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Archive for Kids
August 17, 2010 at 12:42 pm · Filed under Board Games, Family, Kids, On The Road, Vacation
We awoke to another beautiful day in Mammoth. O was still no better, so we got him a follow up appointment at the clinic for later that morning. On the way we stopped by the earthquake fault, which the signs even admit is more of a fissure than a fault, but it is still pretty cool. I remember when you could walk down in it, but now you can only walk along its edge.
Looking into the fault.
We got O to his appointment and after a chest x-ray it was confirmed that he had primary pneumonia, meaning he picked up the actual pneumonia bug, it didn’t start out as a something else and move into pneumonia. She gave him some antibiotics and by that afternoon his fever broke for good and he was feeling much better. Hurray! Except we were leaving the next day to head home. D’oh!
The sun looks so beautiful going down behind the mountains.
We bid farewell to the family and drove my mom up to her place. The next day we headed for Portland, with a stop along the way in Ashland at Funagain Games to pick up our order (Igloo Pop, Gonzaga, and Opera, for those playing along at home). As usual, the kids were great in the car. We always end up driving back into Portland at 5pm, so that feeling of almost being home is put off an extra hour by traffic. Boo.
Anyway, it was a nice trip in spite of the glitches. I was really happy to have had a chance to go back to Mammoth, and to show the place to the kids.
July 26, 2010 at 3:28 pm · Filed under Family, Kids, On The Road, Vacation
The Sunday of our vacation became a day of rest for O. D stayed at the condo with him and they just hung out, napped, and dosed O with medicine when his temps flew up over 104.
My mom, brother, SIL, niece, nephew, XM and I took the shuttle down into Reds Meadows and Devil’s Postpile National Monument.
Rock formation at Devil's Postpile.
It was much warmer down in the valley than up at Mammoth.
Granny and XM.
We went over to Soda Springs, an area by the San Joaquin river where mineral springs bubble up. Unfortunately the water level was so high the springs were way underwater - we saw the bubbles, but it was too diluted to taste different.
The San Joaquin at Soda Springs.
We did wander around the meadow a bit, where we found a snake swimming across one of the waterways.
Sir Hiss.
The cousins and XM filled out some fun Junior Ranger booklets specific to Devil’s Postpile, and were sworn in as official Junior Rangers. We brought O’s nearly completed book with us and XM explained his situation so they gave him a badge as well, as long as he promised to take the oath. Luckily we got the whole thing on tape. It was all pretty cute.
Newly minted Junior Ranger.
Later we took the gondola up to the top of Mammoth mountain. It was a gorgeous day and the views were just amazing.
On the way up.
View from the top.
Hey! I can see our condo!
O wasn’t any better, but it was good for his body to be able to relax. Later that evening we watched a deer wander through the brush behind the condo.
The plan for Monday was to head out as a group to Yosemite. We decided to wait until the morning to see how O was feeling before committing to the plan, so we dosed him up with more meds and crossed our fingers.
Tune in for the final installation: Mammoth Vacation! The Final Days.
July 13, 2010 at 3:55 pm · Filed under Family, Kids, On The Road, Vacation
The next morning my brother took the kids out into the meadow behind the condo. They were just going to run around out there, but pretty soon they were marching off into the forest on a trail. D and I grabbed the camera and hurried to catch up. We found them playing Pooh sticks.
We found this tree by the condo - apparently the gardener watches too much Mythbusters.
That afternoon the friends and family all gathered again and we had a little memorial for dad. Can you believe that at 75 he still had many of the friends he made when he was nine? It was a funny and touching gathering as we all reminisced about Frank Blackford.
Afterwards we hosted a BBQ for everyone at a beautiful spot called Hayden Cabin - an old timey cabin/museum in a little meadow next to Mammoth Creek. I somehow managed not to get any pictures of the creek, which was so full that parts had to be sandbagged so it wouldn’t overflow into the cabin area!
