Sun Mountain Lodge Adventures

 

One of the goals that Chris and I have for our family this year is to do 12 weekend or overnight trips to places that we wouldn't normally go. Above, Chris and Jamisen had their first overnight camp out on the deck at the lake. It's something that will be a regular thing so those fun overnights don't count towards our goal of doing something out of the ordinary once a month with the kids. 

Driving five hours over the mountain certainly does though! We went to Sun Mountain Lodge, a special place for Chris and I because it's where we spent our engagement weekend.

We went on hikes while we were there, had delicious ice cream and stopped by the side of the road when the kids saw a patch of snow beneath a giant mountain of gravel.

There was even enough snow to do a small snowball fight!

In the lobby of Sun Mountain Lodge, they have a giant stuffed bison - the kids were pretty interested in it and were especially fascinated by how large it was. 

We were lucky the weather held the entire weekend because it allowed for lots of outdoor time and tons of exploring. It did NOT tucker the children out though. We were in one hotel room (not a suite) and the kids slept on the floor and they were up sooooo late despite our best efforts to get them to go to sleep in a timely manner! =) 

Lily loves her new bike from Grandma and Grandpa but isn't quite big enough to use it every time she rides so we're still transitioning between the tricycle and the bike. We hauled both of their bikes over the mountain pass.

We stopped at play grounds along the way there and back to make the long car ride more bearable but overall the kids were really good about the long car ride. They didn't sleep either. Not once. Neither of our kids is a big sleeper unfortunately. 

The kids are planting seeds for a 'butterfly garden' in the above photo. So far, the seeds haven't sprouted so we're not sure if we did something wrong or if they were drowned in the water deluge we got in subsequent weeks. It is Washington state after all!

Lily got caught in the act of going for the sugar cubes. Do note that she is fully standing precariously and not safely on the top of her little standy thing. And man, she knows she is busted! It sure is hard to discipline her when she's so cute and makes us laugh so much =)

Lily's Birthday with horses & unicorns

Our little Lily is THREE years old. Wow! Did that go fast or what? She is a happy, happy child with a vocabulary of an 7 year old. This is probably because she loves to read so much. Her attention span is unparalleled when she is being read to.

Lucky girl got to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Faiola when I was at my 3 day lecture/lab for my Nutritional Therapy degree. The university is in Lacey Washington (a big selling point when I was considering the certificate degree). So, while I'm in a classroom all day, Lily gets to hang out with Grandpa. And since it was her birthday, they treated her to quite an adventure! 

Lucky Lily got a new bike (!!!) complete with streamers and a backpack, a crown, ice cream and balloons. Grandma and Grandpa Faiola did that birthday up right! =)

Funny story about Lily: the other evening after getting the kids down for bed, I was reading on the couch to de-stress after the day when I heard quite a little pitter patter of sneaky feet. I said, "That had better not be a kid, because they need to be in their rooms." And, I look over, and Lily is literally creeping by, with her hands covering her eyes, to steal a left-behind saltine cracker off the living room floor. Because she thought that the hands covering her eyes wouldn't allow me to see her. Because if she can't see me, clearly I can't see her. I was laughing so hard that I let her sneak in and out with no comment.

Lucky Lily got TWO birthday parties - one with Grandma and Grandpa Faiola and one at Perch 'n' Play with her friends. Unfortunately, the setting for the giant DSLR camera was set incorrectly and the only photos we have are iPhone photos. I could weep with sadness but thankfully, there will be other photos to share in the future, shot on any number of high quality cameras. 

Lots of her little friends came and she loved every minute of it!

One of her gifts was a horse stable, complete with a horse and two knock-off American Girl type dolls. She did not play with it as intended ...

Precious Lily is three years old and we are so glad that she is a part of our family. She brings laughter, joy and singing to everything she does. Happy Birthday Lily!

Salt Spring Island Adventure

We recently took a trip with our friends, Liam and Sam, to Salt Spring Island. Salt Spring Island is a small funky little island off the coast of Vancouver Island. It is either a 90 minute straight ferry shot or a multi ferry, multi stop situation that takes over 3 hours. We took the 3 hour ferry. It was a long time to be on a boat with four small people.

  

Our kiddos were fascinated by the entire thing and loved watching the islands go by. Do note that Jamisen brought his safety cones with him and set them up everywhere he went. 

