Mt Baker trip

The week before Christmas we spent a few days at a cabin near Mt Baker. The kids (including our nephew Roozbeh) took snowboarding and skiing lessons at the ski area. They loved the snow - the scenery was magnificent, and the skiing/snowboarding was even better. Conditions the first day on the mountain were a little miserable, with lots of snow and even more wind, but they liked it anyway. The second day was clear and gorgeous, and the kids got to practice their newly acquired skills. This area is now our new favorite vacation destination (actually, it's tied with La Push) and we're looking into possibly getting some land up there to build a cabin. The area is undeveloped, for the most part, and has SO MUCH to offer during all seasons - camping/hiking in the spring/summer/early fall and skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing in the winter. We're thinking it'd be a great place for family get-togethers.

The first four pictures were taken by Husband from the top of the chairlifts. His snowboarding skills are far more advanced than ours, and he got to go on all the runs (double black diamond even - those are apparently the most difficult), which afforded him these spectacular views...

This picture is of the trees from the car on our way back down the mountain...

The cabin...

The brats...

Sooo happy! (and cold)

Making her way down the bunny hill...

Getting up is the hardest part!

Yes, even I attempted to snowboard, although this is how I spent most of my time (on my behind). I think I'll stick with skiing! And that is Dylan in the background - quite a crash!

Dylan exposes his creative side

Can someone please explain boys to me? They are definitely a different breed. Dylan came home from school yesterday with this beautiful artwork that he sketched during reading time in class (you MUST enlarge it):
?! What the...?! I just shake my head and chuckle...aside from that I'm speechless. What a multi-talented child I have!

La Push video

Another favorite pastime at La Push..."La Push" as in "I will la push you into la water, " and chasing waves (and the occasional shoe:)).

Happy Thanksgiving

As many of you probably know, one of our favorite places to go is a little spot on the Washington Coast called La Push. We ventured out there again this year for Thanksgiving, this time with mom and our Peruvian friend Margory in tow (Margory is up here to go to school and play volleyball - she was just offered a full ride scholarship to play in NYC! She works with husband in the intramurals dept at SCC).

Just as an aside, I have to point out the irony of going to La Push (which is on the Quileute Native American reservation) for Thanksgiving - something I think about alot when we go there for that particular holiday. I wonder how many Native Americans celebrate the fact that several hundred years ago they welcomed and helped save the lives of the people who eventually brutally slaughtered them and almost completely destroyed their way of life and culture? OK, OK, I won't get all soap-boxy on you, but I just can't resist pointing that out.

So here are some of the pictures. We had such a great time, and the weather was AMAZING. In a previous post I detailed the weather during our last trip out there, and this time it was the exact opposite. When we arrived it was sunny and about 60 degrees! We got to spend a ton of time on the beach playing in the water, and there was a full (or almost full) moon that illuminated the white caps on the ocean at night. BEAUTIFUL! Just confirms that there is no other place I'd rather be than in the Pacific NW.

**To really appreciate the scenery in these pictures, click on them to enlarge!**

The view to the north

Mom & ZoyaZoya climbing on a log with the view to the south in the background

Margory and Zoya

"Sorry!" was the game of choice for the weekend. With no phone and no TV (though we did bring a small tv with the Wii), we get to enjoy each other's company more than usual)

Pickle posing

Margory and I climbed to the top of a big haystack rock to get a better view of Second Beach

You can tell by my hair that the wind was blowing!At Second BeachSecond Beach again"Patrick"
(anyone else like Spongebob as much as we do?)

Sea cucumbers (I think)

Gotta get rid of those lovely pictures

I feel compelled to post simply to move those two hot babes down the line. Here are the kids in their Halloween attire. Zoya was a baby jaguar and Dyl was, well, himself as an old man. My favorite part of this picture of Zoya is the shiny part on her costume where her little round tummy sticks out!

OK, fair is fair/Like mother, like daughter

As promised mom, here is an equally flattering snapshot of yours truly for all of posterity to admire. All I have to say is, "Don't hate us because we're beautiful!"

Hey, if I could figure out how to put us cheek-to-cheek in these pictures, we could go, "hhkhkhkhkhkhkhkhkh0OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO!!!!!" (sorry folks, inside joke)

Random pictures

I've wasted my morning away looking through a ton of old pictures that I have on the computer. These are some of my favorites:

Zoya in her new Spring dress (6 months or so)

Pickle and Zoya

Cousin Chloe

Cousin Max (this picture still makes me giggle!)

Cousin Emma

Cousin Riley

My Dyl Pickle

Husband and Zoya at La Push (I love the detail in the water almost as much as I love the subjects of this photo!)

G-Sue at her finest (sorry mom, I'll take this down if you want, but I love it so much!) "You are so BEAUTIFUL..........to MEEEEEEEEE!"

Missing my long hair

I was going through old pictures and found this one from 2 years ago. I can't believe I cut off all that hair! What was I thinking?????? The good news: at least it can grow back.

Have you heard the good news?

Isn't that a Jehovah's Witness line? Check out this post...how exciting (not to mention exhausting)!

Pickle's first fish

Dylan went salmon fishing for the first time a couple of weeks ago with his friend Zane (whose dad, incidentally, grew up in Stevensville, MT - graduated in 1980). I wasn't sure he would like it that much since he had to opt out of the owl pellet dissection in school last year because he thought it was so gross that he was getting queasy. Surprisingly he LOVED it, and even helped clean his fish, though he said that he spent most of the time playing with the fish intestines. FUN! That must come from my gene pool because Kathy Parker and I used dissect the eyes of the fish her dad caught on the Bitterroot and would spend hours on their patio seeing who could stab the lens with the point of a knife first. Yes, my interest in biology started early!

Zane's dad filleted and vacuum-packed Dyl's fish and sent it home, and we enjoyed some of it for dinner that night. It was delicious!! I think we're going to look for a small boat and start catching our own salmon from now on. There's really nothing that compares to fresh fish!

First days of school

Both Dylan and Zoya have started school for the year (their first days were almost a month ago). Dylan is in 5th grade and loving every minute of it so far, aside from being a little nervous about the increased amount of homework. He's also THRILLED about the health education unit they will have toward the end of the year...yes, the dreaded "talk" happens this year for his class (does that bring to mind Ms. Mullary's hideous flowered bag for any of my sisters? That's the only memory I have of my fifth grade "talk"). I keep telling him that he's got nothing to worry about because I gave him all the information he'll ever need last summer, which included a graphic trip through several of my biology books and a complete physiological explanation of where babies come from. He was really funny about it all - his only comment after he finished gagging and making mock vomiting sounds was, "Mom, don't you think you should have waited 'til I was a teenager before you told me that?!" Anyhoo, he's excited for the most part about fifth grade, and loves his teacher.
Zoya is attending a co-op preschool this year. There are a lot of great things about it, including the teacher and curriculum. I get to spend one of the three mornings there "working," which sometimes is great fun and other times not so much (is it terrible to admit that I don't like other people's kids, or at least some of them?). She's not very happy if she has to stay home for any period of time, so school has been really good for her. The only problem is that she only goes 3 days a week, so the days she doesn't go get really long.