Dad & Kids Camping Trip - 2011

 The end of July brought about the annual Dads and Kids Camping trip. Dad and Harrison had fun last year so they trekked into the mountains again this year with Aunt Chyna in tow.

Last year Harrison reportedly threw up all over the tent at bedtime due to consuming an obscene amount of unhealthy food so this year I told dad to help him eat healthy. Then I told Aunt Chyna to make sure Michael helps Harrison eat healthy. It doesn't sound like he ate very healthy, but at least he didn't throw up this year. Evidently Harrison was given a jumbo marshmallow which he carried around in his hand, palm up, taking bites out of it as he wandered around camp. Breakfast entailed bacon and cinnamon buns. This must be why moms can't come, we would never allow these types of nutrition shenanigans on our watch.

Camping near a lake also includes swimming, boating etc. and the weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday. There are a set of 14 stairs leading down to the water. Harrison held hands with Chyna or another adult when he climbed them and they all started counting steps with him. Before he left for camp, he could semi-reliably count to 3. He returned home to his momma counting to 14! Funny thing was no one mentioned he had learned this. I was sitting next to him on Sunday evening when he suddenly started counting his toys to himself... I was daydreaming but snapped to when I heard him saying "six-seven-eight-nine-ten"!

Dad also gets some props because they returned home significantly less dirty this year than last year. In 2010 Harrison was 18 months and they walked in the door with grime a quarter inch deep under Harrison's fingernails and dirt marks smeared all over his face. This year Harrison was 30 months old and either has learned more advanced cleanliness skills in the last year or his dad did a better job keeping him clean. That said, he still needed a bath immediately upon returning home!

Aunt Chyna, Michael, Harrison, Aunt Rae Rae, Zaidy & Uncle Stephen

Annual Mariner's Game

Team Fein has a tradition of grabbing the Coyle's and taking the families out to the ole ball game once each summer. July 2011 was no exception with Emily and Harrison especially excited to see the Mariner's Moose.

We planned to arrive a little late since two of the three kids needed naps right around first pitch however when we arrived the game had been played so quickly that we walked in at the bottom of the sixth inning! Twas ok though since a 1 year old, 2.5 year old and a 3 year old generally don't feel the need to watch all nine innings. The kiddos had plenty of fun just "sitting" in the seats, oblivious to the game taking place below.

Orange "crush" soda tongue

Top of the ninth, Rally Caps!

 Fun was had and most importantly, the kids got to run the bases after the game. You may recall last year and Harrison's fear of the giant key shaped bank mascot on second base scaring the pants off of him. Behold, he was there again this year which made Harrison pause but with dad's hand and some reassurance he made it around second, looked over his shoulder to ensure that thing wasn't following him and made it to home plate!

Rock On

I am a big fan of "Caspar Babypants" a children's song group. The music is a lot of fun and you can listen to it over and over without considering suicide. When Harrison was 12-24 months, I would play it in the car and he would immediately stop whining or crying and just go eerily quiet and listen to it while looking at the window. If that isn't magic, I don't know what is. Caspar has an extra cool edge becuase "Caspar" (the lead vocalist) is actually Chris Ballew from "The Presidents of the United States of America" an alternative rock band big especially in the late '90's from Seattle... considering they did an entrie song about peaches the segue into kids songs doesn't seem so far fetched.

Why am I gushing about Caspar? Aside from the above, Krissi and Gavin (along with Brigette, Amelie and Dash) invited us to check our Caspar Babypants at Silver Lake Park for a free concert promoting their new CD. In the rain. Why it is raining in the middle of July is beyond me but we braved 59* and constant drizzle to rock out to "Baby Bear" and "Poor Little Broken Truck."

Unfortunately Harrison spied the awesome looking playground 100 feet from the stage so during most of the concert he was begging me to play instead of enjoy the music. So I forced him to have fun by tickling him, making him jump up and down all crazy and letting him crawl on my back. Good times and totally worth it.

Here is Harrison and Amelie dancing... sorry it's sideways:

After the concert, we picked up the new CD and hand the band members sign it. Caspar asked Harrison, "what's your name" to which he relied " 'arrisen" and when I told him to thank Caspar he said "Hank Ew Caspar!" And he thanked Ronald Babyshoes and Freddy Babyshirt as well to which all three replied separately with "awww, you're welcome buddy!"

