Judah Update

Judah loves playing in the car. After he gets out of his seat he wants to play for awhile all over the car. So we have to budget some time for this. It actually works out quite nicely if I have to unload a lot of groceries or stuff from the car. Yesterday we weeded part of the garden adn found some left over carrots. So we dug them out and brought them inside to eat. Tonight I made a carrot soup using the smoked chicken broth I had made and froze, it was amazing. We also had homemade artesian bread, the fact that that is just mentioned in passing shows how awesome the soup was. Judah told me “good soup, mommy”. Judah had his bath and was running around naked after. I warned him sternly to come back to the potty if he had to go peepee (after learning the hard way that he just will pee on the floor). So he ran right back when he had to go and sure enough went right on the potty. Jamie has been sending video updates each morning and Judah loves to get a video from Daddy, he thinks it’s like a video chat and responds back to his Dad. He just started watching Veggie Tales and tonight wnated to watch “Bob”, I think he knows the characters from reading the books. Or maybe because he’s red, like Elmo. All things red are Elmo. On Monday I heard him count to three for the first time. We were listening to his music on the way to Stephanie’s, and they sang “here come the one, two, threes!” and Judah repeated it. He always had gotten stuck on two, repeating one, two, one, two. Yesterday he also said Charlie and Kaci for the first time in my hearing. When they had to go home for nap he cried very sadly and said, “my friends, my friends”. Good thing they came back over for bath, dinner, and playing.

Cleaning - The Oven

OK, so I've been trying to find a way to really get my oven clean for several months now. I tried a few things including the baking soda paste and elbow grease. Last night I tried something I saw on Pinterest, I know Pinterest, and it actually worked! I was amazed. I totally laughed while doing it too, at the fact it was actually working. I'm super bummed I didn't get a before picture in all it's hideous glory. I got a pic mid-way to try to show what the WHOLE glass area looked like before. The second pic is my clean oven door, really, that is my oven door. The magic tool in this cleaning experiment? The razor for scraping, it did the trick where rags and scouring pads wouldn't. Here's the link to how to do it. 
-Michelle

Snow Camping Adventure!

Here's some fun pics from our first snow camping adventure.

So, I had been wanting to go skiing all winter and I thought I wasn’t going to get a chance when it was already the end of March but I was wrong! We ski really late in Washington it turns out. Our friend, Chet, is a ski instructor up at Snoqualmie Pass and mentioned he was going to take his kids up the first weekend in April if the weather/snow cooperated. Hearing this we hatched a crazy last minute plan to take the trailer up and give it a go on the winter camping, plus show Judah real snow and maybe let me ski. It was a bit back and forth all week on whether to go, since the weather was more rain than snow. 

Finally, Friday morning we pulled the trigger on going. The benefit of going so late in the season was that we didn’t have to worry about crowds and getting a spot with the trailer, and parking. This was somethign that was concerning when we looked at Steven’s Pass and where they park trailers (up a switch back hill, parked within feet of each other, and requiring a turn), plus it fills up very fast. In fact, there was no one there when we arrived, we got the pick of the lot! So we put it right by the on/off ramp into the parking lot, over looking the slopes from our kitchen window. 

At this point it was pretty much just raining and we got pretty soaked in our venturing outside to unhook everything and play in the snow. So we started learning quick about how to deal with wet and cold while trailer camping. We had a dedicated door blanket for boots and gear. Wet stuff was taken off and hung on hangers in the shower to dry. It was definitely smart to have multiples, especially of gloves. I was really happy that I found some great kid gloves for Judah at the REI clearance rack, they held up really well to puddle splashing with the hands. Judah got to watch his very first ever full length feature film, Shrek, on the computer at the table. We made tacos for dinner and settled in for the night not expecting snow or skiing in the morning because it was still raining pretty steadily. 

The next morning we woke up and had breakfast adn played outside. The rain had started to turn to snow! By the time the Kaufman’s arrived it was snowing nicely. We all bundled up to go skiing while Jamie and Judah watched from the warmth of the trailer. The conditions were pretty hard, lots of wet snow that was hard to turn in and started catching your skiis as you got lower down and it was slushy. It was also super wet, definitely a multiple hat and glove day. I ended up hanging my absolutely drenched coat in the car to dry over the weathertec mats. Odessa was done after one long run and a few turns on the lower slopes on the magic carpet, so we skied right up to the trailer and she joined the boys for hot cocoa and movies. Chet, Dexter, and I did a few more runs before lunch. We had lunch and warmed up in the trailer while the kids watched movies. 

I took Judah’s tent out of his bunk and they enjoyed playing in there for awhile. I headed back out for a few more runs after lunch, while Kaufman’s decided to call it a day and Judah headed down for a nap. Judah had a hard time falling asleep, but ended up sleeping until about 5 when we went out to play a bit more. He wanted to run with the kids the next trailer over, but they were bigger and too fast to keep up with. We had a yummy dinner of mac and cheese and green beans and then Judah headed to bed. 

We woke the next morning to snow...lots and lots of it. About 6 inches. Oh, and avalanche cannons, lots of them, thankfully they started after 8:00. At this point, having not driven our Suburban in the snow really at all, much less towing a trailer, Jamie started to get a bit worried about making it out of the parking lot. We had a quick breakfast and then started packing things up. Just as people were starting to get there to enjoy the snow we got the truck all hitched up and headed out...with no problems at all. Our Suburban did great! Turns out the bigger concern is not getting blocked in by all the arriving skiers. We got right out onto interstate and less than 2 miles down the road the snow was all gone. So we didn’t get stuck, but had we gone the next weekend, they ended up with tons of snow, closing the pass, several avalanches, and a few people lost their lives. So always good to be prepared to stay a few days, extra food, clothes, and maybe some survival gear in the car?