We had the party catered by Angel’s Restaurant, a local place that caters events with a big smoker. I figured as the lone vegans we’d be bringing our own dinner, but it turns out in this not terribly vegan-friendly town that the BBQ restaurant has vegan baked beans, cooks the corn without butter, and makes the most delicious vegetable skewers I have ever had. The owners also said they have vegan food on their restaurant menu, and that they cook the food separate from the meat. Wow! It is really rare to have people “get it”, and I couldn’t thank them enough for being so awesome.
We couldn’t have asked for better weather, the temperature was just perfect.
We had some fun taking pictures on a huge boulder as the sun sank behind the mountains.
O was a trooper throughout, despite the fluctuating fever, hacking cough, and lack of appetite and energy. We decided that he would have to miss any planned events for the next day and just stay home and rest.
That is where our journey will continue - with Mammoth Vacation! Quick! Go Sight-seeing Before the Rest of Us Get Sick Too!
July 9, 2010 at 4:43 pm · Filed under Beer, Family, Kids, On The Road, Vacation
As promised (and in a timely fashion), I bring you the next installment. The first thing we did on Friday morning was take O in to the doctor. She said it sounded like he had a cold, and she could barely hear a hint of a wheeze so she gave him an inhaler and some cough medicine with codeine. It sounds like regular sick symptoms can be exacerbated by patients sudden change in altitude (Mammoth Lakes is at about 8,000 feet), and we all figured he’d be good to go.
We headed out for some sightseeing, and went up to the lakes. Our first stop was at Twin Lakes and a visit to the campground I always stayed at when we came up in the summer. Here is a shot of Twin Falls - the water level was really high this year and everything was beautiful. We even saw a bald eagle.
We drove up past the rest of the lakes and stopped at Horseshoe Lake, where the mountain is releasing enough carbon dioxide to kill the trees. Spooky!
The lake was just gorgeous. There was a huge patch of snow down to the lake shore just to the right of the photo.
The kids were impressed by this big cracked rock.
The road to the upper lakes leads to a great view from the top of Twin Falls. Here is Twin Lakes, and the valley behind it.
Our next stop was for some beer at Mammoth Brewing Company. They had free tasters of all ten of their beers, plus root beer for the kids. The beer is really good, and D and I were smitten with the IPA 395, a double IPA that uses hops with local sage and juniper.
That night we had a party in our condo for the friends and family that had come from all points across the country to celebrate my dad. My brother had a ton of pictures of my dad enlarged and mounted on foam core, so he was watching the proceedings from several vantage points. He also converted a bunch of old family super 8 movies to DVD and had that playing as everyone ate, drank, and chatted the night away. It was a really nice time, and a testament to how much my dad was loved by everyone.
We finally managed to get the kids to bed and dosed the boy up with codeine cough medicine. He slept pretty well for the first time in a few nights, but it would turn out to only be a brief reprieve…
I think I’ll split the Friends and Family Plan into two parts, as I have a dozen more pictures and I don’t want to make this one too long! So I’ll see you again, at Mammoth Vacation! The Friends and Family Plan Part Two.
December 4, 2009 at 5:36 pm · Filed under Family, Food, Holiday, Kids
Ever since O was little, we’ve let the kid or kids help rip the bread for the stuffing. I now present to you a retrospective of stuffing making:
2003 - this requires a lot of concentration!
2004 - hmm, no picture of stuffing ripping, but clearly we had help in the kitchen
2005 - still serious business.
2006 - we were in China, but we did have bread!
2007 - XM’s first time!
2008 - she still thinks it is awesome to have her mouth wide open when we take her picture…
2009 - by now they are old pros at this.
I can’t wait for the teenage editions, you know the ones, where I force them to at least hold onto a piece of bread near the bowl and they do their best glare/withering look/eyeroll as I take the picture…
November 4, 2009 at 9:41 am · Filed under Family, Holiday, Home, Kids
We had a nice Halloween, I can’t believe that it stopped raining and was actually warm out!
I allowed the kids some control over the Halloween decorations, which is how we ended up with a string of pumpkin lights down the hallway.
