"A Fair-E-Tail"

September brings with it cooler temperatures, the end of harvest, and the local fair. Our little county fair might be small but the kids still think it is action packed! We went down one afternoon and checked out all the animals. Lola loved the chicken barn and especially enjoyed getting to pet one of our friends' chickens. Rowan really liked the rabbits and the pigs. We grabbed our traditional burger, and then hit the rides. Lola had a blast on the roller-coaster and the helicopters. Both kids got to play a carnival fishing game, and won little stuffed prizes. At the end of the day, we got a funnel cake and the kids played in the lentil pit.





We should have known that something was wrong when Rowan didn't scream, cry and tantrum as we pulled him out of the lentil pit. When we got home he was extra clingy. I took his temp and it was up to 104. Ack. Turns out the little guy was getting the flu. That was on a Thursday. I got to deal with a very sick and cranky toddler all weekend. Poor little man was so sick! He got over it without too much trouble though, and things headed back to normal on Monday.

That Monday Lola got to go back to preschool. She went all last year, despite being the youngest in her class and did great! This year we told her she could go full time, which is 3 hours a day, 4 days a week. She gets to ride the bus, which is very exciting.



Lola's first day was great. Unfortunately, that night she sprung a fever on us, and was out for the next two days, missing class picture day. Bummer! So finally on Thursday, both kids seemed healthy and Lola went back to school. I went back to work. The next day we went to the other local fair, and the kids danced and danced to the old time music. They didn't care that they were the only ones dancing, and the musicians even cheered them on!

Finally, our week ended with the local town parade and little festival. Lola got to ride in the firetruck with Daddy, and Rowan got to hold his buddy Ivy and watch the parade. We had some yummy food, saw lots of friends, enjoyed the ping pong ball drop, and had a really great day overall. To add to the excitement of the day, Lola won the duck race! We don't have her prize yet, but I hear it was quite a bit of cash!









To give me a little time to clean the house, I filled the wading pool with warm water and added bubble bath. Instant outdoor bath! It kept the kids busy for an hour, as they enjoyed one of the last warm days of the season.



Sunday brought with it a surprise of sorts. I was surfing the web, looking at puppies (because that is what I do, you know) and discovered a chihuahua breeder in a nearby city. We packed up and took the short drive to check them out. Long story short, Ivy will be getting a "baby Daddy"! I chose a little 2 day old male pup. He will be ready in November. I know, I know, crazy cat lady is doubling as crazy chihuahua lady. Oh well! With that, I am off to bed. Seems that the kids kicked the flu just in time to catch a cold, and they were so nice to share it with me.

Vacation, Baby!

Well, we haven't been on a real vacation since I was a fourth year vet student, about 5 years ago. That was a quick trip to Hawaii, which was blissfully relaxing. Things are a bit different with kids, I have discovered. I was quite thankful for the minivan when I started packing, late as usual, the night before. We managed to pack everyone's stuff with enough room for Gramma, who was going to ride with us on the first leg of our journey.

We left the house at 8:00 am, which was pretty good, considering our goal was 7:00 am.

"Do you have all the passports?" Wil asked, 15 miles into the trip.

"Yeah, I picked them up from the saftey deposit box two weeks ago," I replied, opening the glove box to check that they were all in order.

"Shit." I said, realizing that Wil's passport was not in the envelope, just mine, and an old one of mine.

After 30 minutes of sheer panic and a trip home, Wil found his passport on the table next to the bed. Arg.

Back on the road, we headed for Penticton, BC, to watch my cousin run the Ironman. She was attempting to qualify for the big race in Kona. The trip was pretty easy, with surprisingly few potty stops. We breezed through the border and got to our Osoyoos hotel in the late afternoon. When we checked into our room, there was already luggage in there. The hotel had double booked our room! The staff were so flustered by their mistake that they put us up in an amazing suite just down the hall. It had a bedroom, kitchen, livingroom, and nice bathroom, plus a balcony overlooking the water. Awesome!!! We dropped Gramma off with my aunt, and quickly settled in for the night and prepared for the next day of cheering.

We got up early for the race to get a good spot along the bike route. We cheered and waved as my cousin and her friends zipped by, then we drove to Penticton to find a spot along the marathon route. We met up with Gramma and my aunt in front of a fast food joint, which proved to be both a saving grace and a horrible diet buster. We stayed on the same 6 foot patch of sidewalk with both kids for about 3 hours! They did awesome, although it was a bit of a challenge with Rowan as he is at that in between age where he isn't too happy being contained, but has no regard for his own personal safety. He spent most of the time in the stroller, and actually only fell apart once. We cheered on our racers again, and packed up for a break. The kids were so tired they fell asleep in the car, so we drove to the finish line and found a great shady place to park. After they woke up we walked to the final cheering spot and again cheered the tired racers on as they came into the final mile of the race. After swimming 2 miles, biking over 100 miles, and running 26 miles, they were still amazingly chipper. After dealing with two very tired children in the hot sun, sitting in one place for almost 6 hours total, we were surprisingly chipper too.




