Pumpkin patch

We went to Roloff Farms today and had a great time! Pics are up, whole story to follow tomorrow.

Roloff Farms Pictures

Children's museum

Yesterday I got to take the kids to the Portland Children's Museum. It is very nice and the kids had a great time. We were there for almost an hour and a half but only saw about half of the exhibits. As usual, Rinnah loved climbing up and down the stairs, and Ian loved building things with blocks and pipes. They both really enjoyed the grocery store exhibit where they got to shop and check out (with coupons!).

Speaking of shopping, Ian is figuring me out. He used to just ask if I would buy something and I'd say, "No, I don't have a coupon for that." Now he finds something he likes and says, "Mommy, you see you have coupon for this?" Or he finds the sale tags and says, "Mommy, I want buy this! It on sale!" And he gets so excited when I let him hand the coupons to the clerk. It's the coolest job.

Still working on pictures. The internet here works MUCH better than it did in Seattle, but it still seems to have a personal vendetta against me uploading pictures. Whenever I try, the connection goes poof. Hopefully tonight I'll get some up.

Ian is napping right now. We've had a LOT of struggles with naps lately, so we're experimenting with a new schedule of bumping lunch up by an hour or so and trying to get him in bed by 12 or 12:30. It worked well for Rinnah today, but Ian still took awhile to settle down. If he wakes up in time we'll be able to all go back to the Children's Museum together which would be very nice.

Errands

Not an overly exciting day today. We had to stop at the office this morning to make sure we could stay parked where we were, and I needed to pick up a few (free) things at the grocery store. I also picked up some free chocolate covered fruit from Edible Arrangements, which was fun. They make some amazing bouquets of fruit! As a side note, I got to parallel park our massive truck in downtown Portland, which was a whole new experience too.

I think it's good that we didn't have a big agenda this morning, because the kids were less than cooperative.

After naps (yes, they napped today, thank goodness!) we drove down to the marina that's nearby. We're on an island, so it was close. We walked around for a bit with these huge gorgeous houses on one side and the marina full of boats on the other. It was really pretty, just a tiny bit chilly. The kids loved seeing all the boats.

Edited to add: Hey, I finally got a picture uploaded! The internet works a lot better here than at the last place, but just as I was trying to get pics uploaded last night it started to flake out on me. Here's one picture of the marina at least.

From Portland

Portland

We made it to Portland today!

The kids actually did pretty well in the truck. They certainly enjoyed the stop at the mall to play in the play area. Ian was so tired he fell asleep in the stroller-I'm not sure he's ever done that, even as a newborn!

We found a pretty nice RV park, especially considering we were getting online less than an hour before we arrived to find a new spot. We had one park picked out that had an indoor pool, but when we called they said kids who aren't potty trained aren't allowed in the pool, even with a swim diaper. Rinnah is the one who really loves the water, so if we couldn't take her the whole splurge was kind of lost on us. So we found a cheaper place that seems really nice and is just as close to the childrens museum.

No campground wifi yet (even though reviews said it was good here) but luckily the Holiday Inn is right across the street.

Friends

We'd spent the last few days sweeping up a Triaminic deal at Walgreens and a bunch of good sales at the grocery store (free milk! and a whole cart full of groceries for $6.09!) but today I got to take the kids over to our friend Elsa's house in the morning. The kids just loved being able to run and play. There's a little circle in her house, through the kitchen, then the dining room, living room, and back to the kitchen. They kept going around and around, catching each other and chasing each other. They had a blast. And I enjoyed just getting to visit with Elsa and not having to worry about kids running in opposite directions in a large and crowded museum. It was a nice morning. And Elsa and I got together again this evening after the kids went down, just spending a little longer catching up. It was so good to get to visit with her.

We've only got a few days left in Seattle. My mom is leaving on Saturday to start her drive home. I know the kids are going to miss having Grandma right across the street. We're heading down to Portland this weekend too. Luckily that's not a long drive so we may still be able to do a big family thing here on Saturday before we go. We'll have to see what our options are!

Better late than never

This morning we went to church, the same one we went to the first week we were here. We really enjoyed the music there and the teaching was good too. Today the chairs were arranged in a circle around the room with the communion table at the center-an interesting and refreshing layout we thought.

The plan was that the kids would take a nap and then we'd head over to Elsa's for dinner. Well, they took late naps again, and it was after 7pm before we even got there. We did have a very nice dinner and the kids had a fabulous time climbing up and down her steps, and tossing soft toys and an empty soda case box down the steps. Rinnah laughed so hard she fell over several times. It was so cute!

Catching up with old friends

This week I've been able to spend some time with our friend Elsa while Jeremy watched the kids. It has been so wonderful to catch up with her, to reminisce about our college days and to talk about life and such. She's one of those people that when we get together, we just pick right up where we left off and it doesn't feel like we've been mostly out of touch for a few years.

Other than that, we've just gone back to the children's museum a few times and spent a couple of days snagging half-price deals at Goodwill and some drugstore deals. It's been a lower-key week, partly because Ian has only been getting over his cold the last couple of days. We've also been trying to get some things organized, like I packed up Rinnah's 9 month clothes and Ian's 2T clothes so we can send them back with my mom next week. Rainy weather seems better for catching up on all that day-to-day, ordinary and uninteresting stuff.

