School's Out for Summer!

Alton's Nonna (my mom) and Aunt Cici (my sister) are elementary school teachers in the same district in California, so they have all their vacations at the same time. It's no surprise, then, that they like to come visit us up here in Oregon at the same time! You may have already seen that they were present on Father's Day when Andy was working hard on our now-finished play structure, but we packed a lot more fun into their visit. On Father's Day morning, we tracked down Papa (my dad) at home to do a video chat on the computer with his favorite grandson.
Alton says that the monitor is not enough--he wants command of the keyboard as well.

He clowns around with Aunt Cici while showing off for Papa.

We spent lots and lots of time outside exploring the play structure-in-progress. Nonna had her little camera out to snap all those cute Alton moments.

Alton had the honor of being allowed to eat the first strawberry picked from our small potted strawberry plant in the backyard! Looks delicious.

Along with the Oregon Hood strawberries, this year we planted pots of tomatoes, parsley & basil, nasturtium flowers, rosemary & lavender, plus several other flowers in pots we've received from our CSA. Quite a budding garden for our little green thumb!

Nonna and Cici graciously offered to babysit for us on Father's Day so that Andy and I could go to one of our favorite (non-toddler-friendly) restaurants: the Melting Pot! Mmm, cheesy fondue goodness. Yes, we are on a diet, but being good the other days of the week is worth it so long as we can have a three-hour-long dinner like this.
Another night, the Groener Family (our cousins) came over for dinner and to thoroughly inspect the new play structure.



Alton was in love with that beach ball (before it sprung a leak). Andy says that for the picture below, if you crop out the suburban background you are left with an orphan child from a war-torn country, pitifully clutching the one thing left from his happy youth.

Cici left town a few days before Nonna, and the next-to-last day of Nonna's visit was the day our playgroup went to the local fire station! Alton loooves fire trucks, so despite being a little intimidated by big guys in uniforms, he was really excited for the tour (absorbing it in his usual stoic little fashion). So much to see! First Alton, Nonna, and Alton's little friend explored the miniature fire truck in the lobby of the station.

Then it was time for the tour to begin. He and Nonna play close attention...

but make time to pose in back of one of the rescue trucks.

The highlight for most of the kids: receiving cool plastic fire chief hats! Alton and *P pose in front of the biggest fire truck.

The whole group with the firefighters.

Too soon, it was time for dinner and the end of Nonna's last full day in town. We went out for Italian food and Alton wowed his Nonna by wolfing down lots of antipasto, focaccia, ravioli, and chocolate lava cake for dessert.

We'll miss you!

Grammy and Grandpa Earn Their Keep

So much has been going on in the month of June, I am still working on catching up with posts! At the beginning of the month, Andy's parents Charlie and Jennifer, otherwise known as "Grammy and Grandpa," came to visit. The timing for their trip was set to coincide with several things in their schedule: Jennifer is a teacher and was finished with school for the year, Charlie wanted to pitch in on the big work we were doing to our backyard, and it was also Jennifer's birthday! As you know, we got a lot of help from them in completing the synthetic grass portion of the backyard by the first weekend in June. Great news for our backyard birthday barbecue for Grammy! We had a rare sunny afternoon for our shindig and made sure the water table was topped off and ready for the two grandkids to do their thing.

Why yes, there was more water on their clothing than in the water table--why do you ask?

We grabbed them for a quick photo session...

before they were off and running once again!

Then came the best part of the evening: Grammy's birthday cupcakes, of course!

Alton had no trouble devouring his.

The next day, with most of the big outdoor projects done and just a few touch-ups remaining, we headed out (in pouring down rain--crazy wet spring) to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) for some hands-on playtime. There was a fun children's area with cool nature toys, puppets and crafts.

And we also had a great time in "Turbine Hall," one of the main sections of the museum where you get to play with cool real-life examples of physics principles (that is way more fun than it sounds).

Grammy and Grandpa also accompanied Alton to his Monday morning music class and he was elated to have two more sets of hands to hold while we trotted, sang, and danced. Too soon it was time to take them to the airport and Alton was very sad to see them go. Luckily we had some distractions up our sleeve: a visit from Nonna and Aunt Cici, and his new play structure, of course!

