The little guy is on the mend! He might be plagued by some sniffles, but that didn't slow him down at the farm stand/petting zoo. We soaked up the California sunshine as we fed lettuce to the goats, ran around the haybales, and bought a fruit pie for dinner.
Alton really enjoyed this high perch. He narrowly avoided a gaffe when he spotted a woman from behind who was standing near the haybales. He called out, "Nonna, Nooooooonna!" and walked over to her. I called his name when he was just an inch away from playfully poking her in the bottom. It wasn't Nonna.
Feeding the goats, he was more and more daring. He started out pinching the lettuce between his fingertips, nearly dropping it on the ground when the goats' eager tongues would grip the cool green leaves and begin to munch it down, quicker than a paper shredder. After offering a half dozen leaves he felt reassured and would confidently grasp the lettuce as he poked it through the fence to his bleating little fans. By the time our sack of greens was gone, Alton was darting around, picking up other patrons' discarded lettuce scraps to feed the animals, oblivious to the fact that the nibbling teeth were barely missing his cute little fingers!
Alton wanted the entire family, including Baby Cousin *S in his stroller, to perch on this bench, but he made do with Nonna and Uncle KC when we told him he'd reached capacity.
Making fun out of nothing at all: Alton found some stacked crates that were clearly not part of the decor, but thoroughly enjoyed being trapped by them under the weathervane when Papa had that idea.
Some lunch and we were sacked out! KC had to use Minerva as a pillow on the floor that evening!
Well, we spoke too soon. The morning after his farmers market fun, Alton felt yucky again and we were ready to bring in the pros. One trip to the urgent care center and some antibiotics later, he perked up and we decided to press on to Nonna and Papa's house. It was a long day of driving, but the little guy felt good and even powered down a pb&j! We made it down to our next set of family members, and I gave my nephew *S his latest knitted gift: a striped heirloom "naming day bonnet" for his upcoming baptism. So precious!!
So, we got a little derailed. On our last morning at the mineral spa hotel, Alton woke up under the weather and not his usual self. It was time for us to check out, so we packed up to head southward to Andy's parents' house (Grammy and Grandpa Rhyne) so the little man could have a comfy place to take a break. As we climbed the Siskiyou Pass just north of the CA state line, poor Alton was sick to his stomach (luckily just a few hundred feet before one of the last exits for quite a few miles). We hopped off the highway and took care of him as best we could in roadside gravel and 36-degree weather, then skedaddled quickly down the south side of the mountain to decamp in Yreka at the Laundry Chute.
Several hours, a handful of quarters, and one bucket bath in the back of the Mini later, we were clean and ready to continue on our journey. Alton almost made it to his grandparents' without more illness, but since he didn't, we decided to lengthen our stay at Casa Rhyne by one day and take some downtime to get the little sweetie over his bug.
Things greatly improved on Day #2, so much so that we stopped by the local farmers market to pick up some snacks for the next day's drive. Alton scurried right up to the facepaint artist and expressed interest--what grandmother could refuse? Grammy helped him pick out a puppy face for his cheek.
Clean fridge--check! Earlier today, I thought of something that I needed to take care of later on this afternoon, and now I've forgotten what that thing is, so I have that nagging feeling of "something that needs to get done that I can't remember." I realized that I'm probably going to have that forgetful feeling for at least the first little while on our trip, wondering when the other shoe will drop and I'll realize that something crucial has been undone or left behind. Care to place any bets on how long that nagging feeling will stay with me? Days? Weeks? The whole trip???
So here we have the reason for making our blog invite-only: our big camping trip! At work, Andy is granted a sabbatical every six years, no strings attached. Unlike a university sabbatical, his leave is paid but he doesn't have to do any work-related stuff or research the whole time. Wow! "What to do on your sabbatical" is a big water-cooler discussion at his workplace: some people take big, spendy trips, or rent a vacation house for the time, or undertake major renovations at home...what were WE to do? With several weeks of time free and clear, we wanted to take advantage of our liberation and do something amazing, something we'd never done before, see new places, etc. We considered doing something warm and tropical, like Hawaii, or something farther afield, like Europe, but we knew that by the time we paid for plane tickets, food, and accommodations for the three of us (not to mention a dog kennel), our bank accounts would be so cleaned out that we'd barely be able to spend a weekend in these gorgeous locations. We needed a more inexpensive way to do something epic, and landed upon...camping!
Slowly our trip took shape. We've always enjoyed camping and take Alton every summer (start here and read back if you need to remind yourself of our previous adventures), so we had more than a head start on the gear necessary for such an excursion, we just needed lots of lists, planning, research, and some trips to REI.
With a few stops interspersed in there staying with family, friends, hotels, and a vacation home in Rosarito, for nearly two months our trip will take us south from our home in Oregon all the way down to Mexico, then we camp our way up the Pacific Coast to British Columbia.
And if undertaking this trip wasn't challenging enough on its own...we'll be traveling Mini-style. Like a snail, we'll be carrying our house on our backs for the next seven weeks. Tent, sleeping bags and pads, clothing, toiletries, toys, kitchen supplies, food, three people and a dog all arranged into our cozy little 30 mpg car with the roof box on top.
We're all very excited...but of course right now I'm overwhelmed, nervous, stressed, exhausted. Andy was the one up on a stepladder installing the roof box and cramming outdoor gear into it, I was in the kitchen giving myself a tension headache trying to solve the infinite puzzle of nesting all our cooking equipment into a small plastic rubbermaid box so that the lid still actually closed. It all fits! Although the rubbermaid is now so heavy for its size that Andy refers to it as the "box of gold."
