A Day At Da Hood

I can feel that our sunny, rain-free days are numbered here, so yesterday we went east to Mt. Hood to explore. Don't worry, no helicopter rescues or search parties were needed, although we did have one minor injury and a hit-and-run incident, but I'll get to that later.

My parents flew out last Friday, and as I had posted earlier, they brought along with them our dog, Penny. She made it through the four hour plane ride with flying colors and has acclimated to her new surroundings quickly. She did seem a little skittish the first few days after the trip, but I think she was wondering if she had to leave when my parents did, because now that they are gone, she seems much more relaxed and willing to explore the house and back yard. On the farm, we couldn't easily convince her to come in the house, and now we can't get her to leave without the promise of a ride or a walk.

While my parents were here, we went into Portland to the Japanese Gardens. They are so manicured and serene, I hope my four-year-old didn't disturb the chi or whatever it is they are attempting to maintain in there. No time for reflection when you're trying to keep a little boy from spitting (or worse) into the koi pond. If you know my son, you know that it takes him a while to warm up to people--even close relatives--so about the time Mom and Dad left, he was very chatty with them and giving out hugs and giggles. Hopefully he can warm up quicker next time or they can stay a few more days so we can enjoy the truce a little longer.

Little Zigzag Falls

Saturday, we (finally) went out to Mt. Hood. It was a warm, beautiful day and I was itching to enjoy every last ray of sunshine. We picked out a few easy hikes for the kids, packed our picnic basket again, and headed down Hwy 26. We started out at Little Zigzag Falls Trailhead. It's a short walk to the falls and the parking lot is actually part of the old Hwy 26 that was once all switchbacks down the hillside. It gave us a chance to enjoy our first hike with the dog. And by "enjoy", I mean tripping over and receiving multiple rope burns from her retractable leash. We're still working on her manners.

On our way to the second hike, Dave spotted the entrance to the Skibowl Alpine Slide. It's basically a bobsled run down a ski slope in the middle of summer. The freakiest part was the ski lift ride up to the top of the slide, an experience that was new to us all. We gleefully sped down the run a couple of times and then were duped into upgrading our wristbands and headed over to the Adventure Park on the other side of the hill. And by "adventure park", I mean deathtrap/lawsuit waiting to happen. I'll sum it up with the following conversation that my husband and I had:

Me: Sorry we didn't catch up with you. Your daughter fell and skinned her knee and I had to break into the first aid station to get her cleaned up and bandaged. What's the matter with D?

Hubby: He got into an accident at the kiddie karts. I got a guy fired and our money back, so I think we should leave this park and go back over to the slide.

Me: What?

Alpine Slide at Skibowl

Long story short, my son ran into the attendant with his mini kart at the understaffed mini kart ride, the attendant started shouting at my son, got into an argument with my husband, and is now no longer an employee of the adventure park. My daughter tripped on the wet pavement at the top of the hill, skinned her knee up pretty good, went into hysterics, and we wandered around the First Aid area looking for help until I finally just went in and started rummaging around for towels and bandages myself. We were able to end the day with a few more rides down the Alpine Slide and everything was right in the world again. If you ever get a chance to try the Alpine Slide at Skibowl, I highly recommend giving it a whirl, but don't bother with the Adventure Park pass. Your sanity will thank you.

This week, we are in the middle of an awkward game of musical mattresses as we try to re-arrange the sleeping quarters in this house. It's finally the master bedroom's turn to get organized and officially unpacked as well. Hopefully it won't take a helicopter rescue and search party to find the rest of my socks.


~Paula

Release The Hounds!

There is a lot of excitement in our house this week, and it has nothing to do with the fact that we have finally unpacked the guest bedroom, parked the van in the garage, or the sale on perennials at Home Depot. The fifth member of our family, our dog Penny, arrives on Friday, thus completing our move. The fact that Grandpa and Grandma are bringing her out and will be staying for a week hasn't even registered on the kids' radar yet. They are ready to have their furry sibling here and I'm not sure they've talked about much else in the last few days.

January 2005

My husband and I have had Penny in our lives for 10 years now. She was our first child, so to speak. We got her as a puppy and babied her and kept her in the house and squeaky clean for four of those years. Then we moved into a different house, I gave birth to my daughter, and poor Penny's world began to change quickly. As a sleep deprived mama, I could no longer put up with the 4:00 a.m. cleaning session at the foot of our bed, the dirty paws, or the constant vigil I felt I had to keep those first weeks with a newborn in the house. I finally told myself that a border collie was destined to be an outdoor dog anyway. We live(d) on a farm, so I'm sure it was a young dog's heaven.