 

We stayed at Liam and Sam's grandparent's home. It is a lovely home, within walking distance to the water. The kids loved exploring the seashore. Salt Spring Island is a former (current?) hippie commune so there were farm stands along the side of the road everywhere and an incredible Farmer's Market on the island with kombucha and kefir on tap, sauerkraut makers and kale chip artisans. Yum!

Jamisen found many bones and proudly declared himself a paleontologist. He also brought the bones home (over the border, in his backpack, unbeknownst to us; no deceit on his part. He just didn't know about border rules) and brought them to school for show'n'tell. He had elaborate stories about his dinosaur bones and even tried to tell us what animals they came from. Adorable.

 

Our friends Heather and James watched the kids one night after they all fell asleep and Chris and I were able to take a short walk. It was lovely though surprising to find ourselves having uninterrupted time to talk. With little kiddos at home, that is certainly a luxury.

    

 

 Sweet little Lily is learning to potty train and was so inspired by friend Sam on our Salt Spring Island trip. When she uses the little potty, we say things like "Great job, Lily! We are so proud of you!" The other day, she sweetly looked up at me and said, "Mommy, I'm proud of you and Daddy too!" and when I asked, "Why is that Sweetie?" she said, "Because you wipe your butts every day!"

We did lots of fun stuff on our weekend excursion, like visit a goat farm, a lavender farm and multiple parks. It was a fun experience but certainly not anything relaxing when there are that many kids! =)  I'm thankful for the weather, for friends and for the time to spend with family.

Summer Marches Closer

I recently taught a class on Creative Live with over 5000 live students. It was a fun day and Courtney (pictured above) kept it all on track. She and I have been working together for five+ years now and she is a lifesaver when it comes to everything and anything details.

As the year comes to a close, we are trying to figure out what the upcoming school year looks like. Jason, our nanny of over a year, has decided to pursue his passion of becoming a grief counselor (he has his family systems therapy degree already so this isn't too far off from what he set out to do originally). That leaves us with a 2 day gap in childcare that we are still sorting out.

Lily, our little one that looks so angelic, is hilariously obstinate right now. Often times if you give her a choice of stopping a behavior versus losing a toy or time out, she'll just look at you, and literally hand the toy back to you and cheerfully say, 'Time out!' It's like she's trying to take all the power away and show she doesn't care ... but she's THREE. How can I possibly ascribe such motives to an angelic three year old?! Other parents assure me that I'll be thrilled with this attitude once she's an adult. For now, she's lucky she's so darn cute.

Jamisen continues his love of music. He recently watched a street busker - while reading - for at least 30 minutes. We bought him the CD of the street busker, named 'Strangely' and it is SO inappropriate for a 5 year old; so very inappropriate. The CD hasn't gotten any mysterious scratches that make it wholly not playable but that may be coming. 

We were so happy to have Uncle Weston visit and play with the kiddos for hours. He has such patience and genuinely loves to hang out with the kids. They love having him visit. He reads with them and gets down at their level to play all their games.

For Jamisen's birthday, Grandma and Grandpa Faiola got him an exploding tower. It's basically a set of cardboard cards that loosely fit together. There are two levers that are directly attached to a little switch/air compressor/red button. Pushing them makes too little arms come out that destabilize the tower and make the entire thing crash down. It's super fun and the towers don't take very long to build. 

The towers can get super tall. They all collapse equally and for a little kid, they're basically the best lesson in gravity, physics, architecture and demolition ever. 

Chris and I were so lucky to get away for a lovely Seattle dinner with some friends from his Entrepreneur Organization group. It was nice to have a few hours of adult conversation and the long ride down there and back to connect.

Our trip to the Tulip Fields

For Jamisen's Annual Montessori Art show, each family had to bring a dish. Jamisen wanted to make a pie so we looked up recipes on the internet and even found some cooking YouTube shows with children as hosts. We watched several of these little episodes before deciding which apple pie option to go with. The apple pie option we did involved coating each apple piece with sugar and cinnamon. We also made a egg white glaze for the top to really make the pie get crisp and glossy. The pie was such a hit that Jamisen only got a teensy little slice - but what he did eat looked delicious. He seemed very satisfied with how his pie turned out. 

  

Lily continues to be an adveturous spirit. At Jamisen's class party held at a Lake Whatcom park the kids don't often go to, she was the first one in the lake and, for that matter, the last one. Then she played in the sand, wet, and had a great time at the party. She was so dirty that we had to strip her down to go home in the car.  

