Morning at the Rink

Mike and Thomas headed over to the rink for some skating.  Thomas has been happily skating around the house in his socks and calling himself a hockey player.  So we have to get this guy on the ice and keep him caught up to all those little guys back in Minnesota that can skate in their back yards daily, ha!  Elin and I met up with the guys after they had been there for about 45 minutes. Thomas was tired and ready to get off the ice, but he showed me skating with Daddy, skated with me once and then loved running around on the floor.  I can’t believe how much he has changed last year to this year.  Guess the key is practice and more ice time!

Skating with Daddy

Mommy helping with skating behind the cone

Off the ice he is pretty confident

Discovery Park Hike

We met up with a couple friends and their little ones for a little Saturday morning “in the city” hiking.   Thomas, Dahlia and Lydia all enjoyed running, playing with the sand, finding sticks and adventuring outdoors.  Elin, Reier and Eyelet all happily rode along and eventually all three of the littlest ones slept.

After a couple hours it was time to head home and everyone at our house took a long nap!  It was a great way to start the day!

Valentine Projects

I saw an idea for making fall leaves out of coffee filters on Pinterest.  I had the leaves all cut out and never got around to making them this fall.  Fast forward a few months and as I was digging in the art closet they gave me a new idea for doing the same thing with hearts.  They are so easy, first color with markers, then put water on them and wait for them to dry.  Thomas loved dropping the water on them after they were colored.  They are also a great decoration for our dining room window.  Thomas and I took advantage of one of Elin’s morning naps and decided to paint Valentine’s Day pictures.  I cut out some heart shaped sponges and thought we could make cute little homemade cards, quickly Thomas changed the game into his typical smear fest of painting.  So I revamped the idea, I quickly stamped on the paper and he put his hand prints on. Thankfully Elin stayed asleep the whole time he was creating and I was cleaning up.  He had a great time and we have a stack of Valentines that I need to get in the mail!

Seattle it is…

and Spring is just around the corner.  The tulips, daffodils and hyacinths are coming up.  The lettuce, peas, spinach and onions are planted. Our seeds have been started and we get to keep our little hearts here for awhile longer.  Whew! 

It is a little bittersweet too as we love and miss everyone in our other is it time to get back to Minnesota or Colorado? friends and family.  In time we still hope to get back but for now life has a different plan for us and we are ready for our new adventure. 

Elin is 9 Months

Elin, our lil miss, punky, is quickly growing up! She no long seems to fit the "Baby E" title, in fact Thomas has started to ask for a new baby. *I swear there has been no coaching on this*
Back to Lil Miss, she continues to be smiley as ever with a whole face kind of grin. Her eyes squint, her nose wrinkles up and she grins as big as she can. Then she tucks her face away and the whole process repeats. She is a heart stealer for sure, but what kind of non partial judge am I?!  Her teeth are cute and funny looking all at the same time, I mean who expects to see a baby with a giant mouth o’ teeth.  As often as we are complimented on her smile, we hear look at all those teeth!  She added her 8th pearly white this month!
She is quite active these days and is finding out her strength. She is crawling everywhere, climbing up onto her chair and climbing the stairs.  She also loves to pull herself up to stand on everything. She will quickly cruise around waist high furniture and is trying to walk or more like kneeling walk behind her push toys. This gives her the ability to explore and keep up with her brother.
She is quite the chatter box and boy oh boy does the girl have a high pitch scream. When she is mad or wanting something her scream will stop you, quickly, darn it is loud. We are trying our darndest to eliminate this as a mode of communication-our ear drums and sanity depend on it!
She is also using a few words to communicate with her favorite word being Dada! Let's just say Mike isn't opposed and she loves getting his attention with her frequent Dada's. Her next favorite words are "bup" for up and "mama" for mama, and “mm” for milk.  She also is starting to say “wow,” “uh oh,” “tttt” (thomas/cat) and “bruh” for brother, independently.  She will also imitate a few other early words like "all done, more bye, hi, down, Thomas and uh oh and puppa." Again, there I go in my speechy talk :-)  Seriously, this girl talks and rarely stops, I wonder where she gets it from!?
She is understanding many things too, learning "no, come here, where is ----?, dinner time, and bath time." It is so much fun watching her language develop and seeing her face light up as she try's to say new things.  She loves playing peek a boo, singing and dancing.  As always, she loves Thomas and just cant get enough of him. 
She had a first round with a stomach bug this month that had her throwing up a few times and nasty diarrhea. We had her in to the doctor 2x to check for ear infections and make sure she wasn't dehydrated. Both times all was well she just needed time to fight through the virus. It was a 2 week, off and on, period of no fun and a lot of baths and laundry. Thankfully we were able to avoid the bad diaper rash that typically accompanies the icky poo. Everyone was better for a week and now again  the kiddos have stuffy goopy noses. Bummer for the cold and flu season.
When she wasn't sick she was having a blast eating all her normal foods with the addition of black and pinto beans, rice, yogurt and strawberries. She has also started to try more finger foods and loves putting smaller pieces of banana, toast, peas, beans and rice into her mouth independently. I will be honest she is at the point where she has started to try most things we are eating. She is a pretty big fan of being "big" and just like us. She has also improved in her drinking out of a straw and open cup.
Elin continues to sleep well and is sleeping longer stretches in bed. She has just started to fiddle around with her schedule that was pretty consistent with an AM and PM nap and I'm waiting to see if it is her changing or her sick/teething. Regardless she is getting about 4 hours in a day of naps and then sleeping 11-12 hours at night, waking during the night to eat and then going back to bed. Still with a random party at 2,3,4 or 5 AM.  These parties really seem to happen as she is cutting teeth.
At her doctor appointment the doctor was please with her development. She was especially impressed with her movement and speech skills.
Her weight was 18 lbs (45%tile) and height was 28.25 inches (55%tile). The doctor commented that she was wanting her to get more calories as she had dropped a little in her percentiles.  After we discussed that Thomas had done the same thing, she was just sick and she is doing a great job eating and nursing she wasn’t as concerned, Mike and I weren't either.  O.k. I was stressing for a bit, but then pulled it together.  So hard to hear that though, it honestly made me feel like I was failing as a mom to provide her with adequate nutrition.  Glad that Mike was able to say look at Thomas and they said the same thing.  I wish I had the kids metabolism and energy…plus lucky her for getting to have extra butter and fats added into things

