a "kuk" party

elliot is really into "kuks". if you saw my facebook post a few weeks ago you know that i spend more than half of my day talking about trucks. firetrucks, dump trucks, run of the mill ford trucks from the 90's. monday mornings elliot yells loudly in bed until i get him up so that he can rush to the window to see the garbage truck. i always hope the garbage truck is late so i can sleep a little longer.

a truck party simply made sense! jamie is really good at these types of creative ventures so i just follow his lead. we decided to make a road weaving through our house and accompanying cardboard buildings. just wait for the cardboard space needle coming up, the picture doesn't really do it justice. 

 we invited 13 kids and their parents and had only one family missing, it was definitely a party!

(elliot still doesn't quite get the party thing, but fortunately had lots of help with candles and presents from the older and wiser 3 and 4 year olds!)

"fwies"

when we got home from a fantastic ten days in arizona on saturday we discovered we had some flies. not one or two or ten but lets just say that jamies death count is close to 60 and i have 20 under my belt and we aren't done yet.

we started out basic, fly swatter. jamie got more sophisticated with some fly traps that have caught a total of 6 flies to date (lame!). and then we moved on to the big guns. the vacuum cleaner. elliot decided he wanted a turn at catching "fwies" too. his newest word. charming right?

lindsay came to visit

my sister lindsay came for a week and a half to visit me. well, okay, to interview for family practice residencies so that she can move here and visit me all of the time! except that she probably won't have any time but i try to not think about that. 

when she wasn't interviewing we spent the majority of our free time cooking and then of course eating. sorry for the bad quality of the pictures, i have gotten into the habit of taking pics with my phone and the quality isn't great. 

lindsay and i volunteered as assistants for the pie ninja class at the pantry at delancey.

at the jcrew in downtown seattle at a cancer charity event. where both eating AND clothes buying were involved. dangerous combination.

cooking up a storm for the house warming party we threw for all of our friends from our "old" ward and playgroup.

 no lindsay, just our "extra" fridge on the back porch.

 house warming peeps! again no lindsay, she was slaving away in the kitchen of course.

i didn't know what to do today when i started making pies for thanksgiving and lindsay wasn't here to talk to. so i called her on the phone of course and made her talk to me while i made three pies. she should probably just move here, it would be easier.

winter in seattle

when the world is grey sometimes you just need a little color.

the adventures of elliot and bear

read about it here!

a "roar"ing good time

it was touch and go for awhile whether elliot would end up as a lion at all. 

on the saturday before halloween jamie took elliot to the zoo and showed him the lions in an attempt to build some camaraderie, no such luck. 

before we left home we tried again to get him to dress up by tempting him with candy. at first it seemed it was a go, everytime we asked if he wanted candy he shook his head yes. but when he realized that the costume was an obstacle in the way of the candy he decided the candy wasn't worth it. we headed to trunk or treat without much hope. 

BUT! i think the craziness distracted him because soon the costume was on and with candy in hand he was a happy kid.

after dinner there were games with prizes! elliot got the hang of going to different rooms to play games and win candy pretty quickly. it was literally all we could do to keep up.

when trunk or treat started elliot was practically a pro. he ran from car to car and had no shame sticking his hand back in the bowl for a second helping.

a happy lion at the end of the night! ps. he does have an excellent roar but of course he would never roar when he was actually wearing his costume.

bike ms.

jamie and his dad rode the bike ms race in mt. vernon, washington a couple of weekends ago. between the two of them they raised over $2,600 dollars (thanks to everyone who donated!!) the only thing is that the race started at 7:30 am on saturday morning and the time stamp on this picture reads, 7:34 am. once they made their leisurely way to the start it was after 8:30 am! they barely made it out before the 8:45 am cut-off but they did make it.

elliot and i made a sign and met up with them at the 2nd rest stop of the day, the sign reads, "2 generations, 1 purpose, ride for cindy! jamie's mom cindy was diagnosed with ms many years ago and has suffered through the debilitating effects of this disease so this ride was especially significant to the larsen family.