XM got to go to the pumpkin patch with her school and picked out a big pumpkin, a baby pumpkin, and a gourd. I also miraculously ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in about seven years, so that was great!
The tiny art directors had me carve the pumpkins into their chosen shapes: Boo (from Mario) and Darth Vader.
Their grandma helped them make caramel apples…
and we decorated Zombie Eyeballs (a peanut butter fudge type thing dipped in chocolate).
XM couldn’t wear her princess dress to school for Halloween dress up day because it sheds glitter like nothing else. She opted to be a tiger at school:
And they wore their chosen outfits on Halloween night and at O’s school Halloween Party. O saved up his allowance all summer to buy the Optimus Prime voice changer helmet, so his “trick or treats” were very robotic.
We had almost 100 kids come by this year, beating our record of 73 set last year. I promised D I’d take down the Halloween decorations by December…
September 30, 2009 at 2:12 pm · Filed under Beer, Family, Home, Kids
This year we planted cascade hops to grow up and over our trellis, and we recently had a a little harvest party with the kids.
D and I left the hops on the trellis and decided to pick and choose from the largest of the crop, thinking we’d let some of the smaller ones get bigger and have a second harvest day.
We had to contend with Sophie the hop monster.
We realized the futility and difficulty of our method pretty quick, so down they all came.
At that point we hired some help.
Picking hops is very serious business.
Many modes of transportation were employed.
We ended up with 10.4 ounces of hops. I failed to capture probably the most amusing photo ops: the drying of the hops. We first had them sandwiched between several heater filters and attached to a box fan (which we burned out) with bungee cords (also known as the Alton Brown method). We finished drying them by laying them on an old fireplace screen in the attic.
In the end we had 2.75 ounces of dried hops. D immediately used some to dry hop the rye IPA he just brewed (for non-brewers, basically they were placed in a cheesecloth-like bag and stuffed into the keg with the finished beer, where they will steep and impart delicious hop aromas).
We shrank up the rest with the food saver and stuck them in the freezer for a future brew session. Next year the plants should yield many more hops, as long as I don’t kill them over the winter.
September 11, 2009 at 2:05 pm · Filed under Family, Kids
I meant to post this before school started. We went to Blue Lake Park in Fairview a few weeks ago and played in the “spray ground”. They have a really cool fountain play feature, with different spray zones for kids big and small.
The kids had fun, though they got cold rather quickly. I was so happy to find the spray ground surrounded by shade!
They had a couple of water cannons to spray at each other, and the neat thing I noticed is that if you turned them too far to the right or left they shut down, so you could only spray the other cannon operator and not torment the kids in the rest of the area.
I hadn’t been to Blue Lake Park for a few years, and I forgot how nice it is. You do have to pay a $5 entry fee, but there are several large playgrounds, tons of trees and grassy spaces and picnic tables, boats to rent, and a place to swim in the lake (though you have to be five years and older to do so - I know they have some problems with algae and stuff in the lake, but I’m not sure if the under-fives enhance the problems, or are harmed by them). Next time I’m bringing a lunch so we can stay longer.
August 24, 2009 at 3:16 pm · Filed under Family, Kids
We are down to two weeks left before school starts. Last week we squeezed in a lovely overcast day at Oaks Park with the discounted ride bracelets the kids earned when they finished up the library summer reading program.
Unfortunately our first discovery was that O was just about an inch too tall for the kiddie rides. He is still a little young to go on most of the other rides by himself, so I had to get myself a bracelet too and go on several rides with them. The first thing I did was take them on the tilt-a-whirl, where I assured them it wouldn’t spin fast if we didn’t pull on the bar. I even pointed out a pair of bored looking girls sitting quietly on the ride eating licorice. You might guess what happened next after a statement like that - we did nothing but spin around quickly the entire time. Oops. Bad mommy.
As penance I decided I could probably handle the hot air balloon ride Up Up and Away and went on it with them. Mistake number two of the day - I cannot handle the hot air balloon ride. I snapped a couple pictures (after forcing O to grip the wheel in the middle the entire time so we wouldn’t spin) and then closed my eyes tight. Both kids assured me it wasn’t scary. Did they not feel the horrifying bumping and bouncing we were doing? Crazy nutters.
