family adventure weekend | Day 3: Exploring Stehekin

Saturday morning began with a quick sugar fix in the bakery. What day that starts with fresh-from-the-oven pastries, isn't great? Patrick was so glad to get a good cup of coffee, too. I packed my french press, but had neglected to bring cream and sugar. Patrick's not exactly a straight-up coffee kind of guy, in fact, he hated coffee for the first eight years I knew him. I was persistent, though, and eventually he gave in to the power of the bean.


While we were at the bakery, we asked the owner for some hiking suggestions. We were looking for something simple and easy so that we wouldn't have to endure "I'm tired!!" complaints from a certain young boy. He suggested the Imus Creek Trail, a short, one mile loop with a few creeks and bridges. Sounded good, so we packed a picnic lunch, and with Tula buckled into the Ergo on my back, we set off for our adventure.



The first portion of the trail was really nice—not too steep, wide trail, and a quaint little bridge to cross. We continued up the mountain and before we knew it, the trail had become a narrow path about 18" at the widest point, with about an 80 foot drop on the side. We were already about a third of the way to the end and Alden had his heart set on finishing the hike. We finally decided to proceed, with the stipulation that Alden would allow Patrick to hang on to the back of his shirt for the remainder of the hike. Pictures will never do justice to how steep the trail was (in fact, we only stopped to take pictures on the wider, safer sections), especially for a four-year-old, who not less than a day ago had tripped and face-planted walking across a wood deck. It wasn't a strenuous climb—just a long walk along the side of the mountain.


The view was spectacular and I'm so glad now that we didn't turn around. Alden did great, and didn't complain once. I never would have guessed that he would love hiking so much, but he's been asking to go again everyday since then. The trail ended in a campground right next to the lake, so we sat down to eat lunch. The kids filled themselves on pb&j and began rock hunting. Alden found a rock wall that someone had started, so he worked tirelessly to add onto it.


Tula and I headed back to the cabin for naps, and Patrick and Alden decided to rent a canoe. As soon as they left I sat down to read the Northwest section of the Seattle Times I had brought with us. To my dismay, the first headline I read was Man Dies in Canoe Accident. "You've got to be kidding me," I thought to myself. I read on hoping that it was someone who had neglected to wear a lifejacket, knowing that Patrick and Alden would surely be wearing theirs. Nope. He was wearing a life jacket and still drown. Thankfully (and after much prayer), my boys made it home safely, and I managed to not give myself an ulcer worrying while they were gone.


We picked up some delicious sandwiches from the bakery for dinner and settled in for the night. Day three was a total success.

family adventure weekend | Day 2: Chelan to Stehekin

We woke up early on Friday morning in order to catch the boat to Stehekin at 8 am, shuffled our belongings around according to the ferry's strict baggage policy, and checked out of our wonderful room. It looked like we had packed enough to live out of suitcases for a month—that crazy old woman from the movie Labyrinth comes to mind—but we had to bring quite a bit of food with us. Stehekin has no grocery store and only two restaurants; with Tula's dairy-free diet, we figured we had better be prepared.

Thanks to a good friend who loaned me her Ergo carrier (best baby carrier ever!), I was able to contain Tula for the 2 1/2 hour boat ride (and that's the express trip, the other boat takes 4 hours). Alden did surprisingly well, too. He did a little drawing, listened to an ipod for a while, and folded a bunch of origami shapes.


The ride up was breathtaking. Lake Chelan is only about two miles wide, but it's over fifty miles long, and the scenery changes drastically along the way. At the south end of the lake, it's sandy and arid, but the sandy beaches soon transform in to rocky cliffs and dense forests. Here's a little geography nugget for you too; Chelan is the third deepest lake in North America, after Crater Lake and Tahoe.

We landed in Stehekin, a town of about 95 residents that is situated at the source of Lake Chelan, around lunch time so we grabbed a quick bite at Stehekin Landing before heading up to our cabin. We booked a newer cabin that was built by the owners of the Stehekin Pastry Company (which was featured in an issue of Martha Stewart Living). The cabin was about 100 yards from the bakery, which was a little added bonus!

The owners had left a car at the landing for us to borrow for the weekend. Stehekin only has one road that runs along the edge of the lake and up into the river valley. Most people travel by bike, so there's not a lot of cars around. We didn't think we'd be able to take the kids' carseats with us on the boat, so we just buckled them into the back seat old fashion style. They thought it was the best thing ever! Alden thought that the Subaru Forrester that we cruised around in was the coolest car ever.

Our cabin was a lovely two-story two bedroom house with no phones and no wi-fi—what a fantastic break from technology! Outside our windows dozens of butterflies fluttered around, and across a short field was a corral with four or five horses.

