New Stuff, and Some Old

Quick additional note: It was 104 degrees today at 3:30 pm. Followed this evening by a massive thunderstorm with crazy wind that blew the neighbor's thick and heavy cut hay all across creation. I guess summer is here!

The newest news at our house is that we found a used Burley Solo bike trailer advertised in the newspaper this weekend. I jumped on the ad, called right away, and we went to look at it that evening. It was in fantastic condition (which NEVER seems to be the case w/ used bike trailers), so we jumped on the offer. We are now the proud owners of a bike trailer to cart Violet around with! We took our first family bike ride last night. Violet had a fantastic time, and so did Mike and I. Before we had it hitched up, Violet had already climbed in to investigate...

We were having so much fun that we didn't get any action shots for you. Sorry. But we'll probably be using this cool new toy a lot, so I'm pretty sure we'll have more photos to share soon.

Here are some more fun pics of Violet playing on the front porch and with the cats. They are too cute to leave out.

For the "old stuff" referenced in the title, I thought I'd throw in a few photos as a sort of retrospective. They bring a tiny tear to our eyes, and make us wonder how it is even possible that Violet is so big now.

Violet and her "book bag"

Investigating her farmhouse.

Vi on the farm.

Summer Projects

As summer is now officially upon us, I thought it appropriate to showcase a recent summer project. Don't let the title mislead you, however, as we have a long, long, loooonnnnng, list of projects that span the entire year. And the next year. And probably the following year.

At any rate, our most recent big project was installing a raised planting bed along the south side of the garage. Previously it was simply a mess of weeds, but I thought it might be a good place to grow some of our favorite heat-loving vegetables. We do have a huge garden elsewhere, but this gives us another, more sheltered and easily accessible space to work with.

We are pretty excited about the outcome. It contains four heirloom tomato plants (Oaxacan, Black from Tula, Green Zebra, and another I've forgotten), two green bell peppers, two hot peppers (of which variety I can't seem to recall), and two eggplants.

Violet loved helping with the compost.

I've got dirt in my eye...oh wait, now I've got MORE dirt in my eye!

We've also had some nice flowers blooming recently. It has been a very wet and cold spring, but in the past few days the weather has really cleared up. I think we're about to get the typical summer heat wave.

Although not exactly blooming, Violet's dress celebrates the spring flowers as well.

Mike left today for another business trip. He'll be spending the rest of the week in Calgary, B.C. Violet and I will be holding down the fort, taking care of the animals, and trying to stay out of trouble!

Catching Up

I'm short on stamina, concentration, and time tonight so this will be a short post, but it will hopefully fulfill everyone's need for Violet pics and news. First of all, we had an nice dinner out on the back patio with Maegan and Ryan a week or so ago. One of the very few days that it was both warm, dry, and calm (lack of wind) enough that we could enjoy the patio.

Speaking of warm, dry, and calm, the norm has been the lack thereof. But it has supplied us with some spectacular sunsets and rainbows lately.

Violet has been talking a lot these days, and we can decipher a few words now, like "ball" and "no" (or more appropriately, "No!"), as well as the old-hat "ma-ma" and "da-da". And she is picking up new signs like wildfire. Seriously, she is imitating new signs the first time she sees them, and if she can't get her hands and fingers to do exactly the right thing, she'll try and try and try to get it correct. She is amazing.

And probably of particular interest to my Mom, Vi has started carrying around her baby doll with a cloth diaper she pinched from the diaper changing table. Sometimes the diaper seems to be a blanket, but mostly it is actually a diaper for the doll (albeit quite a large one!) And you may notice the fat lip and scrapes she's got on her upper lip and cheek. Chalk that injury up to a soccer accident on the front porch. Vi just couldn't seem to keep her feet underneath her and her body upright. And that lead to a face-plant:-(

Here is a stray picture from the bike race in Spokane. Violet was getting tired and decided that her lawn chair was a good place to lay down (sort of) with her Kora Dog and Orange Kitty.

Day hike

Last Saturday Joanna and Violet and Maegan and Ryan all went for a hike while I mowed the lawn and tried to catch up on the backlog of yardwork. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

Wild lilies:


Vi getting sleepy:
Violet sleeping (with Maegan in the background):

Violet playing in a little stream:

Even more road trip pictures!

When we drove back from Spokane, we took the long way home via Moscow and US-95. Both Joanna and I are pretty sure we haven't been on this stretch of road since we moved out of Moscow in 2001. It was really nice to relive our youth and take a drive we haven't made in 10 years. Luckily the drive brought back far more happy memories than bittersweet feelings of a more carefree time that seem to accompany our impending middle agehood. Violet enjoyed the trip, especially our lunch and run-around time stop in Riggins.






Here's a nice pic and vid from the bike race where Violet is getting her balance on the scoot-bike.

And, Violet loves to play with my laptop.

Spokane bike adventure

Before I forget, we updated yesterday's post. Go back and check out the link about Map Rock.

The marquee event for the vacation, such that you can call a 2000 mile driving tour a vacation, was the 24 Hour 'Round the Clock mountain bike race that is held in Spokane, WA every Memorial Day weekend. It involves camping for a couple of nights and this was Violet's first camping trip. She did great at camp. She got a little cold at night (it got down to 40 deg F or so) but with enough layers she was fine. She also ran around with a pack of children 7 strong. She held her own just fine. She is very well adjusted. Better adjusted than me, some might say. This year was my fifth one of these little adventures and my first time trying to do it as a 2-man team. Previously I had participated on 4-man teams and one try as a solo. Let me save you the time of having to download the pdf of the results: our team came in DFL. I could make up all kinds of excuses about how this came to pass, but I won't. At least I got a good 105 miles bike ride out of it.

Jetta packed up and ready to go.

A picture of me I ripped off from the race website. This somewhere around mile 90 or so.

Other pictures from the weekend.

Violet exploring a plastic car.

Violet exploring a plastic play-house-slide-apparatus.Violet and Joanna and Sue playing in the rain!

A closeup of Vi's fabulous rain outfit.

A video of Violet and Joanna splashing around in the Columbia River.

So many pictures, so little vacation time remaining

A few more pictures from our vacation.

Look at this baby goose. You can't tell me that dinosaurs aren't related to birds. Undeniably related.
Violet likes to pet the giant sturgeon.

Joanna, Vi and I went to go visit the approximately 12,000 year old Map Rock on the Snake River outside of Melba, ID. Map Rock is where the Native Americans carved a map of the Snake and Salmon River watersheds onto the face of a rock. Pretty cool, as petroglyphs (and pictographs) go. Follow the link above to find out more about how amazingly cool this basalt boulder is! Of course we walked around a bit and made sure that Violet got tired enough so that she took a decent nap on the way home.




We saw some kind of lizard. Edit: It's a Sagebrush Lizard. (Go figure...)