It turned out that most ride operators were willing to let O ride the kiddie rides (many joked that it was his curls sticking out above the “you must be shorter than this line” sign) so he and his sister had a great time together. I’m a little sad that this will really be their one and only time riding these rides together, if I had known how much fun they’d have together I would have taken them more often this summer.
Our third fail of the day was when we went in to use our free roller rink admission. Everyone was excited to go and I was trying to figure out shoe sizes when I realized that none of us were wearing socks. Oops again! I promised we’d take them back over winter when the rides were closed to try the skating again (O can’t get too tall for that, right?).
We really did have a good time, especially me, because the kids were generous towards each other, were okay not playing the carnival games, took turns choosing what to ride, didn’t beg for a bunch of food or souvenirs, and happily left when I said it was time to go. Maybe that happens when you spin them around really fast.
August 18, 2009 at 5:40 pm · Filed under Family, Kids, On The Road, Oregon, Vacation
So it is mid-August and there are a few things I had in mind to do with the kids this summer that just weren’t getting done. With about three weeks left until school, I thought it was high time I crammed them in.
Last week we went out to the beautiful Columbia River Gorge to explore. I haven’t gone off the beaten path very often, so I checked out a few kid and dog friendly locations and we hit the trail.
First stop was Horsetail Falls, which conveniently was right next to the road.
We admired the view before hiking (straight up) the kid friendly (cliff hugging) switchbacks (of death) to Ponytail falls. If you dared stop (and don’t get vertigo) there were beautiful views of the gorge up there.
Ponytail falls is very cool in that the trail goes behind it in a small cave-like area.
The kids had fun scrabbling around on the rocks and exploring the cave. It was a beautiful and cool spot, and we were able to rejuvenate after the climb.
On the way down the trail we saw a little mouse or vole or some sort of rodent. It was very cute and not at all afraid, just ambled down the path with us. Everyone stopped to watch and the little guy wandered between another hikers’ boots before sauntering off the path for a shortcut through the leaves.
We drove on up the road to the Bonneville Fish Hatchery near the Bonneville Dam. The hatchery has expansive and lovely grounds so we found a picnic table and had lunch. We explored the hatchery, where even Ziggy was allowed! The kids couldn’t get enough of the fish window and the amazing views of Herman the sturgeon (11 feet long, 400+ lbs, and 70 years old) and his friends.
They also fed the trout, and I encouraged O to hand feed a duck and it bit him on the finger. Oops! Bad mommy. Whenever any small amount of food went in the pond the trout went nuts, which freaked the dog out to no end.
I thought they might be too tired to continue, but they wanted to do the final hike I had planned so we headed over to the Wahclella Falls trailhead. The falls were a mile back in so I double checked that they could do it and they wanted to go, so off we went. The first part of the hike is along a wide flat gravel path. We reached a waterfall that ran down the rock face, and I had to assure them that this wasn’t our final destination.
The trail headed uphill for a long while, then straight back down towards the creek. We stopped at a nice bank and threw rocks for a while and the dog got a nice long drink. We could hear the falls just a little farther up the trail. The canyon walls were fairly steep but the scenery was beautiful.
We met up with a mom and her two kids at a spot on the trail where a lava tube went into the cliff. They were exploring it with a flashlight and invited my two to come with them. They braved the cramped and slippery conditions and had a mini-adventure.
We reached the falls shortly after that, and enjoyed the wind coming off the spray before trekking back to the car. It was quite a day, we were all sore and tired the next day! It was gorgeous though (no pun intended), and really fired me up to do some other adventures before summer is done.
Upcoming adventures include a day in Estacada with a swim at the Clackamas river, the water spray park at Blue Lake Park, and a day exploring Sauvie Island. I believe I also have to take them to Oaks Park so they can use their ride bracelets they earned at the library… Yikes! I better get planning.
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