Long overdue (and just plain long) update

This morning my mom is watching the kids and I got to sneak off to the library to get an internet connection and upload some pictures. Woohoo! I'm not sure I can remember the last time I had some solid kid-free hours to do what I wanted to do, not just get the house ready to show or something like that. It's very nice and so quiet here.

Last Friday we met up with another of my online friends, Cindy. She's got 5 kids. Her 4th is a boy the same age as Ian, and she's got another boy a few months older than Rinnah. We met up with her, her husband, and her kids on the beach near here. We had a nice time!

From Meetup with Cindy

From Meetup with Cindy

From Meetup with Cindy

On Saturday we had one of the best days we've had since we hit the road. We met Elsa, a friend from college who lives nearby, early in the morning to catch a ferry to Whidbey Island. It's a huge island just off the coast, very developed and modern (no deserted) with some gorgeous scenerey. The kids loved the ferry ride-it was their first ride on a real boat:

From Seattle

From Seattle

From Seattle

From Seattle

After the ferry ride we got back in the truck and drove to the very northernmost point on the island, Deception Pass. We saw all sorts of things along the way-farms, beaches, towns, parks-it was a nice drive. When we arrived, we took a short hike up a very steep hill, then climbed the steps to the top of this bridge:

From Seattle

It's 187 feet above the water, and the views are breathtaking. We walked across and back so we could see from both sides (there's a road in the middle).

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From Seattle

From Seattle

From Seattle

After that, we decided to head down to Fort Casey for lunch. But on the way we made a stop at a blueberry farm where we could pick our own berries. I think this is Rinnah's absolute favorite thing we have ever done. She just had a ball picking the berries, eating the berries, and running around realizing there were more berries in every direction! Ian took his job very seriously, choosing "only the blue ones" and eating just a few because he wanted to fill up the bucket.

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From Seattle

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From Seattle

From Seattle

When we left, Rinnah was inconsolable until I pulled out the blueberries we were taking home. I think she thought it was just a buffet! For the rest of the day she was happy so long as she had a steady stream of blueberries coming her way.

After the blueberry farm we continued on to Fort Casey for lunch. It was an old military fort in WWII that now you can look around and climb on. There were lots of little cavernous places that made for a great place to run and play hide and seek with the kids. They had a blast! Rinnah cooperated more for the camera, but both kids had a good time.

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From Seattle

Rinnah is about the size of the cannonballs they used here

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From Seattle

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From Seattle

After that we headed back on the ferry for the ride home. The kids really did awesome, especially since we were out so far past naptime.

Besides the big adventures, we've been doing many smaller things. The kids are spending lots of time with grandma, which everyone enjoys. We've been to the children's museum several times now, and made our rounds to catch the Walgreens and grocery store deals. We've also spent some time at home since Ian seems to have caught some sort of cold over the weekend and we're trying to get him to take it easy. We went to the zoo yesterday hoping that he would get more rest riding in the stroller than he would playing at home. I'm not sure if it worked or not, but he enjoyed seeing all the tigers and elephants. Rinnah was much more interested in finishing off the blueberries than looking at the animals.

This was at an African village setup they had at the zoo

From Seattle

From Seattle

From Seattle

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This was indoors, kind of like a sandbox but filled with some kind of small rice or seeds so it wasn't messy at all. Both kids really enjoyed digging for treasures here.

From Seattle

From Seattle

I think we'll be in Everett through this weekend, then head down to Portland on Sunday. From there we'll be off to California!

Where has the internet gone?

Oh, how I miss reliable internet.

We haven't had much luck getting online at this park, and Jeremy is about to max out his monthly capacity for work on his card. He'll probably have to work from the library tomorrow as it is, so I can't use that for blogging. This morning I actually got online so I thought I'd take the opportunity to catch up a little bit.

We've been having a nice time up here. It's a little cooler than we've been used to so we pulled out the jackets and sweaters. The fall weather here is nice-pretty chilly in the mornings but warms up nicely by afternoon. It hasn't been too rainy either. We've been to the Imagine Childrens Museum in Everett twice already, which the kids love. We also went downtown last weekend and rode the monorail to the science center nestled right under the Space Needle. Other than the lack of internet, the park has been great for us. We're right next to the laundry machines, which makes it much easier to get that done. We're very close to Walmart and a few grocery stores, so I've been able to run out and get our free food deals. My mom is parked just a few spots over so the kids can spend time playing at her "new house" and that's working out really well. They are definitely enjoying their visit with Grandma.

Here are a few pics from our visit to the science center last Saturday:

Rinnah looking at the giant praying mantis

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We went in the butterfly house. Rinnah liked them, but Ian was kind of scared of them.

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From Seattle

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Waiting for the monorail

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Walking with her daddy through the museum

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Ian in a dinosaur footprint

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Ian playing with some dinosaur animations

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Rinnah was very excited about these toys

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Playing in the water

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Rinnah playing in the water with Grandma

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Ian playing a xylophone in the music room

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Rinnah was fascinated by this bench being just her size and being able to put her feet flat on the floor

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Excited to push buttons on the car

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Figuring out the flashing light

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Not sure what face Rinnah was making, but this is almost a cute picture of them together

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