The other day, Lily found an Easter egg in the yard. Like a legit, hard boiled Easter egg. That was oh, six weeks old? Sure enough, not five minutes later, Jamisen's panicked alert sounds through the house, "Mommy! Lily's eating the egg!!!!!" The egg yolk had liquefied, the egg white was gray and it smelled like the inside of a trash compactor that had been rolled in manure and then dropped into a methane processing plant. She didn't get sick but what the what? Like, I can't even comprehend what she was thinking. Oh, I know what she was thinking! We told her NOT to eat the egg. And in Lily's world, everything is opposite day when it comes to being defiant. Sweet, but defiant.

Before the tulips were cut down, we visited the tulip fields with our little friends Sam and Liam.  Sam especially is quite sweet with Lily and she seems to gravitate towards him as well. It is an adorable friendship.

They hug every chance they get. In fact, at Lily's birthday party, they spent a good 2 minutes hugging and posing for the camera. Which you'll never see since the camera setting was on incorrectly and none of the photos turned out. But that is a sob story for another time ... =)

Jamisen has started repeating the kindest, most sweet phrase of all time to all of us. He looks up, sweetly, and says, "Mama, you are loved." Then he turns to Lily and says, "Lily, you are loved" And then he goes through everyone in our family and says "Daddy is loved, Lily is loved, you are loved and I am loved. Our family is loved." Could anything be sweeter?

The day in the tulip fields was beautiful and we had a really lovely time. I was exhausted by the time the flower excursion was over but we went to a park and just kept the party rolling. The kids took their bikes and we had a fun time being active in the park. Though, to be fair, much of why I had fun is because I mostly stayed horizontal on the ground and watched them bike around me. Their energy is impressive.

Chris was gone to Saudi for our tulip day excursion. To help the kids while he was on the long trip, he made cards for the days he was gone - and a countdown paper calendar so the kids could have a visual indicator of when Daddy would be home. 

The cards meant so much to Jamisen that he fell asleep with them. It was sooooo sweet. The kids love their Daddy so much. And how much more thoughtful of a Daddy could you find? Awwwww ...

Jamisen tells me that he's ready to try staying dry at night without night diapers ... we had him mostly dry at night before the house explosion and we're game to try it again. Wish us luck! Lily is potty training so a few more clothes in the extra daily washes won't be noticed.

Jamisen's 5th Birthday

Our happy boy, Jamisen, is five years old! Wow! He is creative in the kitchen and came up with the cupcake flavors he wanted to bake for his birthday: strawberry, vanilla and blueberry. He thought about what he wanted and was very careful to explain he wanted peanut butter, blueberry and vanilla cupcakes so everyone would have one they liked. The next day, he said he had changed his mind and wanted strawberry in place of the peanut butter. We were pretty excited about that since strawberry sounded better than peanut butter for a cupcake. 

Jamisen got two birthday celebrations; the first was at Montessori school. They have a very sweet tradition where the child walks around the months of the year (the points on the orange star), while all the children sing "The earth moves round the sun, the earth moves round the sun, we are so thankful that Jamisen is five!" as he walks around the sun, holding a photo of himself at birth, 1, 2, 3, and 4. There's a few circles to do when you're five years old! Grandma Faiola and Lily got to attend this special party. 

Jamisen's birthday party was a joyous occasion, held at the house. We had quite a few little kiddos and parents over. In the photo above, the kids are playing with sensory beads (basically, little biodegradable gel beads). It's a funky feeling on the hands and completely entertains the kiddos. 

It was all fun and games until one of the kids (who shall remain nameless but wasn't any of ours) dumped many of the beads out on the ground.

We also had a playdough station that was a big hit. It was dollar store playdough and worth every dollar to not worry about having to save it or keep it moist. In this case, the generic worked just as well as name brand. 

There were so many thoughtful gifts that Jamisen got for his birthday. Uncle Erik and Aunty Cheriss and baby Alise got him a backpack firehose. 

Do notice he is using the firehose to have a stand-off with his friend Liam, who is using another birthday present, the bouncy ball, as a giant kid-swatter. They were pretty evenly matched. 

The adults got quiche and scones and a halvah/challah bread concoction. The kids got cupcakes, jell-o and snacked on the quiche as well. This was Lily and Jamisen's first time trying jell-o. Lucky kids! 

Happy Fifth Birthday, Jamisen! =)