The next day we headed back to the States. Before crossing the border, we stumbled upon a tiny train museum. It was a huge room, bigger than our living room, filled with tiny model trains, planes, people, pets, and cars, all blessedly behind thick clear glass. The kids loved it! They probably could have stayed there all day, following the trains across the rooms, in and out of tunnels and over the hills. Rowan especially loved the tiny sheep and cows grazing on the green plastic grass.

Playing with trains wiped the kids out and they slept all the way from the border to Leavenworth, our next stop. The hotel there was less than awesome, but it was safe and comfortable. We visited the cute shops in town, had a great dinner, and then played and played in the pool.

The next day we stopped at the fish hatchery and saw lots of fish! We then drove to Seattle and went to Woodland Park Zoo. We walked the entire zoo! Lola walked the whole way, and Rowan spent most of the time hopping in and out of the stroller. The kids liked all the animals, but the favorites were the gorillas and the penguins.



I liked the snow leopards. The mama leopard had two little cubs, and they were bothering her mercilessly. I totally felt for her! We looked at bugs, reptiles, and all manner of birds and animals. The kids then spent some time playing in the giant indoor playland. They were soon ready for a rest in the Tacoma hotel. After a rest, we met up with a good friend for dinner at Lola's favorite - Red Lobster!



The next morning we headed to Olympia to visit the Children's Museum, which I would totally recommend to anyone near Olympia. It was awesome! Wil and I had nearly as much fun as the kids! We explored room after room of trees with plastic fruit growing amongst wooden leaves, a medical center, a market, a climbing structure, a veterinary clinic, a treehouse, chickens that "laid" eggs, a huge water table with boats, a ship, a crane, and an enormous table filled with moon sand! There was more, but I can't even think of it all now! I wish we had something like that near here, we would be there all the time!



After playing ourselves out, we drove on to the tiny town of Moclips, where we checked into our quaint little cabin by the sea. We spent three glorious days exploring the beach, playing in the shallow sandy bottomed river, and watching old movies. We had cool weather for the most part, but no one cared. The kids ran and ran, leaving little footprints in the sand. They chased the waves, and tried to dig for clams. No matter how much we rinsed off before going into the house, they still left a good deal of sand in the tub every night!

A good friend met us there on the only really sunny day, and we hiked several miles down the beach to reach some huge rocks at low tide.



Hidden at the base of the rocks were tide pools, which the kids were so excited about! We all enjoyed poking the sea anemones and touching the barnacles and starfish. Lola thought that the disgusting bloated dead sea lion we walked by was a great find...ick. She probably ran 10 miles chasing pelicans and gulls off the beach, and racing the waves. Rowan toddled along, pantless, and picked up sand dollars, handing them to me until my pockets were bulging. He actually walked a long way for his little legs, but I did end up carrying his heavy butt a couple of miles during the hike, which was a test of my physical fitness (or lack thereof!).




My friend and I spent an hour walking down the beach and catching up. We came upon a little seabird, a common murre, and were able to walk right up to it. I would have preferred to leave the little guy alone, but my friend, a bird expert of sorts, had to check it out and make sure it wasn't hurt. Turns out he wasn't hurt, just a bit on the slow side. She nicely placed him back into the sea, and he followed us down the beach, getting washed up on the sand again. Since there were lots of dogs around, and the murre seemed less than intelligent at this point, we walked him back down the beach to the little river outlet, where he could swim away without being washed up on land where a dog might have gotten him. We watched him paddle to safety, and hoped never to see him again.



The next morning we got up very early for our journey home. The kids were sad to leave the ocean. They had gotten pretty used to running like wild children through the surf, with rosy cheeks from the salty air. We locked up the little house and headed out. We stopped in Renton at Bullwinkles Family Fun Center, which was indeed fun, and the kids played themselves out there. They were so tired afterwords that they slept until we stopped at the fruit stand in Thorp, then slept again until after Vantage. What a drive! They did really well, and we only stopped those two times. We were glad to finally arrive at home in the early evening after 10 hours on the road.

So here we are, back at home, back to the grind. Our house is now "pending sale" as we wait to see if some paperwork is going to come through for some buyers. We moved a bunch more stuff to the new house today, and completed the painting job. Now we just have a few more lights to hang, trim to put up, molding to hang, and transitional pieces to put in the floor. Oh, and two small rooms need floored, but that shouldn't take long. We are close to being ready to move. Lola's new room has furniture in it already! I will be so happy when we are living in just one house, as right now it feels like half our stuff is in each place.

Well, back to normal life, until next summer when we look forward to vacationing again!

New House

Well, we have officially begun renovation on our new home. We are blessed to be moving out into my Gramma's house in the country. She is going to Arizona, where the winters aren't so awful. So while we shovel mountains of snow this winter, she will be sunning herself by the pool, reading a favorite book. Of course we will plan on visiting often, as the kids adore their Great Gramma.