July 5 & 6: Splash Pad and Zoo

With an abundance of nice weather, we continued the fun in the sun. While we took it easy on the 5th after the go-go-go of Independence Day, in the afternoon we visited the local park in with an awesome "Splash Pad" which I referenced last summer. I don't have any photos of Harrison frolicking in the water, mostly because he insisted "mommy go too!" and pulled me by the hand into the water fray.

Auntie Chyna set out some towels on a grassy knoll to sun herself and during a snack break we sat down to join her. Harrison grabbed his box of snacks and ran top speed down the little knoll, stopped dead at the bottom, bent down to eat a treat, then ran back up hill to me. Repeat. Repeat. Not sure why he was doing it but it was funny.

The following day, we went to the Woodland Park Zoo, one of our favorite places which never fails to enthrall and entertain Harrison. Penguins are always a must with him!

One of the first animals we saw were the hippos, which he accurately pointed out were sleeping in the water.

Climbing the hippo statue

As part of his mental development, Harrison has learned that there are other mommies and daddies out there other than his parents; in fact he likes to categorize things into families whenever possible. For example, we say a couple of gray wolves and once he correctly understood they were wolves, the next thing he said was "mommy and daddy wolf" followed by the question [where did] "baby wolf go?" Or depending on his mood he might decide that the two large animals are a mommy and a baby (I assume because he feels particularly attached to me at that moment).

In any case, while there were not any wolf pups at the zoo there were statues of wolf pups nearby and Harrison decided to climb into their den:

Another thing I love about the zoo is that you can bring food with you and picnic anywhere.

After some PB&J and trail mix with M&M's (or in Harrison's case, just M&M's without the trail mix!), we enjoyed elephants, lions, etc. Harrison insisted we see the monkeys but somewhere around lunch time, we accidentally passed them and by the time he asked for monkeys again, they were too far away and our day was winding down so I lied to my child and told him that "mommy looked for the monkeys but can't find them because they are sleeping, it is their nap time." That seemed to resonate with him, especially since we had earlier looked for snow owls who were indeed asleep in the day time. He accepted this statement although he did make me promise we see the monkeys next time.

A few hours later, dad returned home from work. Dad took Harrison upstairs and proceeded to ask him what he saw at the zoo today. When they came downstairs again, dad was so proud that Harrison recalled things so clearly. I asked what he had told him. Dad's reply was, "he said he saw the monkeys, and they were sleeping."

Grandpa Dale left on July 7th and we miss having him around. Harrison woke up the next morning and asked [where did] "grandpa go?" When I reminded him grandpa flew home on an airplane, he replied "noooo, grandpa no go."

The seldom mentioned fourth member of Team Fein, Winston, misses grandpa the most. Grandpa played, and played, and played with Winston every day to the point where Winston immediately launched into a barking frenzy the minute grandpa would enter the room. On July 8th, Winston literally moped around the house, which really says something considering bull dogs generally look mopy all the time. He nary lifted a paw. On July 9th, we left the house for an hour and returned to find Winston had protest-peed on the rug. I knew it was a protest becuase it was just a little bit, clearly not done out of  necessity.

Visit soon grandpa, can't wait to see you again!

Evidently there are a lot of bronze statues as we seemed
to have found and photographed all of them.

July 4: Boats, BBQ & Bottle Rockets!

In celebration of the birth of our country, we visited the Center for Wooden Boats at South Lake Union and enjoyed their annual Wooden Boat Festival. Ahoy!

We boarded several vessels with huge masts, flying flags and kind crews that let us pretend to steer the ship and tour below deck. Pretty cool stuff, I'll let the pictures speak for us:

Harrison's first temporary tattoo

As we got ready to leave we came across  some fun water fountains Harrison could not resist. We let him play until his soppy diaper literally fell off from the water weight, then we called it quits!

We made our way to the Ivar's on North Lake for a nice lake side meal of fish and chips.

During nap time, mom and Auntie decided to make pineapple sorbet... we ate it 8 hours later and it was delicious!

For the prior three days, Team Fein had been talking about "Boom City,: the local reservation that sells fireworks. Grandpa was intrigued so we decided to shop there for our sparklers etc just for fun. If you've never been, it is like going to a carnival with booth after booth after booth of fireworks stands, each with someone hollering that they will make you the best deal! There are signs lining the road as you drive in that tell you "Booth #115 - Sir Booms Alot!" or "Booth #98 is mind blowing!" You can kind of see a sliver of it in the photo, behind Chyna.