It's a weird kind of camping hybrid that we're going on...not as convenience-oriented as car camping, but not backpacking, either. With car camping (the kind of camping we do, where you drive your car right up to a campsite next to other people with their campsites and cars or RVs), you usually fill your car to the gills with stuff, overpack food, don't care what clothes you do or don't bring since you're just there for a weekend, and you even pre-cook the food you're going to eat sometimes. With backpacking, you hike to a campsite carrying all your gear on your back, so weight, pounds, ounces, even GRAMS matter with the things you choose to bring. In our case, we have a car...but it's a small one, so size matters even if weight isn't as much of an issue (hence our 2 quart cast iron dutch oven). We will be on the road for a long time, so we clearly can't pre-cook food at home like you ordinarily could with car camping, but we want to eat good, healthy, fresh things that are in season, so we're not grabbing the backpacker's dehydrated packets of spaghetti, either. Our plan is to hit a lot of Farmers Markets along the way for tons of produce (that we'll probably have to transport on our laps--hope we pick good-smelling stuff) and fill in the gaps at grocery stores. Our second pot 'o gold is our food bag; a strong-handled tote that I packed with glass jars full of bulk ingredients like olive oil, oatmeal, sugar, flour, peanut butter, and coffee (oh yesssss, coffee). This bag weighs a ton!
Our adventure begins in two days and my mind is abuzz with questions. Will our clothes be enough? How is the cooking going to work? What will the weather be like? Are we going to be able to sleep? Will we get lost? Can I relax and not worry and just have fun? Did we turn all the lights off at home? In nearly two months of travel, we'll be forming a lot of new habits and routines and I'm sure making a lot of things up along the way. We will kick back and enjoy bonding together as a family, but we'll still have the ability to "plug in" with the cellphones and GPS if we need to in order to keep up with our navigation (and blog updates, hopefully). We're embarking upon something pretty huge here, and can't wait to experience this!
P.S. Since we will be away from home for quite a while and on the road, we made the blog "by invitation only" so that our travels are kept private from the rest of the Internet. If you're reading this, you got the invite! But just know that if we're ever vague about where we're going or where we've been, it's because we're erring on the side of safety.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Andy's brother Zach and sister-in-law Karen welcomed their second baby daughter right at the end of March, born the 28th at 1:30a.m. and 8lbs 13oz. For her first week or so, the little sweet pea was getting some phototherapy for jaundice and Alton was getting over a cold, so after meeting her briefly in the hospital after she was born I didn't see little Miss *A for a little while. We all organized a night to barbecue in at Zach and Karen's, and the sun was shining down on us all over a lovely evening of food and playtime for the two bigger cousins.
Me holding *A; she said hi to the sun.
Alton and *P running free in the yard.
Don't forget lawnmower time!
*A snoozed with me through most of the dinner prep; she said her tummy was full.
She enjoys the swing!
Alert after dinner.
Once they finished their dinner, the toddlers were ready for storytime.
I mentioned in a prior post that in March Andy and Zach brewed some beer. As they were planning out the schedule for when the beer would be brewed, then bottled, then ready to drink, they realized that the bottling would happen right around the time that Baby *A was due! They suggested that perhaps this batch of beer could be named in her honor, and so before we arrived at their house for the barbecue evening, Andy and I put our heads together and designed this label. Fun!
Lovely hue and a nice kick, and we've all agreed that it's the best one they've brewed yet!
Welcome to the family, Baby *A!
I'm catching us up to March! So as you see from an earlier post, I went out of town for the weekend to meet my new nephew, so Andy and Alton had a manly Father-Son weekend together while I was gone.
They went to swim lessons...
to the zoo...(doesn't it look like Alton's inside the cage in this one?)
...hid in boxes
...played outside
...and generally ran around having fun!
March signaled the first chilly opening weekends of one of our local farmers markets. Alton stocked up on pears
and kicked it on a curb eating hearth bagels with his little friend!
Andy brewed some beer with his brother Zach (more beer pictures to come!).
Alton clowned around in his sandbox,
blew some bubbles,
and killed some time before the end of the month, when Alexa and Brian came to visit for the first time with their baby girl!
*D is a squeezable little five-month-old sweetie, and she was wide-eyed over this big boy and all his toys. She especially enjoyed the rocking horse.
Our sextet decided to ride the train into Portland to visit the farmers market again, so rail-happy Alton was glad to hop on board!
The weather that day was crazy! Sun, then clouds, then rain, then cold, and back to sun again. *D couldn't decide if she wanted layers or a sun hat.
Alton loved the soft mud for stick drawings.
But he covered up again when the showers came.
Alton was glad to make faces at *D for the train trip home.
She loved it!
Happy little family.
More horsie time for little girl.
Then right at the end of Brian and Alexa's visit, we had another visitor arrive: Alton's cousin *P! She came to our house to stay because (spoiler alert) her parents had departed for the hospital for the birth of their second daughter. So temporarily at least, ours was a three-kid household. Alexa sat down on the couch to read a little book to *D, and Alton eagerly scooted over to hear the story. *P joined them to see what was going on, and soon there was a mini-storytime going on in our living room.
We took the whole gang swimming, then after we said farewell to Brian, Alexa, and *D, we took the two big kids to the gymnasium for some hoop time.
They expended some energy,
and read to themselves on the way to dinner.
We closed the month out with a new member of the family...pictures to come!
