What a fun filled week.

June 25th.  It started off with a nice walk to the Painted Plate downtown.  It is interesting to see the differences between cities through the eyes of a 10 year old.  In Olympia people walk, a lot.  We walk a lot.  We walk downtown, to the store, to the market.  If we had a bike trailer for Lauren we would probably ride our bikes a lot further than we walk, but we do like to walk.  Hayden’s first question was why we weren’t just driving.  "It is just so much faster and easier.  Its so easy I could do it."  Nathan’s response, "Well driving taking money.  Money for gas, money for parking, money for insurance, money for upkeep and repairs.  If we walk instead of driving when we can we can use that money that we would have spent on the car on other cool stuff."  Hayden’s response, "But my feet hurt."  And it was just the beginning!  We arrived at the Painted Plate and Hayden chose to paint a fairy trinket box, and I decided to do a picture frame with both her and Lauren’s hand prints on them.  We had a lot of fun, but towards the end Lauren decided she had had enough, so we wrapped up and headed home.  That night we had pasta with a veggie packed sauce.  A 10-yr old wouldn’t even know that there was spinach, peppers, onions, squash, tomatoes, and carrots hidden in that lovely red sauce.

June 26th.  The next day we had to get ready for our family photo session by doing our tie dye.  What fun that was, we could have dyed a lot more things we were having so much fun.  Hayden chose the colors, we had turquoise, tropical green, royal purple, and fuschia.  We had the mini computer out to show how to tie them to make different patterns.  We all had two t-shirts and then a 5 pack of onesies for Lauren.  We all tied our first shirt as the "test" to see how we liked them and to make sure we had at least one t-shirt we liked enough for the photos.  As I was mixing the dyes some of the turquoise powder sprinkled on my first shirt, so I decided to just stick the ends of that shirt in the dye and let it soak for a while.  Hayden’s first shirt turned out to be "wicked" in her words, but the purple really faded a bit after rinsing and washing in the detergent.  She still liked it more than her second shirt.  Hayden also had fun dying onesies for Lauren, her favorite was the rainbow one, it really turned out nice.  The only one that seemed dissapointed in his shirts was Nathan, he liked his all purple one until it turned from dark purple to lavender.  They would all do nicely for the family photos though!  That night for dinner we had home made pizza and talked about the cost of food.  We made two pizzas and figured out that it cost $3.25 per person to make, including our drinks, and how that compared to eating out where it would cost more and we would have less food and the nutrition wouldn’t be as good.  I think she understood, she said that it was cool that we could make two pizzas for around $10 and it usually costs about $15 to get one delivered and it doesn’t include the soda.  Then we played our new game In A Pickle.  It was great fun.  It is a card game with things and ideas on them, and you have to create a series of things where each thing is larger than the last thing, but the card you put down only has to relate to the card it is touching.  It really got us using our imaginations and creativity.

June 27th.  A busy day at the inn, since we couldn’t really get away we decided to make the most of it and played Bocce in the front yard and relaxed while waiting for guests and planning our camping activities to come in Week #2.

June 28th.  At last minute, sort of, we decided that on Sunday it was a good day to take the kayak out.  Lauren’s first kayak trip.  Of course this means that we had to take two cars, one for the kayak and one for the girls as the kayak only fits on the bug and Lauren’s car seat only fits in the van.  How funny is it that the kayak won’t go on the van.  We have to figure something out there.  We headed to Don & Linda’s inn The Inn at Mallard Cove so we could borrow thier single kayak for Lauren and I and Nathan and Hayden could take our double.  The double Nesi’ka is a beautiful boat and very light but a trailer for taking her up and down the hill to the beach may be in order.  Nathan and I carried the boat with most of the gear in it, Don carried Lauren and Hayden carried the paddles.  After getting situation (and taking some cute photos of Lauren in the double) we hopped into the single and headed off.  Lauren loved it, liked the rocking motion didn’t have any problems, until she realized she was going to fall asleep.  I am sure there were people on shore who were wondering what we were doing to the poor baby in the kayak.  It is amazing how much a baby’s cry is amplified from the cockpit of a kayak and bouncing off the water!  Instead of continuing on I decided I would head back towards the beach and Nathan and Hayden could continue on to the Nisqually Delta.  By the time I was near the oyster farm the little bundle sitting on my lap had fallen fast asleep and was very peaceful.  I paddled around near the beach for a while and decided that I should just head into the beach.