Alpaca Farm

As organizer of the toddler playgroup that Alton and I belong to, I am always looking for ideas and suggestions of activities that break us out of our usual haunts. South of our house, a particular country road always winds me past the Northwest Alpacas Farm, one of the larger (or possibly largest) alpaca farms in the area, and when I contacted them about a tour for our group they were game! They don't have any kind of regularly scheduled public tours (most of their visitors are potential buyers of the alpaca, which are bred for their fiber and sheared every year like sheep to make yarn and clothing), so one of the employees at the ranch gave us some off-the-cuff sound bites and history on alpacas, breeding in the U.S., and what their business is about.
Below you see Alton (in the red hat) and *P (wearing the grey fleece vest I made her for Christmas!) with friends, excited to check out these poofy animals. The little guy in the upper right of the picture is Alton's buddy *F, who came up with Elizabeth and big sis *B from Newberg to see this tour!
All the kids were carooming around the dusty driveway and peering through the wire fence, which looked out onto the large front field that is reserved for the pregnant mothers.

We actually spent quite a while staring into this pen, because one of the mama alpacas was in labor and about to give birth. We learned that female alpacas do not need assistance or privacy when the baby is being born; they are content to just walk, lie, and roll around the field while they are in labor amongst their fellow preggo alpaca girlfriends, then drop the little one right there on the grass and hang out next to him until he's ready to walk! It was at a bit of a distance, but still very cool to see this completely silent mother alpaca have her baby right out in the open.

The very first "nursery" pen in front of us held a couple of mother alpacas with very young babies. The fluffy little guy lying down in the photo below is only one day old!

Then we did a little walking around the rest of the ranch. We went over to a pen where some of the younger alpacas are kept together. This group is so young that the male and female alpacas do not need to be kept separate from one another as they will in adulthood. All of the alpacas are tagged on the ear with a number so that the employees can keep track of them: right ear for boys, left ear for girls.
Alton looks through the fence at the alpaca teenagers, and they rush right up with curious faces to greet the visitors.

Once we stepped inside the pen, however, they were shy!

After some nudging and "You go first!"-ing, they ambled gawkily up to us and took turns daring each other to sniff us.

Fred, our tour guide, brought out a bucket of alpaca feed (it looked like those alfalfa pellets you get at petting zoos, although a little less stinky) and said that we could put it in our hands and offer it to the alpacas! But patient and still as we were, they never took the bait--too shy! Fred said that the older alpacas would be gobbling it down. We learned that alpacas are "flight animals," which means they will turn and flee if you approach them too quickly, and that they do not have upper front teeth, so they cannot really bite.
Karen held out a handful of feed to the alpacas while *P urgently ferried more and more pellets to her palm from the bucket.

Alton really, really wanted the alpacas to eat the food in his hand and tried to stand still while Auntie Karen showed him how to hold his fingers out flat, but the alpacas just snuffed and shied away. I really wonder what he would have done if one had actually eaten from his hand!

We left there with Alton full of talk about the alpacas. This afternoon I was sitting with him in a waiting room that had toys out for kids, including a few animal figures. He was placing all the animals inside of a big red van, and I think he surprised the pants off of most of the people nearby when he held up one of the figurines and said, "It's an alpaca!" (It was a reindeer, but still.)

Good News....

So much to post about. I have some catching up to do, so in the meantime here is Alton singing one of the songs from his music class. We are now on our 4th session of the music class, and he is getting more vocal with chiming in to the songs all the time. This song's refrain is "Good news, chariot's a-comin'," which sounds vaguely religious, but it's actually a nondenominational music class. The next line of the song is "Beep beep, the bus is a-comin'," so I'm guessing it's not a revival tune!

Play on!! (by Andy)

The play structure is finished!! I finally had the opportunity to bolt on all the parts for the play structure and it is now done and ready for play time! Here are the specs at a glance:

• 5' x 6' play deck
• 4' deck height
• step ladder
• 8' slide (I'm told it's fast)
• canopy top
• rock wall
• trapeze
• sandbox with bench
• steering wheel
• periscope

For those of you not familiar already, this was built from scratch. We purchased a set of plans online, modified it slightly to suit our needs and off we went. Wood was purchased and cut to the appropriate lengths. Each piece was then routed on ALL sides to provide a nice, smooth surface. About half of the boards needed counter sinks drilled in them (larger holes so that the heads of bolts sit flush or below the surface of the board) and so that was done, too. Lastly, all the boards needed to be stained. We had many options when we were choosing the wood for this project. Pressure treated wood would obviously provide weather protection without having to do any special to the wood. However, the look of each size board was inconsistent and wouldn't look right. In the end, we decided on Douglas Fir for the whole structure and then stained the whole lot "rosewood." That what gives it that Lincoln Log look. The structure went together very well and I must say that one of the best compliments we hear is that it looks like a store-bought kit. This structure was custom built for Alton and friends to do what they like to do best.

