Snow Day...finally!

Thursday morning at 6:20, I got the automated call from school. No school due to snow. And you can see how "much" snow we had. Less than an inch. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining but it is really silly.
Fortunately, Levi and I got out to play in the snow about 8am. Good thing because it was already melting while we were playing and was gone by noon!
Levi wasn't too interested in playing with the snow. I tried to build a snow man and he just wanted to throw the snow balls. Especially the really big one that was suppose to be the base. He was also really upset about the snow all over his lawnmower and other outside toys. As you can see, he really didn't care about playing in the snow. He just wanted to play with his lawnmower. Silly kid!
Even though the snow was gone by noon, Levi and I still had a fun day playing at home together.
Thank goodness for "snow" days. Too bad my tulips are looking pretty desperate for some warmer temperatures.

Holiday weekend in Mt. Rainier National Park

I always feel a little stir crazy at this point in the year. The holidays are long gone and spring break still feels like an eternity away. That's why I feel the urge to escape during the President's day weekend. This year Gabe and I debated for a while where we should head. We always go to the Oregon coast. In fact, we went there last year for this holiday weekend. We didn't feel like going to Mt. Hood but thought playing in the snow might be fun since we didn't get any in Portland this year. That's how we decided to make the 3 hour drive up to Mt. Rainier. Not to mention, neither of us have ever been up there. And we have a family goal (although Levi doesn't know it yet) to visit as many national parks as possible on our family vacations!

Gabe's dad and Joanne (along with their little dog Tinka) joined us for this adventure as well. We didn't make it up to our cabin until around 2pm on Saturday and after the long drive no one really felt up to much. So we enjoyed a fire, some hot chocolate and view of the creek out back. Sunday we took off to the mountain. Did some sledding on the small toddler hill. Got lots of video of Levi's first sledding adventure. We were planning to snowshoe around Paradise Valley but since there was no fresh snowfall, we didn't even break out the snowshoes. It was a fairly clear cold day but the mountain wasn't visible once the entire time we were up there. I'm sad that we returned without a single picture of the largest mountain in the Cascade range!

But here's a shot of Levi and Gabe before our hike into Paradise. That's the Tatoosh Range in the background.And another view of the Tatoosh Range from our hike into Paradise Valley.Levi came down with a cold this weekend and was up really early every day. We came back yesterday completely exhausted from staying up talking and playing games. And then having to get up at dawn with you-know-who. But here's one more picture Gabe took of Christine Falls. So pretty!It was fun to explore somewhere we've never been. We might have to make a trip back in the summer to hike and see wild flowers. And to get in some up close views of the mountain we never saw this time!

OMSI playtime

I have today off. One of our many furlough days this year. It hurts on the pay check but makes for a nice four day weekend at least!
Levi and I met Marie and Taya at OMSI to play this morning. They have a play area designed for toddlers. There's a sand area which the kids loved, and a forest area with stuffed animals. Levi's favorite part was the ball area. One section of the ball area has this cone where blown air holds the ball in the air. Levi thought that was so cool and really quickly figured out how it worked. The bigger boys didn't really like him playing with it, but Levi sure loved it. It was fun for him to try and grab the ball out of the air. Here he is...I wonder if his daddy could make something like that for him to play with at home?
Didn't get many shots of Taya and Levi together. They move too fast in opposite directions! But here's one of them giving kisses to the mama raccoon. Well, Taya is giving kisses this time but Levi was as well.So we just got back, and I got Levi down for what I hope is a longish nap today. We're leaving in the morning to spend the weekend up on Mt. Rainier. I've got to find our snowshoes in the mess that's our garage, as well as get things packed and organized. Figured it would be best to get this post done a little early since we won't be around tomorrow. But I will post some pictures of our adventure on the mountain when we get back.

Red Velvet Experiment

Happy Valentine's Day!

For my valentine, I decided to make a red velvet cake this year. My maiden voyage into the baking of this interesting cake follows.
After a little searching, I decided to use Paula Dean's recipe (as much as I can't stand the woman, she does have some amazingly delicious recipes) with little consultation from this cookbook. They were pretty similar.
First, I had to wait for the buttermilk and eggs to come to room temperature. May have rushed it just a bit because I wanted to get the cake in and out of the oven before Levi woke up from his nap.I don't have a functioning sifter anymore, so I hope my whisking of the dry ingredients was sufficient. I also used dutch processed cocoa even though the America's Test Kitchen recipe specifically said not to. It was the only cocoa I had. I also put in more cocoa than Paula's recipe called for, but not as much as the Test Kitchen recipe said to use.All the recipes I looked at stressed the importance of using a hand held mixer instead of a stand mixer. So I had to dig the old hand held model out. Didn't have as much food coloring as I needed but it doesn't look like it will make too much of a difference.

To top it off is a very standard cream cheese frosting. Which I wish Gabe would have made. He made a killer frosting for my birthday cake and as you can see...mine is a bit on the lumpy side. But I guess I couldn't ask him to make the frosting for his own Valentine's day treat. I'm already a failure as a valentine this year. Today at New Seasons I was trying to buy him a beer with some other Valentine's day treats I was picking up for him. I didn't grab my purse on my way out the door since the boys were coming with me. Turns out the checker at New Seasons had to ask for my ID and wouldn't have sympathy for a wife just trying to do something nice for her wonderful husband. I had to walk the beer down to Gabe and Levi's check stand and ask his checker to please put it on Gabe's tab. She was nice enough to discreetly put it into a bag without him seeing what kind of beer it is. That is unless he's peeked into the bag since it's been home in the fridge. Like I said, I'm a failure for a valentine.Tomorrow, after our traditional steak with blue cheese dinner, we'll cut this baby open. It will give me something to look forward to. I'm certainly not looking forward to spending Valentine's day trying to teach 140 middle school kids. The worst day of the year...too much drama and too many tears.

Cool Shades

I know, I know. More park pictures. We don't really have a lot of options for active adventures on a Saturday morning. We've discovered Levi will only take naps longer than an hour if he's very active in the morning. Definately going to figure out some new places to let this kid run all his energy out.

Photo by Gabe

As you probably noticed, our child has an obsession.  He wants to wear his glasses and hat EVERYWHERE.  Last weekend he wore his glasses to the grocery store.  And into the grocery store, where everyone commented about what nice glasses he had on.  Today he had to wear them to the park.  Even though the sun was under a very thick cover of rain clouds.  A friendly man walking his dog laughed when he saw Levi today with the sun hat and glasses on.  It was maybe 40 degrees this morning.  The man was wearing a stocking hat and gloves.  Like I said, this kid has an obsession...with looking cool.

Out of Juice

It's not raining today. This morning we set off to get some coffee and spend a few hours at the zoo. I grabbed the camera on our way out the door, hoping I could get a few good shots for our photo this week. I took a few pictures on Thursday night of Levi laying under the living room chair. Which happens to be one of his new favorite places to play when he's getting sleepy in the evenings. Strange kid. I knew the battery was getting low, but figured I could get a few more shots before it died completely.
I pull out the camera 2 minutes after arriving at the zoo. The black bear cub was wandering around looking oh so cute. Low and behold, the camera is dead. I couldn't take one shot. Totally disappointing! As I was watching Levi watch the river otters do back flips off the glass, I knew I was missing my shot for the week.
So this is all you get...me playing around with the macro lens. Which is actually ok. I haven't even touched that lens in what....could it be like 2 years? Another reason why I wanted to do this photo a week project. We need to play with our camera again. Especially now that Gabe bought this bad boy with his bonus.