brad told us about the store grocery in anacortes so elliot and i stopped to pick up some nourishment on our way to the next rest stop. i think the muffin and elliot's head are just about the same size.

after the next rest stop elliot and i headed back to the city but brad and jamie rode on covering over 100 miles saturday and sunday. i definitely think this event is going to become a tradition in the family. what a great way to support a good cause.

our baby free weekend

over labor day weekend jamie, elliot and i headed to l.a. and then jamie and i left elliot in l.a. and headed to the mountains. don't worry, we didn't just ditch him on a street corner, my mom and her husband mike watched elliot for the WHOLE weekend! awesome. even when he screamed the whole first day. not so awesome.

anyway, i planned this trip for jamie's birthday - the plan was to drop off elliot and then drive to palm springs and take the aerial tramway up to 8,000 feet where the temperature went from 120 something to 70 something. perfect. then we were going to hike down the other side of the mountain to the little town of idyllwild, hang out and do WHATEVER WE WANTED on sunday and hike back monday morning. this plan all went well for awhile.

here are pictures leaving the desert floor behind and looking up at the mountains that are rapidly approaching.

here we are at the top of the tramway before we started hiking to idyllwild, don't we look so refreshed and excited to get started?

you have to get a state park and national forest permit in order to hike anywhere in the san jacinto range because most of the trails pass back and forth on state and federal land. from the top of the tramway to the forest service office it was about .5 miles, only 10.5 miles to go.

it really was beautiful and very serene. gorgeous vistas, nice cool weather, no screaming baby who hates the baby backpack. yes, very nice. see, jamie is happy!

so we finish the long hike down the mountain to the humber park trailhead which is still a good 2 miles from the town of idyllwild. and we start walking down the road. jamie wants to hitch hike the rest of the way and i do not so we walk. and walk. and walk. and it gets dark and we are still walking. we finally make it to our hotel, exhausted. we head out for a quick dinner and then literally crash until 10 am the next morning. our plan had originally been to do whatever we wanted to do all day the next day. all of things you can't do with a baby, see a movie, eat at restaurants while remaining in your seat for the duration of the meal, etc...

after we finally got our aching bodies together enough to go out and get breakfast we started calculating how long it would take us to hike back up the mountain the next morning based on our hike the day before and as our start time got earlier and earlier we decided to change our plans. instead of our relaxing day in town we decided to hike all of the way back to the tramway. except that we didn't want to walk back up the road to humber park and the devil's slide trailhead (and in fact couldn't hike that trail anyway because permits are limited from the idyllwild side of the trail during summer weekends... who knew?) so we decided to take the longer deer springs trail, you know, 12 plus miles from start to finish. see some new scenery..

we thought we knew where the trail started and began walking up the road. although idyllwild is still in the mountains, it is at 6000 ft which means that the middle of the day is HOT. when we got our permits for the hike back the ranger told us to double whatever water we were already carrying. so we walked up the road about .5 mi and decided we must be going the wrong way so we walked all of the way back in to town only to discover we had been going the right way after all. 45 minutes wasted and we hadn't even started for the day! this time i let jamie hitch us a ride back to the trailhead. the trail was hot and it was ALL uphill but we made it. even had more excellent views.

funny enough you have to hike up and then back down. the trail starts at about 6000 ft and ends at about 8000 ft but the trail had us hiking up to almost 10000 ft. before descending to the tramway. by the time we were done it was once again dark and we were exhausted. but we had booked another night in idyllwild! so we grabbed another quick dinner and our car and headed back to the town for the night.

we really appreciated having a whole weekend sans baby but i think next time we might take a more restful approach to the weekend rather than cramming 22 plus miles into two days... still it was 22 baby free miles and being that elliot absolutely hates hiking, that made us happy.