Outdoors she has been for the last six or so years, and now on Friday she will be an indoor dog once more. We debated whether or not to bring her out here on our journey. Would it be too stressful (for the dog and me)? Would the kids be able to handle having her in close quarters? Would the dog be able to handle having the kids in close quarters? As the move got closer though, the kids began to cling to Penny and it wasn't long after that that the decision was made to bring her with us. Ready or not.

Why didn't we bring her out here in August, you may ask? That was the original plan, and a lesson we had to learn -- research first, book your plane tickets second. After purchasing our tickets to fly out here, chasing our moving truck, we discovered that the airlines have a blackout period to fly pets in the cargo hold during the really hot and really cold months. We left August 14, and she couldn't fly until after Sept 15. Fortunately, we have a long list of friends and family that wanted to come and visit us, and my parents were gracious enough to agree to bring her on their trip out this weekend. The health certificate from the vet is signed, the arrangements are all made with the airline, and my son has made sure that our house is stocked with new chew toys.

Penny with her summer 'do ~ August 2011

I have to admit, I'm looking forward to having Penny here, too. She's mellowed considerably over the years and become almost a pleasure to have along on walks and bike rides. It will be nice to have a quiet companion in a house that has become so very empty and eerily silent these past few mornings when the kids are both at school. So welcome home, my furry friend. Your humans can't wait.

Cougars, and Foxes, and Fires, Oh My!

We have had a busy, but rather uneventful week here, so my posting today is mostly about this and that. My daughter started first grade (and is loving it) and we've been getting a few more rooms in order (and I'm loving that). I gave into my urge to buy some shrubbery for our backyard today and am happily typing away with dirty fingernails. It feels good to get my hands dirty in the name of nature.

Speaking of enjoying nature, I had to slip in another photo from our Ape Cave adventure last weekend. You have to drive through Cougar, Washington, to get to the caves, and on the way, the park sign above was spotted. I can't help but picture the ladies from the Cougar Den on Saturday Night Live sitting around in big hair, big nails, and animal print clothing soliciting younger men as they pass through. It's made me smile to myself all week, and now I pass the gift onto you.

In other wild animal news, the mascot at my daughter's school is a fox, and there is a darling little statue of a fox leaping in the air right next to the main entrance. It seems that with every special occasion, one lucky lady working in the office gets to dig out an outfit and dress the statue accordingly. Tuesday was welcome back to school, Wednesday he was naked, and Friday he was wearing red for Spirit Day. Stay tuned for more pictures of the Foxy fashion collection as the year goes by.

I'm not sure if it's been hitting the news back in the Midwest or not, but Mt. Hood has been wrapped in smoke from forest fires for a couple of weeks now. At the end of August, there were several lightening strikes that spurred fires east and south of Portland. The wind here, although not as constant as back on the plains, can still whip up to 20-30 mph and a nice, brown cloud traveled 65 miles and entered over our neighborhood one day. It's nice to know that at least we don't have to worry about tornadoes now when something like this is overhead. These fires are not only hampering our weekend travel plans, as we would like to head out to Mt. Hood while the sun is still shining, but it has also besmirched the view of Mt. Hood from our deck. Prayers for all the firefighters, homeowners, and civilians that are in its path.

August

September

As mentioned in an earlier post, we are now sitting in our sitting room! It is actually looking more like a home and less like an abandoned storage facility all the time. Maybe by the time my parents and our dog, Penny, arrive in another week, we'll have somewhere to put them, too.

~Paula

Five Minute Friday: In Real Life

I'm joining a fellow blogger, Kimberly, in what's called 'Five Minute Friday'. I'm to write for 5 minutes flat - no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking. This may be a challenge as I probably spend almost as much time editing my blog posts before publishing as I do writing them.

Today's Five Minute Friday topic:

In Real Life

Real life is having a lot of alone time. I'm surrounded by noises of a new city - traffic, construction, people walking by (usually with at least one dog in tow), and of course the noises inside a house that I've known for almost a month now. I'm getting used to the noises inside but it has taken some time to get used to the noise outside our fortress of solitude.

A friend of mine pointed out to me before we left our hometown in August that, like her, I have the tendency to turn in on myself and keep the outside at arm's length...do my best to shut it out when the input becomes too much. I've been so busy since we moved here that I haven't had time to think about this much. Now my oldest is in school and my youngest is about to start preschool. I'll have a lot of alone time in the mornings at least. How will I spend it?