We settled in and I put Tula down for her nap and I took a nap too, which is a rare treat for me! Patrick and Alden went out to explore the valley. They drove up to Rainbow Falls and threw rocks into the Stehekin river. Then they headed back to the bakery to get ice cream cones. That night we headed back to the Landing for dinner. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was much more upscale than I would have expected for such a small, mountain town—white tablecloths and all.

After eating, Alden wanted to do more exploring and was sad to find out that it was already bedtime. We indulged him in one game of "Sharks and Minnows" which is just his fancy version of freeze tag where you get to put a wash cloth in your back pocket and pretend to be a cold-blooded predator. Then, off to bed for the kids, and a great evening of wine and board games for us.

It was a great beginning, and we had so much planned for the next day...
oh, and after sifting through photos, it seems that Patrick never let the camera out of his hands until three days into the trip, so no pictures of him until tomorrow :(

family adventure weekend | day 1: Chelan

Day 1: Chelan

We hurriedly ate our lunch at our house, loaded the car and started the 3 1/2 hour trek to lake Chelan. Two mountain passes and three movies later, we pulled into Campbells—a historic lodge turned beautiful resort. We were delighted to enter our surprisingly beautiful lakefront room. No dated floral bedspreads or tasteless art in sight. The decor was classy and modern with a Northwest twist. The walls were adorned with pictures of mid 20th century families enjoying the lake. We had a sliding glass door that opened to our own private patio, and a path led down to the beach and pool.


We decided to eat a quick dinner at what turned out to be a overpriced, overrated restaurant, and head back to Campbell's to enjoy the water. Tula was quick to wade into the lake up to her torso followed by me, and eventually Patrick. Alden had no interest in getting his feet wet, but instead stood happily in the sand throwing "boats" (sticks) into the lake.


It was getting late and we decided we didn't haul all of the pool accessories from Seattle for nothing. It took some persuasion, but eventually the kids decided to trade their sticks and rocks for swimsuits and floaty toys. I spent five minutes blowing up an inflatable car for Tula to float in, and nearly passed out—she hated it. First, I thought she just didn't like being in the water, but it turned out she just didn't want anyone to hold her—not even a giant floating car. That works fine at a wading pool or the beach, but not so well when the shallow end of the hotel pool is two inches over her head. She would stand on the stair and without trepidation, attempt to walk off of it into the deep water.

She is one stubborn girl (ahem... admittedly, with a stubborn mommy). She screamed when I put her back in the floaty car, screamed when I tried to hold her to swim, and she screamed loudest when I hauled her—flailing arms and legs—out of the pool. I had originally hoped to slip stealthily in and out of the water in my not-so-flattering bathing suit. Instead, I didn't have time to even grab a towel, and I was walking past a couple hundred windows trying to strong-arm a tantrum-throwing toddler.

Meanwhile, Alden and Patrick played and splashed in the pool. If you've ever heard our past swimming pool stories, you know this is a surprise! The last time we were in a pool Alden had a life jacket, two noodles, and a rubber duck and still wouldn't uncurl from a ball in the waist-high water. I'm glad to see him overcome some of his fears!

The day ended with the kids in bed and Patrick and I sitting outside on the patio drinking a glass of red wine, watching the moon dance on the ripples of the lake. I thought to myself, "Are we crazy for leaving all of this after one day, and boating up into the woods?"


Check back tomorrow to find out if Stehekin was worth the 2 1/2 hour boat ride and to see some pictures of my dear, camera shy, husband!

an interview with Alden (age 4)

1. What is something mother always says to you?
Give me a kiss.

2. What makes mother happy?
Smiles

3. What makes mother sad?
Disobeying

4. How does mother make you laugh?
tickling

5. What was mother like as a child?
She really liked fruit loops

6. How old is mother?
5 years old

7. How tall is mother?
(runs to go get tape measure)
1 [inch] tall (looking at the wrong end of the tape measure)

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
snuggle

9. What does mother do when you're not around?
snuggle with Tula

10. If mother becomes famous, what will it be for?
loving

11. What is mother really good at?
catching the ball

12. What is mother not very good at?
not catching the ball

13. What does mother do for a job?
cooking food

14.What is mother's favorite food?
guacamole

15. What makes you proud of mother?
taking me to Top 10 Toys

16. If mother were a cartoon character, who would she be?
Curious George

17. What do you and mother do together?
cook together

18. How are you and mother the same?
we both ride in the car together

19. How are you and mother different?
our faces are different

20. How do you know mother loves you?
by giving kisses

21. What does mother like most about daddy?
his kisses

22. Where is mother's favorite place to go?
Top 10 Toys

The "catch up" post

So where have the mahoney's been the last three months, you might be wondering... or maybe not because you all gave up checking here for new posts a long time ago! I'll admit it, I have been wooed by Facebook. I swore I'd never sign up, thinking to myself, I barely have enough time to keep up with the friends that live in the same city, let alone people I haven't seen in fifteen years! I took the liberty to mock Patrick when he joined, and dragged my feet for a few more months. Finally, I drank the Kool-aid and signed up. I'm hooked. I find it so much easier to update than the blog, and I feel like when I write, I'm actually talking to people instead of just posting and wondering if anybody reads.

