Our Weekend

I've been a little stressed lately.

So last weekend we didn't clean the house or do much laundry or wash the dishes. I don't think we checked our mail for a day or two (take that bill collectors!).

Instead, we got in the car and drove to Deception Pass and went geocaching.

Geocaching is pretty fun. I call it my "old lady" thing. I guess it is what people do when they retire and want to have fun. But I digress. It's also one of the kids' favorite things to do. We had MoMo this weekend, so it was sort of expected that we would do SOMETHING fun.

The basic gist of geocaching is that you have a GPS device and you go on the internet to geocaching.com and look up caches in the area you want to go. You get the coordinates and a few clues and then you go hunt for a hidden treasure.

Like a real treasure hunt!

I printed off (or rather hand wrote, since our printer is dead dead dead) a few of these geocaches and off we went.

The first one was on the way to Deception Pass on Chukanut Road. This is by far our favorite drive. In fact, when we first bought our car in 2002, and we couldn't sleep at 2am because we were so excited and thinking about our new car, we drove here in our pajamas.
It's pretty.

I tried to take some nice pictures, but Nathan was driving, and he really likes this road. So they were all a bit blurry.

But anyways, you get the jist. There are trees and cliffs and the magnificant ocean.

We got to the first geocache, and let the kids out to find it.

Apparantly, there was also some bum scratching and rock climbing. BUT, the cache was found! We forgot to bring things to trade, and Zoe was pretty upset that she had to leave some fantastic pirate tatoos behind (we ended up going back the next weekend and grabbing them for her!).

And then we were off to our next drive by destination: The Long Horn Saloon! We didn't actually stop here this time, but on Nathan's birthday we rode his scooters out here. We were the only non Harley riders and were a bit intimidated, but it was pretty fun to eat here and pretend to be tough.

We kept driving.
Pretty soon we were a long ways from the city and the busyness and the stress.
Pretty soon, this is all that surrounded us:

And let me tell you, it felt GOOD!
We kept going, since we had another geocache that we wanted to find, and we (meaning Nathan)ended up making a wrong turn.
In our history of weekend adventures, the majority of them involve wrong turns and subsequent adventures. Even though we own not one but TWO GPS devices, we are wrong turn and subsequent adventure taking masters. This one time on our honeymoon we made a wrong turn while walking around San Francisco. We ended up finding this amazing tiny fortune cookie factory squeezed into an alleyway shop. Another time in Bellingham, we took a wrong turn and found a seemingly homeless trailer full of Vespas (Nathan about had a heart attack and ran into the house nearest the trailer and, long story short, the trailer and it's trove are now his). Wrong turns on our weekends to British Columbia are also exciting since they tend to take us several hours to re-orient ourselves, but have enabled us to find amazing places, like Granville Island.
So Nathan made a wrong turn and as we are turning into the next available turn around parking lot area we see this sign:

That's the coffee roaster sign, not the BreadFarm sign, that we were interested in. And yes, that is my finger at the top of the picture. It was bright out, and there was one of those intimidating Harley Biker Guys looking at me like I was crazy to take a picture of the store front sign.

But, the picture was a must because Nathan loves coffee, and we are trying desperately to start our own coffee roasting business, with coffee delivery on his Vespas. Of course, we went inside where we found the most amazing selection of homemade muffins and local wines. There was also the cutest little coffee roaster in the corner. Unfortunately, the guy who does the roasting wasn't in at the time. We'll have to try again later (darn, I'll get to eat another muffin).

Our final destination was the gift shop just past the Deception Pass bridge. We got there and parked and went inside. This geocache was a little harder. You had to go to the originally posted coordinates where a second set of coordinates were hidden. After you type the new coordinates into your GPS you had the final hiding spot. Someone took a lot of time to set up this cache. It was brilliant, and I'm not going to give it away at all, because really, you ought to try out this geocaching thing. It is so much fun. The girls finally got to trade a few items and they picked out a toy horse and a gold polar bear pin, and then we headed home. Only we took another wrong turn, but sort of on purpose, because the kids were chanting,

"I WANT TO GO TO THE BEACH."

And so we went,

because really,

who doesn't?

And that, right there, the heaving of the waves and the skipping of the stones, that is what made the last of the stress melt away.


Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
don't you feel better now?

Crazy.

This just seen:

Man walking down major street (let's just call it The Guide),
wearing a nice white
straitjacket.
Fully buckled in.

Sorry, no picture, you'll have to trust me.

A Little Salt.

It's over half way through September and I've been meaning to tell you that it is Childhood Cancer Awareness month.
I know I know, there are so many things assigned to these 12 months, that it is getting a bit ridiculous. But this one, this cause, it breaks me.
I have no idea why.
My kids don't have cancer. My friends' kids don't have cancer. There are no kids with cancer in my mother's uncle's friend's brother's dog's house.
But none the less, I found my way to this little girl three years ago. She stole my heart from the get-go.
Every day for three years, I checked her mom's journal and read about Rachel. From the sidelines, I watched her grow from a pre-schooler to an almost second grader. I wrote her letters sometimes, but mostly just watched. While I was watching (it just sort of happened) I fell in love. The 'pinch those cheeks,' and laugh at her antics, kind of love. But a big big love, all the same.
And then she died.
And suddenly, I had this window into what it is like for a parent to lose a child. Rachel's mom Jodi, kept writing, and let us all know exactly what grief does and how it moves and what it eats and how it just stinks like no other stink.
Through Rachel, I met over a hundred other kids with cancer and many many other parents facing that stinky monster named grief.
These are their faces:


So, September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

And you are now aware.

Feel like doing something about it?

On September 24 (that's next Monday), eat your dinner at Chili's.

The proceeds are going to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where kids are treated and parents encouraged, free of charge.
So, get the steak, and spring for dessert, and leave a nice tip.

If you just can't go, you can create a chili for Rachel.
She sure spiced up my life.

It Ain't Easy...

...being Green.
But Z is.
Green, that is.
She has wanted to dye her hair since she was two. She got a killer pink wig for her third birthday and her head about exploded with joy. She had pink plastic hair!
And then she decided that she wanted to grow up and be in a Rock Band. I mean, a Rock Van.

Z: Mommy, I will miss you when I grow up.
Me: You will? Are you going to move away?
Z: Yes, I am going to be a rock star in a rock van in Africa.
Me: Oh!
Z: And I am going to play the Kintar (translation: guitar) and Daddy is going to play the drums and I am going to play the microphone and MoMo is going to play the shakers...
Me: Wow! That sounds like a really cool rock band!
Z: Yeah, I know, it's going to be the coolest rock van ever. And I'm going to have pink hair. And I am going to live in Africa. With pink hair!

Maybe we should lay off of the U2 a little bit.


So for her fifth birthday N took her to the salon and she suddenly picked green over pink. She wanted a Mohawk too. She begged and begged and begged. I don't think she really understood what a Mohawk was, so I said no. Could you imagine my girl with a green Mohawk? I'm pretty sure that her teacher would have something to say about that.

And while we were there, just for the hell of it, we let baby S in on the fun too...

Procastination: the act of postponing, delaying, or putting off.

It's another kinda gray day out here at the Refinery. A put on your fuzzy sweater, drink your hot coffee and pretend that yesterday wasn't over eighty degrees out by noon, kind of day. So I am sitting at my desk, drinking my coffee and watching the sky blue up oh so slowly. Honestly though, I am delaying the inevitable need to ship some samples to the lab and I don't really understand why. I seem to procrastinate more lately than ever before. You would think parenthood and adulthood and marriage and all of that stuff would put a nip in the butt of that kind of behavior. But it hasn't.
There have been so many changes lately. My Dad doesn't work here anymore. There are so many new people and new managers. My little girl started kindergarten. I think I just realized the other day that I'm not pregnant anymore and my baby boy is already weaning and getting his first tooth and two seconds away from crawling. He's practically a toddler already. And wasn't I just pregnant? N isn't working anymore but he's been helping a friend out in his restaurant downtown, and we've passed that critical point of more income going out than coming in.
So, I think my way of trying to slow time down a bit is by procrastinating. I walk to the units instead of riding my bike. I think about the books I'm reading instead of actually writing. I lay in bed for ten more minutes instead of eating breakfast.
How do you snap out of a procrast induced fog?
Any advice out there?
I'll gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today.

Raging Rock Stars

This post is really for my friend Cam, since he is the only one that reads this...

Am I all RSS-ing now?

And while we're at it, here's a sneak peak of our fourth anniversary dinner. Just the beginnings of our August Insanities...

P.S. The first step is admitting you have a problem (the posts just aren't coming fast enough, duuuuuuuuuude, I need mooooooooooore!)...

Breaking my heart into a million smiles.

August was a crazy month full of good stories to tell and pictures to post, but first, September brought something even bigger.

Something that caused my heart to pound and time to come to a slow halt and memories to surface like hungry fish in a shallow pond.

My baby girl...

...Who loves singing and dancing and playing and then singing some more.

My baby girl who eats cookies like a monster.

And ROARS like a lion.

My pumpkin loving,

Christmas Angel,

Is a Kindergartner.

Can you believe it?

I'll tell you about the green hair later, and N's birthday party, and yes, even the BIG MOOSE.
But for now, just know that this Mommy is missing her little peanut.

When did she get so big?