Returning home, we quickly fired up the grill and enjoyed dad's hot dogs and brats, then headed over to Overlake Hospital to visit Great Papa Hugh and the family, as Great Papa was not well (he has since returned home). To make a long day even longer, we piled back into the car, drove to Bothell (where fireworks are legal) and madly ripped open our large package of explosives and furiously shot them off as it was almost 10pm, it was almost dark and Harrison was getting tired. Dad, grandpa and auntie shot off bottle rockets, fountains, etc. while Harrison sat in mom's lap and happily threw snaps at the asphalt.

It was pretty dark so these are the best photos. Chyna said it was the most fun 4th she had ever had! Every year it occurs to me that July 4, 2008 was the day we told our families that we were expecting Harrison to debut 30 week later. Three years have past already and were so much fun. We love you little dude!

July 3: Fremont Market

Dale, Raina, Chyna and Harrison strolled the Fremont Farmer's Market today (while Michael finished the new bench for the deck). Chyna and I had already visited several local markets but all were very small with only 10 or so booths so Chyna was much more impressed with the Fremont Market. Two blocks of fish, cheese, honey and flower mongers along with people selling handmade items and antiques.

After a stroll while enjoying some freshly made mini donuts and super sweet roasted corn, we decided to have lunch at a vegan restaurant down the street since Chyna was trying out the vegan lifestyle for a few weeks. Although we shied away from the fake soy based "bacon" the food we did get was really delicious, especially Harrison's Mac n' cheese which was the creamiest concoction I had ever seen!

We continued our walk and grandpa managed to get Harrison to hold his hand and walk for several blocks, a big feat considering Harrison usually insists on doing everything with mommy.

 Aunt Chyna really enjoys the northwest, unlike Las Vegas there are lots of trees and foliage. She especially loved these poppies that were casually growing on the street side.

July 2: Gardening with Grandpa

Today we decided to get some flowers to replace a batch in a planter box that died recently. Our favorite nursery is Flower World in Maltby - it's like Disney World in that you need a map to navigate it, there are lots of animals to check out and you can spend all day there. Harrison promptly took Grandpa to the turtle pool, one of his favorite spots nestled within tons of flowers.

After a stroll around the grounds to visit the ducks, chickens and peacocks, we ate lunch at the Maltby Cafe, famous for delicious food and cinnamon rolls four people could easily share (looking back I wish we had bought one!). At home Grandpa helped dad plant the flowers we bought while Harrison helped mom pull weeds. What a nice way to enjoy the great weather!

July 1: Edmonds Beach

On July 1st, Raina's father Dale arrived in town to hang out with his daughters, grandson, son in law and let's not forget, his grand dog. Lucky for Grandpa Dale, summer didn't wait until July 5th, as it usually does, and graced us with warm weather and sunny days. We packed up the car and drove to Edmonds to enjoy a late afternoon on the beach.

Although Harrison was wearing shorts, they were not very short and got pretty wet as he chased the waves in and out so dad stripped him down to a diaper.

Since we had not planned to "swim" we forgot a towel so Harrison snuggled into dad's sweatshirt until the goosebumps subsided.

Chyna and Raina relaxed on the sand while grandpa explored the beach, ferry terminal and train tracks. we wrapped up the evening with some Korean BBQ... the last time we had Korean BBQ was the night Harrison slipped and hit his head on the pool deck in San Francisco last September and then subsequently vomited all over the Korean restaurant and we spent the whole night in a downtown hospital ER. Needless to say we were happy we enjoyed our dinner incident free!

Aunt Chyna is Visiting!

Mommy's 17 year old sister Chyna is visiting for the summer! Auntie Chyna is feeling at home and Harrison loves having her AND mommy around all the time. In the past couple weeks we have kept busy taking her to our favorite spots as well as dragging her along on our humdrum errands.

 

It is so much fun to have the freedom of visiting places all around Seattle without the restrictions of working full time. We recently enjoyed a mid-week late-morning stroll in Pioneer Square, including a visit to Waterfall Park, a little urban oasis tucked into a courtyard at the site where UPS was founded.

In Pioneer Square, a group had apparently "Yarn Bombed" the trees and light posts... someone must have knitted for a really, really long time to make "sleeves" big enough to fit around all the trees!

One adventurous Saturday morning, we visited the University District's farmer's market, had lunch at a vegetarian establishment that I had walked by ten zillion times in college but had never entered (and it was great!) followed by a stroll through the University of Washington's quad and Red Square.

Harrison enjoys playing and says he "loves" his Aunt Chyna, which means a lot as he doesn't always give his heart away so readily! We are having a lot more fun, I just need to upload some more photos.