I've decided, though, that I should still continue to write on the blog. If you are hoping for lots of photos, please join/find me on facebook, as that's where I'll be putting most of the pictures. As for writing about what's going on in our lives, I'll try to do that primarily here—it imports into facebook anyway :) And I'm hoping that it will become a little more consistent, since getting the photos uploaded was the primary reason I procrastinated putting anything up.

Sorry for the long explanation! I'll try to keep the re-cap brief.

So far, we have had a really wonderful fall and winter. Patrick had nearly three weeks off at Christmas and we had about a foot of snow. We finally broke down and bought snow pants, thick gloves, boots, and a sled for the kids, which has always seemed like silly things to have in Seattle since it usually snows about two inches a year, but I'm so glad that we did.

Alden and Patrick spent nearly an hour everyday sledding down a little hill near our house. Tula went a few times too, and she thought it was great until she flipped out of the sled on her last run and landed with her face in the snow. After a quick recovery, she was ready to play some more. We were all throwing snow and Patrick threw a large and well-packed snowball at me. Naturally, I darted out of the trajectory not realize that little Tula was standing behind me. She took it right in the face. That was the end of playing in snow for Tula! Finally after 6 straight days of sledding Alden said, "I'm tired of being cold, let's sled again next year." And that was the end of playing in the snow for Alden.

Patrick used some of the time he had off to take each of us out on a date, well in Alden's case, they called it a Daddy "Day." They went to a fun indoor race track where they have a kid's course with battery powered cars. Alden was the only kid there and Patrick payed for two 6-minute races for him. He went around the track for about four minutes, stopped in the middle of the course, and got out. He'd had enough and was ready to go. I suppose it's not as fun when there is nobody to race against. Thankfully, the owners were kind enough to refund the second race. After that it was on to the candy store. Alden came home with a huge bag of goodies and even a few treats for Tula and me.

Tula's date was to the zoomazium at Woodland Park Zoo, which is one of her favorite places. After that, they went for burgers and fries—another favorite—and to the toy store where Tula picked out a big bouncy ball. Our little girl loves action!! Now that she is [finally] walking, she spends most of her day dancing, chasing balls, running from Alden, and climbing things. It was a perfect day for her.

For my date with my wonderful husband, we went to dinner and to U-Village to go shopping. I love that Patrick likes to shop, too. I picked out a few things at Anthropologie and H&M, then we headed to Saltoro's on Greenwood—a little unassuming neighborhood place that has really great food and a nice atmosphere. We love their Truffle Fries, which are really thin, crispy fries, coated in truffle oil and parmesan cheese... mmmm.

After a great "staycation" we are back into the swing of things. Alden is back in preschool two days a week, and Patrick has been working like crazy. His department has been doing a lot of filming lately, so I'll try to put up some links to the stuff they've created.

Tula is growing so fast. She just had her 18-month check-up today and is in the 90% for height. I'm not sure where she's getting that from. Maybe she's just trying to catch up with Alden so she can defend herself a little better :) She had two shots and she didn't cry at all! She's a tough little girl.

I've been spending most of my time just trying to keep things running smoothly. It's amazing how much laundry and dishes four people can generate. I'm the planner, organizer, cleaner, book-reader, snuggler, nose-wiper, errand-runner, and cook. All of which keep me pretty busy.

For the most part, it has been a beautiful fall here in the northwest. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful weekend to go to the farm (waaay back at the beginning of October). This is the third year in a row that we have driven up to Snohomish to visit our favorite pumpkin patch. Click here and here to see the photos from previous years.Tula loved all of the animals, but she was a little frustrated that we wouldn't let her out of the wagon to scoot around on her bum. She would be so much happier if she could just walk so that she could keep up with Alden. I would be much happier, too, if I didn't have to stain-stick the rear on her pants everyday.

