The mother of all Blog Posts

We have quite a bounty of things we've done since I last posted. Here's the run down...

A half deaf/blind pocket gopher visited our yard. We walked right up to him. He wasn't afraid at all and only stopped eating when Dada clapped his hands really loudly. It took us quite a while to figure out what he was because he was slightly disfigured. But that's as close as we can figure anyway. Hope he makes it out there...

The boys had a play date with their friend Drake at the Woodland Park Zoo. We ended up spending the whole time in the Zoomazium. (An indoor play structure I had been saving for when we got caught in the rain one time, but Cade couldn't stand the wait any more.)

You can see the "round door," as Cade calls, it in the background of this picture. It's the kid's entrance to the Zoomazium.


It's quite astonishing in there. Beautiful play structures. This is a detail of a "tree house." There is a twisty slide enclosed in this tree.


A small cliff to climb in the enclosed toddler area.


Reid looking at a log tunnel. You can also see a fish tank to the left and some murals.




The large slide structure in the bigger kids area. None of the boys would be contained in the silly baby spot for long.

Reid wranglin' an elephant.


A puzzle station.

They had a bath, which I suppose is not remarkable, but I got some cute pictures.

Case in point...




Looking at these pictures is the first time I could really see the resemblance in the two.


I love this picture. You can tell exactly what Cade was thinking.



We went to the Alderwood Mall to their play structures.








Cade and this kid had a great time together. Cade hugged him when it was time for him to leave.



I would say there were probably 50-75 kids in this area screaming and running around like monkeys. This guy had to have been mighty tired. I'm just sayin'...







Hey you, get offa my bird.

Cade has had two swimming lessons now, here are some pictures from the first one. (He is a star, by the way, he absolutely loves it!)

First in the pool. On the way, I could tell he was nervous. I asked him what he was worried about and he said all the water in the pool. As soon as we walked into the pool area, he said, "I wanna go in!" No more worries for that kid!

When he first got in, he was shaking he was so excited...

Learning how to do mouth bubbles.

Practicing while the teacher is with the other student. (This day there was only one other boy, there is a little girl in the class now, too.)


The marshmallow.

The marshmallow and mouth bubbles.

Getting ready to float on his back. The black square is underneath them for support and they lay their heads on the teacher's shoulder.

So excited!

Aahhh... Love this floating thing.

This is the "magic carpet."

Magic carpet dismount.


Kicking on the wall...

Reid busied himself with is "ninos."

"Aaaaaarrrrrrr"

And finally, I gave up on the ol' garden for this year. I decided to pull everything out since there wasn't going to be much more growing time. I started with the carrots, because that was all that was obviously still living. I decided to see if there were any potatoes, just for the heck of it. And there were some...if you wanted to call them potatoes... the smallest is about the size of a pea. So since there were a few potatoes, I decided to try my luck at the onions and found a few that were slightly larger than the starts we planted, but hey, they were onions. They're bigger than any I ever harvested in California...

Tadaaaa. This whole bounty was contained on a dinner plate. But close up everything looks huge!

Cade asked for these carrots at the store. I was glad we had something to show him in the end. The red ones are actually orange inside. They all taste pretty good for miniature carrots.

My lovely little late season tomatoes. The only two I got this year. I took this picture and literally the next morning they were gone. Little pointy hoof prints were my only clue. I love deer. Really. But man...

This is a carrot, right here.

Reid just shoves the whole thing in there. Not that it was such a huge one...

Cade the weirdo...


Reid the cute.

So all in all, I wanted to grow a garden to feed my family. And maybe I'm not feeding them dinner, but they are getting one or two good wholesome organic snacks out of it. Not bad, I'd say.

And so, apparently I wore these kids out. Reid got sick Monday and Cade came down with it Friday or Saturday night. Just colds. Minor really, but we won't be doing much to take a picture of this week, probably. Off to recouperate...

PS, Reid got a molar in today. Three more to go until it's time for them to start falling out!