Mossyrock

My fella and I took our respective girls on a little camping trip south of Mt. St. Helens. It ended up being a super fun weekend, minus the driving and setting camp up in the dark with tired girls.

Figuring out the food situation needs to be worked on. I'm all for living on beer and peanuts (and beer and rainier cherries. and beer and crab. and beer and homemade beef jerky/pepperoni) but I'm used to planning camp food. As in that's pretty much what camping is: preparing food and cleaning up and preparing to make more food. But the girls didn't seem to mind eating mac and cheese for dinner and powdered sugar donuts for breakfast... I did sneak a banana or two into the weekend, but aside from the cherries (and beer) that's about as nutritious as the weekend got.

I have another, much funnier photo of someone else on the see-saw, but I'll play nice. For now.
I didn't see any Partridges. Weird.

Mount Saint Helens

We spent at least half the weekend here:

At Northwest Trek:

River Otter

Beaver

Eating cherries while waiting for beef (see the sign behind Natalie?)

How I spent my evenings

You don't have to be pretty when your camping, right?

heh-heh. Not exactly a "full moon" rising...

Strawberry waffles and a game of Go-Fish on our last morning.

Home again, home again...

A forced day off

I was "forced" to take last Wednesday off due to a daycare scheduling problem. Brady was on an airplane headed to southern California with Grandma Honey (who usually watches the kids on Wednesdays). I felt a girls day was in order, so we spent the day with our friend Makenzie and had a fun afternoon.

Early morning sillies...

After stopping in Lynnwood to see my brother and to get some lunch and an oil change, we headed to Forest Park in Everett to visit the petting zoo there.

Makenzie got a cow and Natalie got a bunny nose and whiskers.

The girls even got to go for a quick "pony" ride.

This goose had the notion that little girls should provide snacks.

Photo Uploader hates me...

It's not that I don't have posts to share, I have a couple in the queue, however one of them is very photo-specific, so with photo uploader being uncooperative (I even gave it a couple of days reprieve to try to remedy itself, but noooo).

So.

I am going camping starting tomorrow after work and I can hardly wait. I'm so ready to check out of real life for a few days.

And Brady, the lucky dog, is spending a week in SoCal with Grandma Honey, so it will just be me and Nat and company. My favorite company.

Hopefully blogger just needs a vacation from me as well and we will get along like old friends when I return and we can catch up and have a good laugh over this whole thing.

Pappa-Papparazzi

I was feeling feisty on derby night and unfortunately for the spectators I took it out on them (but hopefully entertains you). I was sitting next to a friends mom whom was visiting from out of state and meeting me for the first time (I'll preempt the next conversation by saying that I think she liked me). She caught me sneaking this photo (my comment was that the last time this 'mature' woman should have worn an outfit like this was in 1986):

and questioned what I was doing. "um... well. I have a blog. And I also have he opinion that people with fully functioning intelligence and make questionable choices in their personal appearance should bring me entertainment. Is it my finest personality trait? Probably not. But I do it anyway." Then I told her about Northwest Profiles, and then we talked mother-in-laws and had a great evening.

So except for one photo, here is a small sampling (and I mean small, I had a huge pool to pull from) of some characters we encountered last night:

My one nice photo: Morticia Militia skating a grand slam as a Cog Blocker (she was a guest skater from the Jet City Hula Honey's).
This lovely lady had a blue Mohawk and a trucker hat (and Michael Jackson's autograph on her neck) that read "Instant Asshole: Just add alcohol"

Our lovely lady gets comfortable.

I couldn't get a good shot of this guy, but he reminded us of:

Beaky the Buzzard. Nope, nope, nope.

We got in line and Tracy texted me asking us where we were in line. I replied "standing behind THIS guy"

And this one just is plain not-nice of me, but his grampy panties were poking up a good few inches, add a couple Bettie beers in me and it's a real giggle.

Three things...

Thing One:
Did you know that they painted over the "City of Subdued Excitement" mural? Yes, the very one that is featured on my blog header... wiped away. Why I Oughta... Kinda bummed me out when I drove by the other day. Why? :(



Thing Two:
I can't remember thing two anymore.



Thing Three:
We had us a night rainbow tonight. My son, in one of his windows of wonderfulness, grabbed my arm as I was drying dishes and told me to "come quick before it's gone!" He drug me to the window to witness a beautiful hot pink sunset. Then he insisted on taking a photo of it. When he went outside (at 9:15 p.m. I might add) he shouted "A Rainbow!" and sure enough, we had a full bow over the trees.

So of course I went and pounded on Erin's door to get her out to witness it. I think it was worth the heckle, how many times do you get to see a full rainbow at bed time?


Crap. What was thing 2....

The return of the camera

It was like Christmas getting my camera and seeing all the pics from last week. Ok, not quite like Christmas, but I like surprises, so I'm trying to make the most out of the return of my camera... pathetic I know, but I don't care.


Little Miss spent most of the afternoon here, since kids under 6 couldn't go onto the ships. I don't think she minded at all.
These guys flew overhead a few times, each time in a different formation, pretty cool.

Brady waiting for the flight elevator alarms to sound for our decent back off the USS Lincoln (yes, he wore his Daniel Boone/Davey Crockett hat the entire time).

Proof of my attendance...

Brady and the USS Lincoln.

The return of the camera was celebrated by eating s'mores...

Tonight is derby night in Everett, and 2 roller betties are guest-skating for the Hula Honey's, it's gonna be a great bout. And then next weekend, more derby?! It's derby overdrive! It's derbylicious!

The Weekend on a iPhone

I realized at 8:00 tonight that I left my camera at my (boy)friends parents' campsite. Maybe I'll get some interesting pictures on my card when I get it back... :)
Anyway, I had a wonderful but exhausting weekend. Lots of driving and child-wrangling, but great.
So here is my weekend as captured on my iPhone:

Saturday morning: B and I got to take a tour on the USS Lincoln. Pretty fun taking the flight elevator up and down. (Video and more pics on the camera).


Sitting in traffic on the way home from Everett (and on the way to the Rankin's superfun evening of food and fireworks!). He wasn't flipping me off in particular, and maybe he wasn't intentionally flipping anyone off and was just resting his hand in a "I hate you traffic" kind of manner. At any rate, it was entertaining and helped pass time to guess how long he was going to flip I-5 off.
On the way home from a afternoon of swimming and other girly fun in Bow.


I love that Natalie plays along in my photography fun. I called her my little suicide bomber... sometimes I question my own parenting. But then I think, 'nah, that was funny'.

I thought "hairy knuckles" when I read this. They open Thursday on Railroad Ave. Better get there early in case there is a line. I'd hate for you to miss out on your "Man Pie".

How many Northwest Profiles did I see this weekend? At least 2. Northwest Profile #60: Blue Tarp Camper. And #56: Socks and Sandals Guy. Or in this case, Socks and Sandals Best Friend. I told you I would paparazzi your ass for doing this Tracy...

And the finale... the annual "let's try to blow up our street" block party. The kids had a super time blowing stuff up with their neighbor friends.

Rock and Roll (part deux)

I made a side by side picture of me last year at this race vs. this year... but I didn't see a big difference so I'm not sure I'll post it... plus pictures of me just aren't my favorite thing in the whole world and posting a picture of me from a year ago... yeah-I-don't-know-about-that. Oh what the hell, I'm not that person any more so what do I care, right? So here it is: