Update... I actually wrote this on the 1st of September. Here we are a month later and I'm finally adding pictures and posting it. Better late than never!
So... the fences are done. This story goes back months and months when we decided that Minerva needed her own space. This was more than a dog run for a dog that's hardly outside, it was a way to give her a place to do her business while not allowing her to do said business on Alton's play space. Well, future play space. At any rate, that gave us a need to extend one fence as far as possible. This was the east side fence and we found that we could extend it 40 feet before reaching the utilities entering our home. And since I didn't want to build a Meter-Checker dedicated gate, I opted to stop at the utilities. This, however, gave us no way to access the backyard from the side of the house, so we decided to move the gate to the west side of the house. I decided to extend the west side a bit to give us some room to play with, rather than just a gate. This became 12 feet for whatever reason. When talking with the neighbors for approval, the west side neighbors asked if I could install a gate at the end of the new fence (same as I was dong for my side) and also convert their current "end cap," or piece of fence that currently closed off their backyard at the side, into a gate as well. Apparently, their plan was to put trashcans here.
So the fences and gates are all done now. The east side matches well with the existing fence and Minerva took to it pretty much immediately all on her own! However, we have yet to actually do anything with that space. I'd like to take out all the bark dust, but I worry that with nothing to put down in its place, it would become a huge mud pit. The west side looks great. I was able to move Minerva's dog house out into the yard (temporarily) and we can now actually walk from the side, through the gate, and into the back yard. Not that we do. The plans for that side include a small walkway utilizing the left over bricks from our patio project (Katie would insert a link here, but I don't know how. Maybe she'll help me out.....[Done. --Katie]) and also a small veggie garden.
So now it's time for pictures (I know, I know.... fiiiinallly). Enjoy!
East Side before.
East Side during.
East Side completed (from street).
East Side completed (from back yard).
East Side transition from old fence to new fence.
West Side before.
West Side during.
West side completed (from street). I also did two gates on the neighbor's side. The one you see here and one behind it that was converted into a gate from old fencing.
West side completed (from backyard).
Alton saying "Pumpkin," plus some counting fun.
Okay, I know I've been going on and on about cake lately, especially about my winning cupcake in the Cake Wrecks book tour signing (read about it here and here), but I promise I'll stop soon. I just had to rejoice with you that my cupcake made it to the actual Cake Wrecks blog! Here is the entry, and if you scroll down through the winners from that night you will see my crazy orange wildcat (you can actually see "Katie R." written on the paper plate in that picture), in addition to my non-winner, the "Winter" cupcake.
I was completely bummed to find out at my birthday party that my most local cousin, Matt, is also a fan of Cake Wrecks! Somehow in all the planning, blogging, and cupcake decorating, I ran out of time to put out a call to all my Hillsboro homies to see if anyone wanted to attend the book signing with me, and Matt hadn't heard about it. Darn! I think that if we had been able to put our heads together ahead of time, we might have been able to come up with a grand-prize-winning cupcake entry (or at least I would have had an expert photographer there to take my picture).
And Portland drew an..interesting crowd of hundreds. Let me say that I love Oregon, LOVE it, and feel right at home here. But the Portland metro area doesn't completely exemplify the rest of the state. Portland is very urban hippie, with plenty of dreadlocks, hiking boots for everyday wear, REI "moisture-wicking" style pants, and lots and lots of Subarus. However, the dreadlocks and pants are clean, everyone rides around on their bikes with clear, Neutrogena-commercial skin, and everyone gives you a smile as they swig from their stainless-steel water bottles. Not necessarily so for much of the rest of the state, where the people are a little more conservative, slightly "country," and don't so much favor the deodorant. On my first visit to Oregon, I talked about my driving route up and down I-5 with a friend and her family who are native Oregonians. Noticing that the cities I was visiting constituted an almost-vertical line on the extreme west side of the state, I asked them, "What's in Eastern Oregon?" "Nothing."
Another story comes to mind of when I was working as a college recruiter a few years ago, with the Pacific Northwest as a major part of my territory. A big group of representatives from various different colleges were all up in Seattle for an event, planning to drive south in a caravan of cars to Oregon for an event that started the next day. I was at a convenience store with a few other reps, including one snarky guy from San Francisco who would not stop trash-talking about how we were leaving Seattle for the land of the hicks and "country folk." When we finally got up to the cash register with sodas and chips and such, the cashier idly remarked, "Road trip?" I nodded my assent and the snarky rep said, "Yeah, we're going to the place where they're lucky if they've got all their teeth." The cashier politely asks, without missing a beat, "Oh, where in Oregon are you going?" I'm not making this up.
So yes, there were some more colorful characters at Powell's last Friday night. After the winning cupcake entry was selected, the crowd began to disperse to go eat cake and get their books signed, while I hung around at the front of the room hoping that one of the other winners with a camera would take my picture with Jen, the author. While I was looking around, a grey-toothed woman came barreling up to the front of the room to the table with the cupcakes. She retrieved her entry, and proceeded to passive-aggressively whine to Jen and her husband about how she had driven 200 miles to get here, and then had to decorate her cupcake on a table downstairs in the bookstore because she'd been so afraid that the cupcake decorations wouldn't survive the journey. She flipped her long, knotted hair over the fanny-pack-sporting shoulder of her batik sundress as she lisped to them that she just couldn't understand how she didn't win! Poor blogger Jen and her husband John eventually managed to get away, but I sure didn't. I wound up two people in line behind this loony woman in the hour-long wait to get my book signed. I shifted my weight from foot to foot (in shoes that might have been comfortable had I not already been standing for an hour and a half in the crowded room while the book discussion was going on) and tried to ignore the B.O. and dagger-eyes of crazy greytooth as she kept shooting glances at my Carrot Jockey necklace, which I was proudly sporting. Happily, the Grand Prize winner and I were the last people in line, so at least Jen and John didn't leave Portland with their last memory being this smelly woman ordering them to sit and put down their cake so that she could take a picture with them. But it takes "all kinds" to make a world, doesn't it?
And now, as this disgusting cake says..."That's all, Folks!"
Wow, where do I start? As you might know already from Andy's post, he threw me a surprise birthday party yesterday! But can we back up and start contemplating the amount of planning and scheming and LOVE that went into this weekend of fun? Andy confessed that he had the idea for this more than a month ago. He contacted my friend Elizabeth to get the email addresses of other mutual friends he didn't have, started researching bakeries to find the perfect place to make my birthday cake, and brainstormed menu ideas. But you know me and what a planner I am...so part of his advance legwork was to UNDO the birthday plans that I was making! I had no idea how completely gullible I am; half the fun of this party was to look back over the last several weeks and realize that every step of the way I was being manipulated (in a nice way) by my nearest and dearest. (Below: Alton and me camping, happily oblivious to the plotting that was going on around us.)
While on our annual camping trip with Brian and Alexa, I promised that we would come visit them in Seattle for my birthday weekend--it would be a fun fall getaway, right? Andy had to call Alexa and nix that idea, so that when Alexa considerately proposed that they come down to visit us for the weekend since it was my birthday, I updated the guileless Andy about our change in plans with no trace of his secretive rearranging on his face. I lined up my cousin Diana to babysit Alton so that Andy and I could go out to dinner that night with B&A, and then when I said that I wanted to confirm with her Andy insisted that no, no, it was my birthday, he would be in charge of the dinner plans. After Andy said that he wanted me to have a decadent "spa day" with Alexa before our dinner arrangements, I made a move to go call Alexa and talk about spa treatment appointments, but Andy hustled up once again and said that he would be in charge of the appointments and treatments and we didn't have to worry about a thing. I thought he was just being nice and wanting me to relax, because it was my birthday. And he did, of course, want me to relax, but he also wanted to time our appointments so that the hours we spent out of the house were advantageous for him and Brian to organize the surprise party!
One thing that you might not know about me is that I love surprises, especially surprise parties. If I see an opportunity to conspire to shock and delight someone, I relish planning a surprise party. In high school (maybe senior year?) I planned with friends a surprise birthday party for our good friend Julie. This is one of the few times that I was actually able to snap a photo of the birthday girl's surprised face as we shocked her.
Julie will have to remind me what our cover story to her was...she may have been under the impression we were going out to dinner? But we had a roomful of people and a banner waiting for her at my house instead.
After high school graduation, a big group of friends and I planned a trip to Tahoe to celebrate. But as the date drew closer, our good friend Jamie received an acceptance to a summer biology program (her major frosh year) at the university she planned to attend (ironically, not Brandeis). She very reluctantly withdrew from our Tahoe trip, but we consoled her with a surprise Bon Voyage party that, in an interesting twist, was held at her own house! We knew when she would be gone, got her mom in on the conspiracy, and had the whole gang waiting in her living room when she came in through the garage. She was so surprised that she screamed and fell down on the floor; still the most awesome reaction to a surprise party, ever. Here are Christa, Julie, me, Jamie and Megan at the party, and you can just barely make out the "We'll Miss You, Jamie" banner on the far left.
One surprise party that I worked on a few years ago I cannot take credit for conceiving. In 2006, both Julie and Christa were living near Washington, D.C., and Christa would be graduating from law school and moving away in a matter of months. For her March birthday, Julie had the grand idea to surprise her with a weekend trip and a visit from Andy and me! We were thrilled at the idea, not only to see Christa and surprise her, but because Andy had not yet seen our nation's capital and we had the chance to be escorted around by locals. Julie posited the birthday weekend celebration to Christa as a fun dinner party and trip to Pennsylvania to see, among other things, Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater." But imagine her shock when she arrived at Julie's house and the door was opened by...Katie and Andy, fresh from California! She was astounded and touched and we had a wonderful weekend yukking it up all through the grey East Coast.
And my most recent foray into the world of surprise party planning was here in Oregon for my friend Elizabeth--a baby shower for her little boy on the way. I was dying to throw her a shower and was hoping to make it a surprise, but how to do it? She lives 30 minutes away from me and was 8+ months pregnant with a toddler already, so I knew that if I extended the invite for a playdate, she could potentially have to cancel last minute, too tired to make the trek with her active little girl *B. I finally received my inspiration when she asked if I could watch *B for her on March 17th while she went to the dentist nearby my house. Hooray! I casually suggested that maybe after her appointment I could invite a few of our friends over for a "St. Paddy's Day" playdate, and she said it all sounded like fun. So as soon as she dropped off her little one, I raced around, with Alton and *B in tow, taping up a baby shower banner and setting out plates, putting the cake on the display stand and placing cups next to the lemonade pitcher. The guests arrived and then Elizabeth made her entrance, hearing our ecstatic shouts of "Surprise!" before she clocked the "Baby Shower" banner overhead. She eagerly started to tell her husband about the shower surprise that evening when he got home, but he had been in on the secret the entire time. Tee hee!
Quite fitting, then, that Elizabeth had the chance to turn the tables on me for my birthday surprise party. Earlier last week, we emailed about plans to hang out with the kids on Friday, the day before my birthday, and I deliberately waited until just two days before I was going to come down to her house to mention that it was my birthday, because I worried that even though she had just bid adieu to some houseguests, she would want to try to bake a cake for my birthday. I thought I was being so crafty...but in reality she knew that it was my birthday the whole time! She innocently asked me what my plans were for the weekend, and listened while I said that Andy seemed like he was going to make a big fuss about it and I was excited. She of course waited until I had left her house on Friday to tell little *B about the surprise party. As soon as she heard the word "birthday," precocious little Miss Chatterbox said, "Katie cake?" Good thing she didn't spill the beans!
Alexa might just get an Academy Award for her birthday surprise performance, because I am so impressed that despite talking with me all day about our fake dinner plans and Andy's considerate scheduling of all of our spa appointments, she didn't slip about the party once. Even when we arrived at home and saw balloons festooning our driveway and porch, she kept up a steady stream of misleading comments, hypothesizing that the boys must have gone to the store to make a nice "welcome home" for the birthday girl, and trying to distract my attention from the fact that Elizabeth's car was parked right outside our house. As I dazedly wondered whether Elizabeth was babysitting Alton, or possibly coming out to dinner with us, I opened the front door and SURPRISE!!!
My friend Carrie and her husband Stephen had also seen me just the previous afternoon with no hint of what was to come on my birthday. I mentioned that I was getting a pedicure for my birthday and she smiled and said how nice that was! My wonderful cousins were there in a partying capacity instead of a babysitting one. My friend Chris had played at the park with us just a few days earlier in the week, and Andy stopped by the park on his way home from work to play at MY invitation, but used the opportunity to confer with Chris about party plans when I wasn't looking. Brian had been hard at work with Andy all day, making trips to Costco and keeping Alton entertained while Andy hurried to make sure that the back patio was looking clean and fabulous for the party. Brian even sent little fake-out texts to Alexa, saying that Alton was sleeping and that Andy was also taking a quick nap on the couch in the middle of the day. Ha!
And my amazement continued when I saw the cake. The fantastic, stupendous, personal, custom cake that Andy designed for me. He said that he looked around on the websites of many local bakeries to find one that was up to the task of creating a knitting-themed cake for me, because after I attended the Cake Wrecks book signing on Friday night, he didn't want my birthday cake to be a professional creation worthy of that genre. He googled pictures, made suggestions, and even selected the colors of the "yarn" to be used in the cake.
And in response to your inevitable questions, the yarn balls ARE edible. They have cake inside and frosting outside, and even the little knobs on the ends of the knitting needles are made of pasty sugar stuff. My sister Cari has said that Andy is making husbands everywhere look bad, and I have to say that he certainly won major, sweet, incredible points and kudos for giving me a fantastic birthday party, a one-of-a-kind cake that is so ME, and basically making it a day of relaxation, pampering, and making me feel so special. This was the best birthday that I've had in YEARS, and possibly ever. My brain is still riding the high of happiness and sugar to settle down and think about whether I've ever had a nicer day. Thank you to all my friends and family and Andy for all of their secrets, hard work, and enthusiasm for this party. I LOVED IT!!!
Edit by Katie: And I can't believe I forgot to mention the time that we were newlyweds and I was traveling for work on my birthday in FRESNO, and Andy baked me a cake and drove out to Fresno to surprise me! He enlisted hotel staff to help him break into my hotel room, display the cake all frosted and ready, and then called my cell to track me down...at Mimi's where I was having lunch. Alone. He pretended it was a nonchalant call and then shocked the stuffing out of me in the middle of my bday French Onion soup. Oui!
I attended the Cake Wrecks book tour last night that I talked about here. And I was a finalist! My cupcake "wreck-plica" of the UK wildcat ended up being one of four finalists for their grand prize of the night. Although I didn't get the grand prize, I did wind up with an awesome Naked Mohawk-Baby Carrot Jockey necklace.
I bought the Cake Wrecks book and had it signed by the author Jen and her sometimes co-writer husband, John, and also got my picture taken with them with my winning cupcake! I hadn't brought my camera with me, so a kind woman in line next to me snapped one with her cameraphone.
So as I consume our commencement cake, I allow myself to be consoled about the wistfulness of weaning by the sugary goodness of the cake and its two little friends. Who are these friends, my readers? They are mini cake wrecks!
Some months ago, Andy stumbled upon the incredibly hilarious blog Cake Wrecks, and we're hooked. It is a daily posting of professional cakes that are unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate...and thus very, VERY funny. Perusing the website can end up wiping hours from your day as you wipe tears from your eyes at the outlandishly awful baked goods that appear on these pages.
The author herself is living the blogger's dream: she was just a regular woman who saw a viral email going around of a picture of a cake with an inscription that was so wrong it was hysterical and got inspired to start a blog cataloging similar goofy cake mistakes. The website took off, her following of readers burgeoned, and now she has a real, published book and is going on a book tour. Wow! The very second stop of her book tour is here in Portland on Friday night, and since it's my birthday on Saturday my generous husband insisted that I go and check out the Cake Wrecks book signing scene. In addition to putting the call out to various local bakeries to provide cakes, both "wreck-y" and otherwise, the attendees of the event have also been invited to create their own wreck-plicas: remakes of some of the funniest cake wrecks on the website, miniaturized onto a cupcake.
Well, you know me and cupcakes--I never say no. So when I baked the Alton-Katie-Weaning-Graduation cake, I poured batter into two muffin cups to make my own mini cake wreck to take to the book signing. I laid out all my tools on the counter (while making dinner at the same time, mind you--chicken and pasta with homemade pesto sauce) and started carefully applying toothpick dollops of frosting onto the cupcake. I had selected the original "wreck" from the site based both on how hard it made me laugh, and how easy it looked to re-create.
Below is the picture of the cake, and the accompanying blog about it:
And here is my mini version:
Pretty awesome, eh? Who needs fancy tools and bakeries when you've got food coloring and a ziploc bag? I mixed all my frosting colors in little ramekins on the counter, and had a good tablespoonful or two left in each one after I finished my work of art. I had baked two cupcakes to decorate in case I messed up and the first attempt had to be scrapped and eaten, so I had my naked little backup cupcake sitting there all forlornly, waiting to be decorated. What other cake wreck, I wondered, could I make on this second cupcake that used the rest of my bowls of orange and blue frosting? A little bit of clicking around led me back to this original post, which I am surprised I didn't remember sooner because it nearly made me wet my pants with laughter the first time I read it. Click over there and read it right now, because you have to get the idea of what I was dealing with here.
So again, the original:
And my cupcake version:
Twins again, no? There are supposedly prizes being given out for cupcakes at the event, so wish me luck! I will let you know how my entries fare.
This week our family celebrated a momentous milestone in Alton's babyhood: he has been weaned from nursing. Wow! After 20 months of sweetness, it is now time for Alton to "graduate" from his breastfeeding relationship with his Mommy and be a big boy. Yes, 20 months is older than we are accustomed to seeing children nurse, but Alton and I were happy to keep this up as long as it worked for the two of us. Now is the commencement of a new phase in his life. He has already packed his bags (Okay, not really. Those are our sleeping pads from camping that he was happy to tote around when we returned from our trip.)
So to transition him to a new routine without breastfeeding, Andy went to Alton when he first woke up in the morning and got him breakfast, a Mommy-less assimilation to mornings without nursing. Alton was happy to dig in to his banana and some scrambled eggs in his jammies, and tosses back a side of Cheerios occasionally, too. For a few days we held our breath, waiting to see if he would ask to nurse, but he didn't. I'll admit that Mommy was a little sad to end this aspect of our relationship and that part of me may have been hoping that he would show some reluctance to let it go, but in the end I am happy that the change went so smoothly for him. It would have been sad anytime to wean my baby, and I think that if he had been upset or confused it would have made me sadder. He has been weaned for one week now, so Andy, Alton and I had a little family celebration to commemorate this occasion. We went out for dinner and I baked a cake (Cake from scratch, but icing was not, this time! I was out of powdered sugar and when I hurriedly ran into Target today for other essentials, Target was also out of powdered sugar. Pillsbury it is.) and decorated it for the two graduates.
We also bought Alton a little gift: a big Magna-Doodle for his playroom. A friend had raved about the travel-size Magna-Doodle as an airplane distraction toy, so we got a cheapo Target knockoff bitty version for our recent trip to California. Alton was fascinated by it, and we loved having a small toy to bring along that was engrossing, non-messy, and quiet so as not to disturb other passengers. A full-size Magna-Doodle was definitely in order, and here you see how absorbed Alton is in his play.
Twenty successful months of breastfeeding cannot be achieved by one mama and baby alone; breastfeeding is a natural art, but it's also a learned skill. I want to first thank my mother Pam and mother-in-law Jennifer for their unflagging encouragement both before and after Alton was born. Jennifer credits breastfeeding as one of the things that kept Andy healthy as an infant despite being born with heart defects that necessitated him receiving open heart surgery at 13 months old. Pam had already lost her own mother when her three children were born and looked to her older sisters Marilyn and Carole for guidance on nursing, which she passed on to me early in my pregnancy by giving me a copy of La Leche League's "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding." Both of these women have been my role models and cheerleaders throughout my career as a nursing mother, and I have appreciated their advice, sympathy and suggestions every step of the way. I also thank my entire extended family for always being respectful, curious and courteous about my breastfeeding relationship with Alton--thank you to my dad Steve and father-in-law Charlie, siblings and siblings-in-law Cari, Julio, KC, Zach and fellow nursing mom Karen, with whom I swapped stories, information, and even fashion tips about nursing.
I also would like to mention again the wonderful breastfeeding support group at Tuality Hospital's Health Education Center, which I enthused about here. The group leader Carrie was always understanding and helpful, I met many friends there as a new gal in town, and it was there that I first heard about the work of the amazing organization Nursing Mother's Counsel of Oregon and became a volunteer. It is so crucial for any mom of a new baby, especially one who is nursing for the first time, to have support from multiple spheres, and going weekly to this informal support group was essential to my success with nursing Alton. We made a special trip back to the group this past week to say hello to the leader Carrie and announce our graduation from nursing--it felt like the celebration that it is.
Support knows its definition in the character of my husband, Andy. In my fervent prenatal desire to nurse my baby once he was born, Andy was right there alongside me, championing my role as a nursing mother before I even had a child to nurse. He read pages of breastfeeding "how-tos," listened attentively to his cousin Ali when she and I discussed foremilk, hindmilk and let-down, and congratulated me when I bought my first nursing bras. Andy was flagging down nurses in the hospital for breastfeeding assistance when Alton was first born, proudly took pictures of baby's first nursing session, and called the lactation consultant at Alta Bates to make a consultation appointment for me when we were a week home from the hospital, my mom was gone, and I was exhausted, sore, engorged, and leaking milk all over the place. He always let me understand that breastfeeding was our choice, not "my" choice, and expressed his admiration and appreciation for what I was doing to give Alton a happy and healthy start in life. I felt so happy to know that to Andy, breastfeeding was a beautiful, natural miracle, regardless of whether I was serenely nursing Alton in the crook of my arm, or drowsily latching him on in the middle of the night in our bed, the tiny warm baby body somehow causing Andy to claim only an inches-wide sliver of the mattress. It makes me unspeakably proud when a friend of ours asks a question about nursing and Andy is able to answer it as well as I could have, even if I'm sitting right there. I am ecstatic to think about the role model that he is providing for Alton, who in turn will hopefully champion his own wife's right to nurse one day.
So to eeeeeeeveryone who contributed in any small or large way to our 20 sweet, wonderful, sometimes frustrated, sometimes elated months of breastfeeding--Alton and I thank you!
People often ask us where we got the name "Alton" for our beloved baby. There isn't a specific reason we can point to, and it's not a family name, it's just one that happened to hit that sweet spot of liked the name, not too common, went well with our last name, gave son the same initials as Daddy, etc. It has Anglo roots and means "of the old town." Al-ton, old town, got it.
So I guess it should come as no surprise that Alton is the name of many old towns across the world! There are a good handful in the U.S., in states like Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Texas, and more, and on their recent trip to Canada one was spotted by Zach, Karen and Cousin *P! Shown here!
Even cooler, I discovered recently that in the UK (land of the Anglo names) there is a resort/theme park called Alton Towers! A Six Flags for across the pond. I scoured their website and the sites of any Alton cities that I've found, but so far I haven't discovered any apparel that says "Alton, TX Population: 354" or anything like that. I guess there isn't much demand for small-town t-shirt Alton e-commerce. So if you see an official Alton t-shirt anywhere or you are heading to England for Alton Towers, please hook us up!
Labor Day! Andy's birthday usually falls during or around Labor Day Weekend, and we like to come up with something fun to celebrate this (in addition to the run-of-the-mill awesomeness that is a three-day weekend). Earlier this summer we realized that we had spent the previous FOUR Labor Days with our good friends Brian and Alexa, and since two's coincidence and three's a habit, we figured that four must be tradition and five must be a requirement! Or something like that. Last year if you remember, we went camping out near the Olympic Peninsula, about which you can refresh your memory here and here. Basically, it was really cold, we were not prepared for the weather because we didn't have many warm clothes, and no one got to go swimming except Minerva. I was determined that this year camping would be a sunny success, so I searched around for something EAST of I-5, away from cold rainy Forks vampire country. But why do I always leave the campground search for so late in the summer? I finally got lucky at a place called Lake Mayfield--exactly one tent campsite left in the whole place. The loneliness of it made me think that perhaps this was a patron who had had to cancel a previous reservation, and so I rejoiced at my computer and snapped up good 'ol Site 16 for the long weekend.
We have spent the summer visiting around and doing home improvement projects, as you loyal readers know, and when Labor Day suddenly loomed ahead Andy and I turned to the fairly accurate weather.com to see what was in store for our camping extravaganza. As Andy put it: 80-60-60. No, not the high temps...we wish. No, those were the percentage chances of PRECIPITATION for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Hoo. Ray.
Okay, okay, nothing to panic about, right? So it would be cold, so what? And wet, yeah, lots of that. But we live up in Oregon, after all, so it's time we learned to suck it up, our dog included, and just let things get rained on...including ourselves. So this time we were determined that we would be SO prepared for everything--the cold, the wet, the unexpected showers, the lake that we couldn't swim in because it was so cold--that we would have a great time because nothing would take us by surprise. We would have so many blankets and jackets and dry clothes and things that we would be super-comfortable and completely at ease. Huh. Yeah, we should have known it wouldn't be that easy.
We left Hillsboro on the Friday afternoon 
and didn't hit a lick of traffic (should that have been the first preternatural sign that we should expect the unexpected?). Lake Mayfield is located almost exactly halfway between Portland and Seattle, so a totally ideal camping location for us and our Emerald-City-livin' friends since we would each drive less than two hours. Andy, Alton, Minerva and I settled once again into our faithful compact truck (Andy striking a yoga-esque pose in the backseat with the dog while I drove and Alton rode airbagless shotgun) and scooted on up the I-5 to our destination. The lake is just a little ways south of Chehalis, WA, which you have never heard of because it's freakin' small, and the fact that this unknown town is one of the nearest major landmarks to the lake should let you know that it's off that stretch of the highway where there seems to be nothing for miles and miles. (I was once driving home from Seattle by myself with Alton, and it was during this barren track that my five-month-old baby decided to wail the windows out of the car because he was sick of being in his car seat, overtired, and wanting to be held. I fruitlessly searched for a decent place to stop--a gas station that maybe wasn't named "Bud's," a shopping center, even a lone McDonald's?--and kept pulling off at random tiny freaky exits to console my crying infant, only to have him start up sobbing again once the car was in motion, all the while getting frightened at the growing darkness of the sky that indicated that it was getting close to nighttime and I was hours from home in Boontown, Population: Me. But that was last year.)
We exited the highway with about 15 more miles to go to the campsite and looked around for dinner. Why, oh why, did we wait so long for our food break? Not a Dairy Queen to be seen--the only two dinner options were those wood-wall-paneled, be-fake-flowered, sticky plastic table menu places called "Spiffy's" and "Jammer's Family Restaurant." I'm. Not. Kidding. We opted for "Spiffy's" since it was more on our way, and as I scanned the menu looking for your basic burger, I noticed a particularly ominous "raw food" warning accompanying that section of the menu that actually scared me into ordering my burger medium-well. Now, my parents enjoy a properly-cooked, but quite pink, steak, and have transferred their tastes to us kids for the most part, so that Andy likes to joke that he eats his red meat as shoe leather and I like it "still mooing." I'm not sure if the burger that Spiffy's served to me had ever made the acquaintance of a frygrill in its life (and yes, I say "life," because I think it was still alive). I can see where an inexperienced chef might occasionally undercook a thick, maybe 1/2 lb. burger, but this was a slim patty that would not have been out of place at any fast-food restaurant, and it was...well, let's just say there was oozing involved. Heh, maybe that's already more than you wanted to know. But recall any jokes you've ever heard about the meat just getting lightly passed over the cooking flame, and you've got my burger in mind. Yes, I know, I should have sent it back immediately, but I actually started eating the more "done" side, and it wasn't until I was halfway through that I realized just how juicy it was. But time was a-wastin', and Flo and her cohorts weren't exactly breaking any speed records, so I just wolfed down my fries and we beat feet out of there. Spiffy's will never know that heat = cooking unless perchance they read this blog, which I'm sure they will since it's awesome.
But back in the truck, we sped out to the campsite and began to unload, then left Andy behind to start setting up the tent while Alton and I went in search of--doh!--an ATM, to purchase firewood from the cash-only campground office. We got back with money and wood just in time for it to be too late for a fire because we were tired, it was starting to rain, and we needed to get the sleeping bags and Alton travel crib quarters up and running. So I'll tell you right now, the first night was bad, but the second night was not bad. I think the first night was bad because Alton was up far too late and feeling overtired, we didn't quite have his crib setup down perfect (we learned from our experience for the second night), and we didn't have a nightlight that could shine all night (might have been a bit afraid of the dark!). It probably helped that the second night he was very, very tired from walking miles all over the campground all day long. 
One of the things that they tell new parents nowadays is that babies really like white noise. After having lived for nine (ten) months in a womb surrounded by the sounds of mother's pumping blood, beating heart, breathing, talking, digestion, etc., all being blasted at a decibel level on par with a vacuum cleaner, the baby finds it comforting to hear white noise while he sleeps instead of silence. We actually run a humidifier in his room at night to help with his dry, sensitive skin, but when we are traveling we rely on something else to provide white noise: an iPod. We have loaded our iPod with a white noise CD that has tracks on it like heartbeat sounds, a hairdryer, and (my favorite) rain on a roof. When Alton was very small I would put the CD in my car to relax him when he was at war with his car seat, and I'd be driving around a gorgeous, sunny Hillsboro with the sounds of a steady downpour filling my ears in the driver's seat. At other people's houses or hotels, we plug in the iPod, put "Rain on a Roof" on repeat, and position the little earphones of the iPod on a chair seat or table somewhere near Alton's crib. Voila! White noise on the go.
We didn't need to worry about white noise for this camping trip, though, because it poured rain all...night...long. We only ended up with a tiny bit of water in the tent (on Andy's side of the sleeping bags; thank goodness because Alton ended up snuggled on my side for at least half the night) that required a little shoring up of tarps and rearranging of tent for the next night. Alton seemed a bit weirded out by the rain, the dark, the bed situation, the weird temperature...it was cold, but at the same time so humid that you would sweat. Anything in the tent that was made of cotton just felt wet, all the time. Partway through the night Alton decided that he'd had enough of this nonsense and wanted to be snuggled very tightly in my arms. I was torn; half feeling that my arms would (and did) fall asleep because of the weird position I was in to cuddle him, but half enjoying the intense snugglage and reminiscing that the last time he wanted to be held so securely to sleep through the night was one night on an air mattress with me during Brian and Alexa's wedding weekend, a year ago. Our baby is getting so big! Although forget about pins 'n needles in the arms--we hadn't remembered to bring our PILLOWS. Now that will make you uncomfortable sleeping on the ground.
Saturday turned out quite fine, although in the morning it was still raining off and on. Not much fun to cook breakfast on a campstove in the rain, and less fun to try to eat it with baby on your lap in the "sunporch" of your tent. Brian and Alexa arrived at lunchtime after a pit stop to Kmart to buy new sleeping bags to replace the ones that they had forgotten (although they got our text requesting that they bring us extra pillows--awesome!), and they proceeded to have a blast walking Alton around...and around...and around. With the temperatures still low (although the rain had subsided), we couldn't go swimming, so we sat and talked, made dinner plans, took Alton to the playground at the day-use area, and went for long walks around the campgrounds. Alton at one point decided to painstakingly place small rocks along a fence slat, which Andy has pictured here:
We enjoyed a beautiful sunset, scrumptious hot dogs, and here is where our trip pretty much ends. Alton went to bed without much fuss, exhausted from his treks around the loops, and the adults were able to kick back under the clear sky at the campfire, roast a zillion s'mores, and just hang out (Minerva would like to firmly state here that she would have preferred to be in BED. Yeah, got it, 'Nerve.). We slept like logs, Alton didn't get up until 7:30, but it rained all night and all the next morning. A reluctant check of the hour-by-hour forecast showed that it was going to be uninterrupted rain all day, with a brief reprieve very late in the evening. Mmm, that's okay. We started packing up our stuff inside the tent and tore the structure itself down when the rain momentarily slackened. We got Alton his lunch, he conked out in the car and slept deeply all the way home, and we tossed our wet, muddy, dirty gear into the garage to go order pizza and take long, hot showers. Aaaaaah.