The house is very big! Two floors, five bedrooms, one office, two living rooms, two kitchens, a front room and a laundry/utility room. There are about 20 acres with the house, with plenty of room for the horses, chickens, dogs, cats and other animals that you seem to accumulate as a vet. The basement is largely unfinished, although my Gramma lived exclusively downstairs for years and years. The floor is a commercial grade green linoleum, and the walls are mostly wood paneling, with occasional areas paneled in some kind of a print. Wallpaper abounds, unfortunately, throughout the whole home. Those of you that remember my battle with a particularly ugly forest mural in our current home will appreciate that I had to remove a mural of a barn and cattle from an entire basement wall. What was waiting for me below the cow mural? Only another mural...the exact same one that I had painstakingly removed from Lola's current room when we first moved in here.

We are currently in the throws of remodeling the basement. So far Lola's room has been painted a light pink, with a Lola-chosen bright pink accent wall.


Rowan's room has been finished in a grey/blue with light trim, and the living room is "sandstone" with an "acorn" accent wall. So, the paint has really lightened up the basement. I wish I had pictures of it when we very first started, but you can see it is still very dark with minimal lighting and the green floors and brown ceiling.


This week we are putting in some flooring, a pretty hardwood lookalike in harvest oak, and next week the carpet guys will carpet the kids' rooms in a nice thick warm carpet. We will also be finishing my craft room, which as of now has half painted walls with the exception of the olive green shag carpet that for some reason my Gramma felt the need to hang on one of the walls. This carpet is stuck to the wall so hard that NASA technology would be needed to strip it off. So, we are covering that wall with corkboard, a nice way to finish the craftroom!


Eventually, we will tackle the pink rose bathroom, and the kitchen cabinets which need some serious TLC. Then, we will likely move in this October. Over the winter we may get started on the upstairs, which is lovely, but not really our style. Here are some pictures so you can see what I mean.


The bathroom, especially, is a bit too...ummm...glittery for me. I think I see a clawfoot tub and relaxing space in my future!!!


All kidding aside, the house is absolutely beautiful, and we are so blessed to have the opportunity to move there. Just look at the livingroom! So bright and big! The kids will have so much room to run around and play. I have a lot of great memories in this house, and I know the kids will too.




Anyway, the kids are doing well. Lola knows we are moving, and is a bit upset about it, but she is excited about her new room. It has a whole mirrored wall that makes her feel like a ballerina. She loved being able to choose her own color. Rowan, as usual, doesn't really care either way. He just enjoys walking through the paint tray and running his hands down freshly painted walls. I am never able to find babysitting when I work on the new house, so the kids come with me and wreak havoc while I paint and floor. This week Wil is off of work a lot, so we can work together, which means another pair of eyes on the kids! Remodeling with two little ones adds a whole new dimension to the chore! We are also lucky to have Wil's dad helping us this week, so we should get some serious work done!

Last week Wil stepped on Ivy and broke her leg and pelvis. Ouch! They were out on a walk, and she went one way, he tripped over the leash and lost his balance...180 lb man vs 4 lb dog....well....you can see how she broke. The break was in a bad place, and I couldn't fix it at our clinic. I needed an expert. So, I went to WSU to see Dr. Martinez, who kindly fixed the break last Friday. She has been doing great since then, but hates her "lampshade" which I had to upgrade to a rather large size due to her still being able to reach her leg to lick it. We have to do physical therapy on her leg three times a day, which has added a bit to the already full schedule around her. Oh well!


Well, it is off to the science center with Mom's Group, and then back to the building supply store AGAIN, and back home to get dinner ready for the guys. Crazy! Maybe I will slow down someday...or maybe not!

Friends!

We have been very busy lately. The house is still for sale, but we aren't discouraged. It just means there is more time to get the new house ready! It has been very hot here, so we have been spending a lot of time in the mountains or in the pool. We have been to Kamiak Butte twice in the last week with friends. Rowan loves the slides there, even though sometimes I think he might just shoot off the slide clear into the underbrush. I'm not sure what makes baby butts so slippery on a slide, but whatever it is, he has got a double dose of it!




Rowan and Lola had a good time the other day at Kamiak playing with Lola's good friend and her new baby sister, recently adopted from Ethiopia.


We decided to drive to Yakima for a wedding, traveling to the only place hotter than here. We stayed with Wil's sister and brother-in-law in their delightfully air conditioned home. The wedding was really great! It was very hot. The kids stayed in the back of the room at the kids' table where they colored happily for most of the party. Some friends with a little girl Rowan's age sat with us. When the little ones started getting fussy, Wil would dole out m & m's one at a time to keep them happy.

The ride home was less than pleasant, however, as Lola probably had us stop to pee at least 7 times.

Both kids have been eating so much watermelon lately that I am concerned that they might turn into watermelon! They love the stuff and can't get enough!


I love summer. How lucky are we to live in such a great place? I went outside late tonight to let Ivy tinkle in the yard and I could hear the faint sound of fiddle music wafting over the wheatfields. The stars were shining and the air was cool. Life is good!