Whistler Vacation 2008

Some picture updates of what we have been up too.

We had snow the night before we left for Whistler. Here is our barn all decked out and looking pretty.
Here is Grant all decked out and looking cute!

A view on the way up.
Mom and Dad in front of the fireplace at the condo. Unfortunately they were not able to spend the whole trip with us because my Grandmother Sis passed away yesterday and they had to fly home to tell the news to my Grandfather Bob and help him through this difficult time. She wanted to be buried at Arlington cemetery next to Bob.
Grant at ski school.

He is in a class of five kids. He is the only boy. He loves it. Enough said. :)


For those of you who may have seen news about Whistler. A Gondola tower snapped in half today. Fifty three people where stranded for a few hours but all were safely evacuated. We were not on this particular gondola this trip.
Gondola Story
Hope all is well. Happy Holidays!

Christmas Train 2008

This year for something different and new we decided to take the Santa Train out of Wickersham, WA. Amber got our tickets for us back in August I think so we had the first seats on the whole train. Which turned out to be great because Santa visited us first!
Cheryl was visiting so she got to come with us. Aunt Heidi could unfortunately not make it (she was feeling under the weather). So we piled in the car and headed for the train not really knowing what to expect.

It was a typical cool gray wet pacific northwest day so we unfortunately did not have any snow for the train ride but Grant was very excited to see Santa! These boys don't look excited at all....

Here Grant is holding up his ticket. Which he was very proud of because of watching Polar Express.
Anxiously awaiting jolly ole St. Nick.

Thanks to Amber being so on top of things, Grant was visited by Santa first!

After Santa spoke with the kids a little elf gave out candy canes. She was so cute (and quiet)!

Oh a little peppermint will go such a long way when candy is a rare treat!

A rare photo of James and I!
You might ask where is Grant? on the Wyman's laps of course...

Us making our own fun being silly.
Grant was a very happy camper.

First Gingerbread House

Grant has been waiting and waiting to make his first Gingerbread house ever since I picked the kit up from Costco about 3 weeks ago. I told him that he could make it with his Grandma Steller came to visit. So yesterday Grant and Grandma made there first Gingerbread house!

Getting started...
Grandma applies frosting Grant provides embellishment.
The front porch
and the back porch
All tuckered out from a job well done!
Happy Holiday's Everyone!

How to paint a stripe!

I decided it was time to change Grant's room from his baby nursery to an updated boys room. His room was actually the first room we painted in our house. We painted it the first week we lived here. Plus I wanted to liven it up a bit. All I knew was that I wanted it to coordinate with his new quilt and roman shades.
I had been looking at wall papers for several months and actually found a couple of really cute ones. Unfortunately Grant does not really have a tendency to favor any particular subjects (like cars or trains) right now so I needed something generic but with good colors. Every time I felt like I had finally settled on something the next week I felt it was either to young for him or to old. This led me to create my own stripe design that I custom matched the colors to his quilt and bed.
Here are Grant and James in his new bed with the quilt I wanted to coordinate too.
So I finally decided to take the plunge and paint Grant's room.

For everyone out there who has done any painting trying to do a straight line, such as in between the wall color and ceiling color, is a tedious and often imperfect job. So after a few hours of sifting through the internet I found a possible solution for painting a perfect line. It is called Clear Acrylic Gel Medium. When you use this magically stuff along with regular paint tape you get AMAZING results. We did have a bit of trouble finding this stuff though. I dragged Amber to all the paint shops in town and they had no idea what I was asking about. Finally I went into our little art store and there it was. It was only 8 bucks for the bottle which was more than enough to do our whole job and still have some leftover.
Here is an example of with and without using the acrylic medium. The top line is what you normally get when you paint along a taped edge. The bottom line is where we painted a thin layer of acrylic gel medium layer along the edge of the tape. It effectively fills up any air pockets so when you go over it with your paint color WHALA a nice crisp line!
We could not believe how well it worked! So after many many different iterations of taping and painting and retaping as shown below...
the red stripe
Taking a break while waiting for the paint to dry...

Navy stripes
...the final product a happy little boys room.

Halloween 2008

Alright there won't be much to this blog but figured I should get it done before Thanksgiving. Grant was a kangaroo for Halloween this year. He originally wanted to be a frog but after a little cajoling and explaining how great it would be to have a halloween bag AND a pouch for candy. He changed his tune.
The Kangaroo costume actually worked well in two ways. One it celebrates his heritage of being 1/4 Australian and two it fit well with Ayden and Tate's Horton Hears a Who costumes. Here I am prepping Grant. He still seems so little sometimes....
Grant discovering his tail.

Grant LOVED Halloween. He did so well at trick or treating that he is still eating the treats from it. Only three treats a day (agreed upon since he is three years old) so I guess it is going to take a while!