The ladder.

The sandbox and its seats.

The trapeze.

The rock wall (complete with train rock hold).

The whole structure, head on.

Alton showing us how to use the slide...

...and the rock wall...

...and the ladder.

The plans we purchased were the closest one we found to what we wanted. There were a few changes that needed to be made to ensure that this structure not only met our play time needs, but our HOA requirements. We lowered the height of the deck from 5' to 4 '. This change made the whole structure low enough to meet our HOA requirements. As a result of this change, we had to slightly modify the rock wall (just make it a little shorter) and change the spacing of the step ladder steps and actually take a whole step out!. The sand box underneath was actually designed to be able to just fill the bottom of the structure with sand. But since we were going to be installing a sand box we had bought earlier this spring we had a little extra room down there. The two corner seats were part of the plan, but we found that we could actually make a whole bench next to the sand box by using an extra board. The plans originally called for a swing set off to the side, but we obviously don't have the space for that. Knowing that we wouldn't have the swing set, and still wanting AJ to have something to hang on, we opted for the optional "accessory arm" that sticks out past the step ladder. This allowed us to install the trapeze. The handle placements are all our doing as the plans really only give you a 'preferred' location for the ladder, slide and rock wall.

And lastly, lest we forget that this whole thing sits on top of our new synthetic lawn. So far, the performance of both the structure and the lawn have been flawless. We are very happy with the whole set up and look forward to years of AJ and friends playing out back.

(Rock) Walls!

Andy was busy over Father's Day weekend! On Saturday morning, Nonna and Aunt Cici (also known as my mom and sister) arrived from California, and Alton and I fetched them from the airport while Daddy was busy bolting, drilling, and stabilizing. At his request, we also gave him the day on Father's day to continue his work and as you can see, he made major progress!

Wow! We have a slide all bolted in place, plus handles for pulling and positioning the slider rider into place. Alton shows them off before Daddy installed them.

Another brand-new feature is the trapeze. Since we were carefully calculating the play structure for a small yard space, we knew that we would not have the square footage needed for swings. Instead, we thought a trapeze for more low-key swinging, hanging, and upside-downing would be the perfect accessory.



This weekend also gave Andy time enough to build the rear rock climbing wall! On the front of the playset next to the slide will be a small stepladder to ascend, but on the rear side we wanted something that would be a little more challenging and whimsical.

Alton has already proved himself to be a champion climber and can scale the wall with no help (just maybe a spotter from behind?).

When shopping for the multicolored climbing holds for the wall, Andy noticed that they had a few "novelty" shapes on offer, so how could he possibly resist the one shaped like a choo-choo?

We continue into this week with bolts on order that came in Monday morning, and Andy moves on to some more accessories: a steering wheel for the fort...

and a periscope!


Meanwhile, our minute Sous Chef (thanks Uncle Dave for that apropos description!) was kept busy in the kitchen with Mommy, Nonna and Cici. We used the fresh rhubarb and strawberries from our CSA to bake a crisp that was surprisingly low in Weight Watchers points. Hooray!
The little guy perched back on his dining chair.

Mommy mixes the rhubarb and sugar while Alton waits for his turn.

He puts the sliced strawberries on top one by one.

Aunt Cici is proud of the little helper!

Plenty more to come! Thanks for staying tuned to our play structure build-along.

Blue Steel (by Andy)

There's a movie out there called Zoolander. It's a comedy starring Ben Stiller as a male model who is clueless to the rest of the world and takes on a hilarious parody of the modeling world. During this movie, Zoolander (Stiller's character) shows us a few of his signature "looks." One of these is titled (they all have names) Blue Steel. Although we didn't intentionally teach this to Alton, he somehow picked it up and, in an impromptu photo-shoot, showed us his stuff. The ringing halfway through that distracts him is an egg timer that is going for dinner that is in progress at the time.

I love that he surprises us all the time and is such a good sport.