Stop.

The five-minute rule puts an interesting twist on the result of the post. If you want to see what others are writing about, check out The Gypsy Mama.

~Paula

A Summer To Remember

'Twas the night before school starts, and what did we do?
We recovered from boating and spelunking, too.
The children are nestled all snug in their beds
As visions of a river and caves dance in their heads.

Happy Labor Day, everyone! We've spent a lot of this week trying to get through the last of our boxes that are sitting out in the house. We may be able to park at least one car in the garage sometime this week, and the front sitting room may actually be used for sitting in the next couple of days.

Sunday we spent the day on the Willamette (rhymes with 'dammit') River with a co-worker/friend of my husband's. He has a fun boat and offered to take us for a spin on what turned out to be one of the hottest days this weekend (again, by Pacific NW terms). My husband and I are from lake country in the Midwest, but are woefully lacking in the recreational boating department. I tried water skiing once back in high school. One self-inflicted enema later, I hung up my water skiing career. Since then, we (or maybe just I) mostly have partaken in the more leisurely, less emotionally-scarring forms of water sports--fishing and tubing. So when my hubby forwarded an e-mail from his co-worker listing such things as wake boards, wake surfing, and something called "skates", you can imagine the gruesome flashbacks that came to mind and subsequent panic.

I'm happy to report that even though I may not have spent a lot of time upright on the wake surfing board, I did get up and out of the water, my bottom and all. As is the plight of many moms out there though, there are no pictures of myself doing it, so you'll just have to take my word. My husband had a successful go at it and even my daughter gave wake boarding a try. All-in-all, it was a sun-drenched, adrenaline-pumping, laughter-filled afternoon. A big thank you to K.L. and his daughter for being so generous and showing us how to enjoy the Willamette.

I woke up Monday morning to the aches and pains of arm and leg muscles that haven't been used like that in many, many years. There are areas of my armpits I did not realize had individual muscles until now. In spite of that, we were game to get in one more adventure on the last day of summer vacation and headed north to the Ape Caves next to Mt. St. Helens. They are old lava tubes formed about 1,900 years ago in a rare lava eruption from the volcano. Most of the volcanoes in the Cascade Mountain range that runs along the west coast only give large, explosive, ashy eruptions because of the amount of silica in the ground here, but thanks to a blip in history (or someone who didn't read the memo), we were able to try our hand at spelunking for the first time.

If you ever get the chance to go cave exploring, bring long pants, a thick sweatshirt, and an ample light source. It was 88 F at the mouth of the cave and quickly plunged to 44 F by the time we made the short trip down the staircase to the cave floor. My husband and I have the tendency to try and forge ahead on outings even if we've forgotten a few key supplies back in the van or at home. Five minutes into our first attempt at the hike, we were tripping and shivering along because we forgot to change the kids into the warm clothes we left the van and had left the large flashlight on the kitchen counter at home. We put our pride aside turned around and started over from the parking lot once more. This time, we were properly attired with our jogging headlamp in position and our rented Coleman lantern in hand. And oh boy, am I glad we decided to spring for the lantern.

It's dark. As in can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face dark. There are no lights wired down in these caves, and as busy as it was on Labor Day, there were still times when we couldn't see the lamps of the people in front of us or behind us and it was just us four trying to stay within the lit circle of our lantern and headlamp. The ceiling of the cave is at least 20-30 feet high in most parts of the cave, thank goodness, so my claustrophobic tendencies didn't really bother me much. The kids were incredibly well-behaved and maintained a brave face for almost the entire time. It wasn't until we started the trickier ascent back up the lava tube and had to concentrate even more on our footing that kisses on scraped hands and piggyback rides were necessary.

We trekked for an hour round-trip and came back up into the warm sunlight again just in time as my claustrophobia was becoming directly proportional to how fatigued I was. A no-brainer, we had chosen to take the lower "easy" cave hike which was only 3/4 of a mile long instead of the upper "difficult" cave hike which is 1 1/2 miles uphill over large boulders and an 8 foot lava wall that has to be scaled. The kids didn't think it sounded all that difficult, but then again, they weren't walking the entire way, either.

Another summer vacation in the books tonight, I hope all goes well for my daughter at her new school tomorrow. Fingers crossed that she saved some of her bravado for the rest of the week to come. Here's a little video of our spelunking adventure to remember our Labor Day Weekend.

~Paula