Horton hears a who crew....
We saw several clever, funny pumpkins while trick or treating. Here are our favorites.
My favorite Check out the two little pumpkins munching on the big pumpkin...
James Favorite (Of course)

WARNING! This blog contains blantant bragging. Read on at your own risk!

Ok, so if you are still reading this consider yourself warned. I didn't know how else to record this with out it being braggy so, I am just putting it out there with appropriate warning labels. Please forgive...

So Grant and I have been hanging out together this week because James had a conference/meeting down in California. After his California conference James is heading to Texas to visit with his family a few days and attend another conference down in Houston. So a total of two weeks being gone. I know this is nothing compared to our military friends and it actually really helps me knowing how well you all function with your husbands gone for such long periods of time. Thank you!

Fortunately because of travel expenses and such James could not just do a triangular route and head to Houston from California but had to come back to Seattle spend the night and head out the next morning for Houston. What this is all leading up to is Grant and I going down to spend the night with James in the hotel before he had to leave the next day.

It was great to see James and be pampered by room service for the night and morning. Grant and I took full advantage of our little trip and shopped Seattle before and after seeing James. (Grant is a way better shopper than his Daddy!)

So that night when we are all eating our room service (it is the little things in life right?). Grant started scribbling on a notepad and asked Daddy to scribble some things too. James started with letters and had Grant repeat the sounds which he is very good at. Then just for fun wrote the word "Cat". Grant went through and said the appropriate letter sounds, paused and then said CAT!! Holy crap did Grant just put that word together and say it? Did he just actually read this??? I was so surprised and taken aback that I had James try another one and then another, dog, horse, sat, ball etc. etc. GRANT IS READING! Don't know how this happened exactly but his little synapsis must have just clicked recently and now he is putting the sounds together into words.

I know, I know Mikie could read before he was out of the womb and all (wink, wink Tracy!) but this is Grant and I am proud of him and just wanted to make sure I got this down so I would always remember that he was 3 1/2 when he started to read.

On another note Grant just started riding his pony CC all by himself for the first time ever this weekend. No lead rope, no help from me getting her to go. I waited in the middle of the field and Grant guided her around the trees in the pasture and back to me all by himself. I am so proud!

Backpacking with Heidi

So I have been wanting to go backpacking all summer long but, trying to fit it in between other vacations, triathlons and running races has proved difficult. Also, Heidi and I try to get at least one sister camping trip in a summer and had not done one yet. I realized I was running out of time to do either so I have been watching the weather over on the Olympic peninsula like a hawk.

My luck had finally turned. It looked like our window of opportunity was actually going to happen. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were forecasted to be cool 40's at night 50's in the day but no rain or wind. So keeping my fingers crossed I asked Heidi if she would be able to take Friday off and she could. So then I had to ask my BESTEST friend Amber if she would watch Grant for me on Sunday because James was going to have to leave for a business trip before Heidi and I would make it back. What I didn't realize at the time I did all my planning was that they were headed down to their annual pumpkin patch trip (check out Amber's blog).


Heidi and I made it to the trailhead at 5:30 and knew it was going to be tight if we did not book it to the coast. It is a three mile hike along a fairly level trail. It is through beautiful temperate rainforest that has no roads, house or civilization of any kind. You truly feel like you are totally getting away from it all!
The weekend ended up being great. Both of us being Wisconsin girls we did not mind the temperatures dropping into the forties during the night. We would just snuggle into our sleeping bags even further.

We had a chance to do some hiking along the coast and saw two dead whales. Well actually we smelled the whales long before we could actually see them. Of course once we saw them we just had to take pictures. The blubbery mass you see behind my sister is the actual whale. It has been there since May (according to the park ranger). The other whale we saw was still in the water and that one had been there since August. The whales are so huge it takes them along time to decompose. Isn't my sister a good sport posing for me so I could get the perspective of how huge the bones are!
A whale vertabrae.
While we were on this completely deserted beach we could never fully escape the impacts of humans. I took this picture for my fellow book club members. If you have read "The World Without Us" you would know what I mean...
Heidi being theatrical!
Somehow this tree stump has not managed to be worn away after all this time. It was HUGE!
It was so clear out we were able to see all the way up to Vancouver Island.

This is how we sun bath in the northwest!
If you look really closely at the right side of this picture you can see a little head poking up. It was a giant sea otter. They sure do swim fast!
This is actually Cape Alava with Heidi in three frames stitched together, spooky!
Heidi and I set our camp up right along the beach and even had a few non-human visitors.

The deer have obviously never been hunted here because they were not afraid of us at all, wary but not afraid.
Heidi and I just before we head back to civilization. All packed up and ready to go. Who's pack do you think looks bigger?? hehe (This was actually Heidi's first backpack trip and she did AWESOME not one complaint about how heavy the packs were or how long the hike was, she is a great camping partner!)

It was a wonderful end of season trip. Thanks to James, Amber, Heidi and Grant for helping me to make it happen!