The Farm has a big barn with hay bales stacked up on the sides and big piles of straw in the middle to jump in. Tula loved climbing on the bales and Alden loved dumping straw on her head.
I can barely look at this photo because it makes me want to sneeze, but Alden seems to be allergy free and he enjoyed a good fifteen minutes of tossing the straw onto himself. We could barely coax him out of the barn to go to the corn box.
We have pictures of Alden sitting on this tractor each year and it's fun to see how much he's grown. I hope we are able to continue the tradition of fall at the Farm for many years to come.

Tula wanted to do all of the big kid stuff. I think she'll have so much more fun next year.
Ah, the corn box. This is our favorite part of the whole place. Usually the box is bursting at the seem with sugar-crazed kids, but this year we must have hit it just at the right time because we were the only people inside. Thankfully, Tula only ate a few kernels before she figured out it was just for playing with. We all took turns burying each other and rolling around.


We picked a lot of pumpkins this year... I like the white ones, Patrick wanted some dark green ones so that he could try something new when he carved them, Alden decided that Tula's favorite ones were the orange kind, and of course since his favorite color is yellow, we came home with two of those. Our front steps ended up being so covered with pumpkins that it was nearly impossible to open the door. I think next year we'll have to have a four pumpkin limit.

autumn in montana

Last week we drove to Montana—all 14 hours in one day—to spend a week with my parents in Fort Benton, which for those of you who haven't heard of it (what, really?) is in the north-central part of the state and the last time I checked, had a population of about 1500 people, although if I'm wrong on that number, I'm sure someone who lives there will see to it to correct me.

I packed our bags according to what I thought would be fitting for a typical early October week, but to our surprise, it was almost 90 by the end of our trip. Maybe no one noticed that we wore the same three shirts over and over.

The first three days that we were there, my sister and her family drove up to visit. We had a very full house with people sleeping in every nook and cranny, but no one seemed to mind. Everyone headed down to the levee to enjoy the beautiful trees, falling leaves, and the peaceful Missouri River.

There is a walking bridge that used to terrify me when I was a kid because it was only restored about a third of the way out and when you got to the end you could stand at the chain link fence and look out at all of the rotting boards that were barely hanging on right next to the large gap where their neighboring slats should have been. It's much nicer now—finished all the way across the river—but it still gives me chills when I look down through the cracks. Alden didn't seem to be bothered by them too much. We showed him how he could drop sticks down and watch them hit the water.


Then I showed him one of the little games that my sister and I used to play. We'd each grab a stick with leaves on it and drop them down on the upstream side and race across to the other side of the bridge to see who's stick would appear first. He thought it was brilliant. This picture is of him racing.

Patrick took this shot of the nieces and I just love it. It reminds me so much of me and Tanya when we were little.
We were hoping to get a nice family shot against the serene backdrop... we got absolutely no cooperation from the kids and this was the best we could get. They both just wanted to get down and do their own thing. I still think it's kind of cute.

My mom always plants a huge vegetable garden, and this year was no exception. Most of the bounty had already been harvested, but Alden got to help pick the gourds. My mom grows tons of them to use in a school project (she's an elementary teacher). Alden gladly helped haul them to the house one by one. Can you see the strain in his face!! It was hard work.

He was so excited and he talked about them all week. The funny thing was that he couldn't remember the name of them and he kept calling them "goaches." Within just a few minutes of correcting him with the right word, he was calling them goaches again. By the time they were done working, there were 51 of them in the pile.
Because it was so hot, my parents needed to give some of their trees a really deep soak. Alden was thrilled to be the hose-holder. He kept swinging it around and we were all just waiting for him to hit his face with the water, but somehow he managed to miss his head every time. That is until my mom tried to show him how to hold his finger on the end to give it a little more pressure. Apparently there was a hole in the side of the metal and as my mom covered the end with her finger, water shot out full-force directly into Alden's eyes. If you zoom into the next picture you'll see his reaction!! My mom felt really bad, too.
By the time we shut the water off, there was a huge mud puddle. I tried as hard as I could to keep Tula distracted, but she was thrashing around so bad, fighting me to get in it. I finally gave up and plopped her down in the middle. I figured she was wearing black pants so what's the big deal. She thought it was fantastic.



Here's another attempt at a family photo. I think it's time to call in the professionals!
Here are the kids with grandma and grandpa. I love the way this photo of my parents turned out. We took these on the last night of our trip right before driving to Loma to eat dinner and go see some buffalo.

On our way home we stopped to pick some wheat for Alden to take back and share with his preschool class. I turned around to look at an amazing sunset and was fortunate enough to see eight antelope run by about a hundred yards away.

It was a great trip, and I am always amazed at the beautiful sights that Montana offers. On our drive back, we had to slow down on one of the mountain passes for a few ranchers riding their horses on the highway herding a bunch of cattle. It was really an unexpected treat for all of us to see.