these kids to bed so I can have some dessert. :)

Skagit Valley Wilderness Area

(Ooops...since this week is almost over, I better get a move on and post about last weeks' adventure and hike eh?  And I will go ahead and admit that we did not do an experiment last week.  No one is perfect.)

We headed out to the Skagit Valley Wilderness Area one bright and shiny morn last week.  The hike promised to be completely flat, around the water, and have berry stands on the way home.  Perfection!

Except for the whiner.....I swear, maybe I should just take him up a mountain every time we hike because he seems to do much less complaining there.  And they are such nerdy whines too. Lately most whining centering on hiking has been related to a lack of "science tools".  I blame that dang Nature Center in Austin.  Now he expects every place we go to hand him a fanny pack filled with cool stuff.

Here's Mr. Whine with one of his aforementioned "science tools."  Hmmm....maybe if you have to wear a hat to keep the sun out of your eyes, a headlamp is unnecessary.  But hey, he looks cute and it makes him happy, so who am I to point that out?

But after our initial whine fest (where I decided that walking away would be the best policy and Marsh decided being alone and whining was not nearly as fun), we settled in and had a pretty decent hike.  We saw lots of birds including some big beautiful herons and even a beaver (okay it probably WASN'T a beaver but my ID skills are low and it was beaver-esque.  And Marshall really wanted it to be a beaver. And as my mom says, it's your story, you can tell it any way you like.)

This was one of about five herons we saw.

Mr. and Mrs. Heron's nest

A road less traveled

G Free

So without getting too much into it, M's doctors have been a bit worried about his growth rate and metabolism for some time.  After a full six months of really concentrating on increasing activity, making sure his diet was full of whole grains, etc., and watching portion sizes, it was not improving at all and was actually getting a bit worse. Add to that the DAILY battles we had about food ("I'm hungry" "You CAN'T be hungry you just ate a bunch.  You are just bored." or "Drink some more water"), and I knew that we were on the brink of a very unhealthy situation.

Anyway, it was becoming more of an issue than we'd like it to be and we started searching for some alternative routes to help us get it under control. I read a lot about gluten intolerance and how in some people gluten causes weight gain, mood swings, inactivity, skin problems, a persistent feeling of being hungry, etc.  (I am not talking about Celiac Disease here.  It's related but on a completely different playing field.)  In any case, I felt like the symptoms were similar to what Marshall was going through.  (However, I also recognize I have a four year old and lots of these things are par for the course. :))  We went to a naturopath for some guidance, and while she referred us to a program at Children's Hospital, she also said to go with gluten free if we thought it was something our family could do.

And so we jumped in head first about two weeks ago.  (Which can be the excuse to why I haven't really been blogging because I have been reading all I can about living gluten free, but really....I'm just a procrastinator)  So far, it hasn't really been that difficult.  I realize that we are clearly still in the Honeymoon phase and that Marshall isn't in school either, so monitoring his diet isn't really that challenging, but really, it hasn't been that huge of a deal.  Ready made gluten free bread is out of this world expensive and not super great for you, so I have started making our own.  (Which sounds super Martha Stewart-y, but is honestly not that difficult) and we've found lots of alternatives to our usual wheat-based carbs.  Fruits (dried and fresh) and nuts have become major parts of our diet, but other than that, not too much has changed.


And we can ALREADY see a difference.  Marshall is so much more active and looks so much healthier.  Yes, we have discussed that it might be because we have started eating healthier or that Marshall is swimming almost everyday (which he has been doing since June), but heck, who cares!  If it takes us going gluten free to maintain this lifestyle, than so be it!  We are just so thrilled that we are all living healthier and the food battle is dwindling! Hooray!  See you later Gluten!