As soon as I made the beach Lauren woke up, but then the problem wasn’t the crying baby, it was the fact that both my feet were asleep and as I straddled the boat to get out I realized I couldn’t stand up.  So there we were on the beach, Lauren underneath my butt, but I wasn’t sitting on her, crying as when I went to stand up she slowly fell backwards leaning on the seat being supported by her PFD and me straddling a kayak with numb legs from the knees down trying to put enough pressure down on the boat so it didn’t drift back into the water.  Eventually I got the boat onto the beach and the baby unloaded onto her change pad and the rocks where she hung out while I put the boat away.  She really enjoyed exploring the rocks, shells, sticks, bugs, etc.

The paddle must have done both the girls a world of good as they both slept and slept hard on the way home, not even food could get them to wake up properly, it was an early evening, which was probably good so everyone was well rested for our family photos the next morning.

June 29th.  After breakfast for a full house, we all dressed in our finest tie dye digs and headed to Priest Point Park and the Rose Garden for our first official family portraits done by Ami Davenport.  Nathan said we looked like a gang of dorks, but I think all of our shirts were different enough to coordinate but not match, I love mine, I wear it frequently, I think Nathan’s are hidden in a drawer never to be seen again.  Ami does some great work.  She has been to the inn several times for weddings, and we enjoy working with her.  We had fun, posing, blinking, smiling, enterataining baby, changing quickly and then continuing until Lauren could just stand no more photos.  Then we went across to the playground and ran around and played for a while before lunch.  For the afternoon since we didn’t have any guests checking in we decided to walk downtown via the Capitol campus.  It is a bit of a circuitious route, but it was a great day and we didn’t have to be anywhere else so we decided why not.  After admiring the gardens, and buildings on the campus we went to Painted Plate to pick up our painted treasures.  The fairy did not turn out as Hayden had envisioned, but she is still adorable as the sentiment was there, and painted by a 10 year old from the heart.  Even if we do call her scary fairy.  Then onto Peppers for a yummy dinner and then back home where again a very tired 10 year old fell fast asleep during her "Absolute favorite movie that I have seen a billion times." Twilight.

June 30th.  Our plans for the following day were to go to Wolf Haven, Monarch Sculpture Park, hit Costco on the way home and all this before 4pm when we were expecting guests.  The plans were foiled somewhat as neither Nathan nor myself checked the hours of Wolf Haven before leaving and wouldn’t you know that Tuesdays are the one day a week that they are closed, no worries though, the girls wouldn’t have even known they were too busy snoozing in the backseat to even notice that we were at Wolf Haven and left!  When Hayden woke at the Monarch Sculpture Park she asked quizzically, "Is this Wolf Haven?"

We walked around the sculpture park looking at the new installations, or installations we had not seen in the past, Hayden had fun playing with, on, and around the musical sculptures, and the prayer tree, even adding her own prayer.  She even got the humor of the Flower Bed (a bed frame with flowers growing in it).  Get it…its a FLOWER BED.  We thought about also stopping at Lattin’s Cider Mill on the way home, but we saw the sign after the turn off so just ended up at Costco and home, which was probably a good thing as our guests that had told us they would be arriving around 4pm turned up shortly after noon as they didn’t realize it wouldn’t take that long to drive from Portland to Olympia.  We didn’t remember to grab our cell phone, so we did’t know they had arrived so early until we arrived home at a little after 1:30pm.  Oh well it all worked out in the end.

July 1st.  One week Hayden has been here, it is also Lauren’s 10 Month birthday!  Since we didn’t make it to Wolf Haven the previous day, we decided we would go back out there today and stop at the Cider Mill on our way home for a lunch / treat.  We arrived at Wolf Haven and the 11am tour hadn’t started yet which was good for us, so we were able to join that tour.  There have been some changes recently at Wolf Haven with the loss of a few of their wolves, and some new rescues that have been added to the mix.  It is always interesting to go as depending on who the volunteer guide is you hear something different.  We have found the same with the tours at the Capitol Building.

After Wolf Haven we went to Lattin’s Cider Mill.  It was fun to see the different babies they had.  The peahens were all sitting on eggs and there were duck and chicken chicks everywhere.  We had doughnuts and fresh cider for snack/lunch at one of the tables.  Hayden even got to ride a horse.   It had an out of order sign on it, but it was a horse none the less.  For dinner we did homemade burgers, guacamole bacon burgers to be exact, with organic multi grain chips and salsa for a side.  They were super yummy.

Check out the first week photos here!