During our numerous walks, we tried to take note of a few really cool-looking site locations, so that next year we could book those for INDEPENDENCE DAY weekend.
More home improvement fun! So in our lovely room with the purple paint, the wall opposite the piano is one that is home to a small desk for our computer and to a weird little window. The window is short and wide, and the bottom of it is taller than my head, so even though it doesn't reach the ceiling, it has a basement-like feel to it on account of its not being a picture window. There are a couple dividers in it to make it look like three windows, but that doesn't matter because the glass doesn't open at all. This window faces west, which normally means that you have a smashing view of the siding of the house next door, but when the angle of the sun is just right in the afternoon, big bright sunbeams shoot through the window and threaten to sear the retinas of anyone in a nearby radius.
The previous owners of our house had dealt with the "big useless window that allows afternoon sun to blind us every day" dilemma by installing a dull ivory ruched, ruffly curtain on a couple of tension rods inside the window. You can sorta see it below, behind Alton's head..
(note from Andy: The previous owners also had a large 72 inch TV under this window, thus distracting your gaze from the uselessness that is this feature.)
Ouch. That's pretty ugly. And definitely not our style, so we had to come up with something different. While we were pondering different curtain ideas, Andy was in the midst of a project to put some privacy film on the window next to our front door. The film gave the window a "frosted" appearance and made it opaque so that passers-by can't see into our house. There was a ton leftover, so we decided to take down the ugly granny curtains and put up the film instead--we needed something on the window at all times so that the sunlight didn't damage the finish on the piano. You can see the film on the window below, install stepladder still in place and everything.
Okay, so a slight improvement, but still not fantastic. The white film, with a white wall, next to a white wall, with a white front door...we were getting snow blindness in this room and were dying for color. Our new master plan? Paint the walls behind the piano purple to spice things up! The wall with the window, however, continues on to our entryway, which has a two-story height vaulted ceiling in the entryway with the door. We didn't want to teeter on rented ladders to paint a wall with vaulted height, and we decided that we didn't want to leave the vaulted section white and paint a purple line down the wall where we arbitrarily would decide that the entryway ended and the front room began (do you follow?). So we decided on a plan that would solve both our ugly window and whitey whiteness problems: install a wooden windowsill on the window so that it looked more like a window and less like a hole in the wall, and make a tailored valance for the window in a coordinating shade to the purple to give that side of the room some color. Whew!
Both phases of the project are done after a steady weekend and a few weekdays of work from Andy and Katie. Andy handled the windowsill, of course: he took measurements of the window, took pictures of the other windowsills in the house, went to Lowe's and matched both the size of the sill AND the look of the trim underneath. Add some semi-gloss white paint and he was good to go!
My portion of the project required a little more prep. We went to Joann's fabrics armed with our paint hue card from Home Depot showing the four shades of purple paint with graduating darkness in the shades. You had pale lavender, then plum, then violet, and finally, "really bad bruise." I was hoping to find a solid-color home decor fabric in a plum shade, slightly lighter than our violet walls, for the valance, and a coordinating ribbon in the violet shade to use as a little visual interest accent for the trim. No small order, eh? As my cousin Louise can tell you, as soon as you have a specific idea in your head of what you would like to find, you get to the fabric store and uncover...nada. We traversed through the whole home decor section and then tackled the rest of the store. I even checked out the "quilting cotton," not the best fabric for a tailored valance choice. We hit the "special occasion" section and looked at silk and fake silk that was much closer to the dark purple color, but we knew that with the lack of light in that room, the dark purple would turn to a gothic black on our wall. Le sigh.
I halfheartedly flipped through the special order decor fabric swatches, not expecting to find anything, when I FOUND IT!!! A lightweight canvas fabric, solid-color, in the Lilac hue. Success! Those of you who have trawled through home stores, fabric stores, or the entire Internet looking for the perfect shade of something can relate to my disappointment followed by elation! We were expecting the fabric to be off-the-charts expensive, since it was in the special order section, but were pleasantly surprised to find that it actually cost less than some of the other "designer" decor fabrics by the yard. We actually took the swatch home and compared it to our paint (had to see the paint hue card on a bigger scale) after we had analyzed the Joann's ribbon section and found some gorgeous, .5" wide velvet ribbon in an eggplant shade. We placed our order, purchased a new curtain rod, and once the fabric was in it was only about 10-12 hours of mainly hand-hemming later that we were the proud installers of a new valance AND windowsill. There are a few whole-window shots and one detail shot of the fabric. Enjoy!
