Food Fun

The last few weekends we've spent a lot of time with Grandparents. Last weekend we were in Battle Ground and Grandma taught Sophia how to make ginger snaps. Sophia loves to help, she gets very indignant when we're doing something she can't help with, so she was delighted to be allowed to squish down the cookies. Grandma and Grandpa were here yesterday to watch the Husker game. Sophia and Grandma were decked our in their Husker finery.

We're slowly working our way through the Halloween candy. Today Sophia had a little pack of Oreos and shared the cookies with her face. She thought it was pretty funny.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from Sophia the ladybug, and Sophia the cowgirl.

International Travel

Last Saturday Sophia and Paul carved our pumpkin. She didn't do much carving, but helped design it at least.

Sophia and I had an adventure these week. We took the train and a bus to Richmond, British Columbia (Canada) to visit our cousins Carrie and Jeff. Carrie came to visit in January and ever since Sophia has called our guest bedroom "Carrie's room" and the guest towels "Carrie's towels" sometimes protesting when others used them. I intended that Sophia and I would go to visit her earlier in the years, but minor things like surgery got in the way.

Since I wasn't quite brave enough to drive up there with just Sophia we took the train to Seattle and then had to take a bus to Canada. Sophia really liked the train and seemed to like the bus more than a car, but not by a whole lot. On both, though, I could do more to keep her entertained than I could have in a car, and I got to see the scenery too.

Carrie is one of those people for me who I can not see in quite a while and it feels like no time has actually passed, so although it's been several months, and had been years before that, we just picked things up where we left off. She was great at finding things for us to do, and Sophia enjoyed all the extra attention. We went to parks almost every day, a pumpkin patch, swimming and to an indoor play time at the local community center. Since it's Canada, they actually put money into things like parks and community centers so those facilities were quite a cut above what we'd find here. The swimming pool was fantastic because it was only about 2.5 feet at the shallow end and only about 4 feet deep at the deep end, so with a flotation belt on, Sophia was able to move around on her own. She really enjoyed that. When traveling with a two-year-old you don't have take her to major tourist sites; she's perfectly happy with going to a park every day.

The one major thing we did was go to a pumpkin patch. It was Sophia's 3rd of the year. This one was quite impressive. They had live music with a dancing pumpkin and corn, and large hay rides which had musicians/singers on them. Sophia was a bit intimidated by the large dancing vegetables, but seemed to love the rest of it.

Sophia really loved the room she stayed in. Carrie introduced it to her as a "princess room" and from there Sophia was hooked. It also had a door in the closet into the next room, and Sophia could entertain herself for quite a while running through the door and around. There were also 2 sets of stairs and she wanted to pick which one we used each time.

Jeff works long hours so we didn't see too much of him. Sophia did find him hysterical and would giggle every time she looked at him. Of course, he may have been making funny faces, I'm not sure. We didn't get a picture of me the entire week, which ok with me since Sophia is cuter than I am.

At the train station in Seattle, a man waiting for our train felt the need to display his religious opinion. Different from most people like this, he actually didn't try to talk to anybody about it, so that was ok with me.

Pumpkin Patch

I'm not doing such a good job of updating the blog anymore. Complaints are coming from various family members, but I guess I'm not finding this as fun as I once did.

2 weeks ago my father spent the weekend with us and we took our annual trip to the pumpkin patch. We couldn't have asked for better weather; it was high 60's and bright and sunny - not exactly typical Oregon weather in October. We had lots of fun and took many pictures. One of the pictures we took in front of the llama pen and one very pushy llama posed with us. Later, when feeding the animals, the same llama tried to get all the food. Sophia was supposed to feed the animals, but she chickened out so I got to.

Her favorite part was the big hay slide but she also liked riding the hay wagon and the mazes. We let her lead us through the mazes which wasn't them most efficient way of getting through them, but she enjoyed it.

Beach Week 2008

We are back from spending a week at my parent's beach house with almost the entire family. Both sets of Grandparents were there, along with Barry, Jessica & Lindsey, and Meghan and Patrick. Only Aunts Amy & Karen couldn't make it and they were missed.

Sophia had a fantastic time and enjoyed all the attention, especially after Lindsey and her parents left on Monday when Sophia was the only one to get attention. Sophia also enjoyed spending time with Lindsey. She got to help feed Lindsey a few times. Sophia loves to sing, and sometimes it was quite obvious that Lindsey was trying to sing along. Sophia spent quite a bit of time on the beach, and even went out into the water with a few brave and hearty adults.

We took a short walk in Oswald West State park, which is one of my favorite places on the coast. The picture on the right was taken 2 years ago on the same bridge as the picture on the left. How Sophia and I (but mostly Sophia) have changed in 2 years!

My father fixed his traditional shrimp boil which was enjoyed by all, except the vegetarians and shrimp-allergic among us. Dad cooked it downstairs and outside on the patio but we wanted to eat upstairs. He and Earl arranged to haul it up by a rope. It worked quite well. You can see pictures on Barry & Jessica's blog.

We visited the tide pools and Sophia enjoyed it, but we didn't find any starfish and I think she would have understood better what we were looking for if we'd found a creature she already knew. We found a clam, some tiny crabs, and lots of snails. But Sophia was mostly happy climbing around on the rocks.

Saturday was the first Nebraska Huskers game of the season, so many of the family members were decked out in their red finery. Grandma got Sophia a "go Huskers," as Sophia calls them, dress and she loved it. Sophia would wear dresses nearly all the time if we'd let her. She skins her knees enough that we have to give them a break and put her in pants sometimes.

Now we're back at our fairly boring house. Sophia was quite grumpy today. I think she missed all the attention from everybody. She's also less worn out at bed and naptime since she's not running around all day on the beach and chasing aunts and uncles. Compared to all that fun, we're pretty boring. But it's nice to be home. A week is a long time to be gone and our cat had some nasty things to say to us when we got home!