Sunday, January 25, 2009

Big Weekend

Joey and I just got back from a snowshoe backpacking adventure. We snowshoed 2 miles to a primitive forest service cabin and spent the night. It was pretty cold but we kept the fire going all night so we were cozy inside. We did a lot of sledding, exploring, reading, playing cards, chopping wood and snow fort building. We drove back through Leavenworth, had some lunch and did some sledding in town.
The same weekend, Meg took Jess and 2 of his friends to the Great Wolf Lodge for his 13th birthday. They had a great time and we are going to have to find a way for the whole family to go there.

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Snow backpack adventure

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Scouts at Stretch Island


Troop 366 went out to the beachhouse with us this weekend for a "video game weekend". The kids had a great time.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

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Wallace river

Wallace Falls and flood pics




I had the day off so I decided to be a storm chaser. I hiked up to Wallace falls and saw the incredible amount of water from the recent rains. It was about a 6 mile hike up around 1500 feet. I wanted to go further up to Wallace Lake but I had to get back to take Jess to the dentist. It was also getting a little too snowy up at the top.


On the way home I drove through Sultan and took some pics of the Sultan River and the Skykomish river flooding Sultan. I also saw the Snoqualmie River taking over a lot of the forest.

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Wallace falls

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Lower wallace falls

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Joey's new desk and room




The boys switched rooms again so now Joey has the room with the loft bed. We finally got Joey his own desk and we spent all day Sunday putting it together.


Thursday, January 1, 2009

Vancouver Boys Train Trip 2008

Jess Joey and I just got back from the our annual boys trip. Meg always has to work the week after xmas but I always have it off so we always go on an adventure somewhere. This year we took the train to Vancouver for 2 nights.

The train up took 5.5 hours because of some mechanical problems but I am still glad we took it rather than driving. It was a lot more relaxing and I didn't have to worry about parking the whole time. It was snowing when we got off the train and the wind was blowing about 40 mph in our face. We made out way to the sky train and then walked to the Ramada on the North end of Gastown.

After getting settled in our room we walked back to the skytrain and took it to the waterfront and transferred to the seabus. The weather cleared up and we had a great ride to North Van to watch the sunset. We had some nachos and then came back and went to see a stupid 3D movie at Canada place. We later had dinner at a gastown bar called Black Frog. The kids loved it because they had a free video game machine that had over 100 vintage games.

The next day we had our crappy continental breakfast at the Ramada and then went to Science World on the skytrain. Both boys have been there before but we still had a fun time with the puzzle exhibits. It isn't as good as the Pacific Science Center or OMSI but we still had a lot of fun. We then shopped on Robson and got both kids new shoes. We had our first lunch at a Sushi place on Robson. The food floated by in wooden boats. I thought we were spending too much so we left to do some more window shopping on Robson. We then had a second lunch at a Caffe Crepe. Joey had a huge chocolate icecream crepe. We then did some 5 pin bowling at our favorite place- Commodore Lanes on Granville. We then chilled out at the hotel before going to see Bedtime Stories at a theatre in Chinatown. It was pretty good classic Adam Sandler acting like an idiot. We never really had dinner so we had a slice of pizza at 9:30 after the movie.

The next morning we avoided the free breakfast and went to Smiley Cafe across the street. That was a mistake. It was the worst omelette I had in a long time. We then took a bus to the Space museum and planetarium. The planetarium show was great but the virtual simulator show was pretty lame. We also saw a live show where they showed the different colors of burning different chemicals. We then walked on the snowy bike path to Granville Island. We had lunch at Sammy Peppers which was pretty good. We watched a street performer juggle fire and then get out of a strait jacket and chains. We bought some stuff for our dinner at the public market and then took a bus to the train station to get out of town. The train home was fairly quick and we got off in Seattle at 10:15 on New Years Eve. We thought about going to the space needle for fireworks or going to a party we were invited to but we were all to worn out to be in public. Meg just took us home to watch the space needle fireworks on TV.