Over all she is an absolute delight to have around.  She is pretty smitten with life and we couldn’t love her any more.  Already feels like her big 1st birthday is creeping around the corner!

Hanging with Dahlia

The past couple weeks, Thomas and his friend Dahlia have been getting to see a lot of one another. We have had several meet ups at gymnastics, the aquarium and swimming.  I am not talented enough to get pictures at the pool, but I am happy to report that there hasn’t been any disasters as the 3 of us have attempted to swim without Daddy’s helpful hands around.  

Sometimes they are the best of friends, other times they are working on telling each other to respect their space.  It is fun to see them work out their differences and enjoy playing together.  

Elin loves staring, talking to, and climbing all over Dahlia’s little brother Reier, who is 6 months old.  She thinks he is cool as ever and he is always happy to give her a great big smile back. 

Brewin some beer

One of Mike’s hobbies is brewing beer.  It is a long, stinky process but he likes it so what the heck, right?! 

So he had a buddy over and the guys went outside to start the process.  Thomas happily helped until it got cold and dark.  Then they moved things inside, it was quite interesting watching the guys brew beer in our less than appropriate house.
We had the beer cooling in our bathtub, the kids helping to stir and a crabby me trying to get our taxes finished. Or maybe it was that I was getting sick-again-who knows?  After dinner and the beer left the tub, I gave the kiddos their baths and then got them to sleep.
Thomas got to hang out with Mike and Max a little bit longer in the basement and all was well.
Now the beer sits for awhile and ferments. Stay tuned!

Mickey and Meg….

Mike’s parents puppies, sisters,  Mickey and Meg, went to Heaven together today.  Rest in peace puppies, we hope the hunting in Heaven is good!

Olympic Peninsula Getaway

The Laschen house has been under the weather and some stress over the last couple weeks; so we decided to take a quick mental health vacation and head over to explore the Olympic Peninsula.  Map courtesy of funmapsusa.netBoth Mike and I had asked around about places to see and things to do and we also scoured the Internet.  We knew where we would start and we just thought we would wing it and see what happened.  We were both so glad we did.  Traveling with 2 little ones you never know what the trip is going to be like!

So we started off about 10 and headed to the ferry.  The kiddos love riding on the ferries and watching the birds, boats and water as we traveled to the OP side.  Once we got back into the car seats, Elin took a nap and Thomas happily watched his Tarzan movie.  Mike and I decided we would go to Port Angeles to start our trek.  Port Angeles was about 1/2 way to the Washington coast and on the North side of the Olympic Peninsula.  Once we arrived we grabbed a bite to eat at a dive diner that was apparently "the place to go" in town. It was packed, completely opposite of the first place we entered and found empty. After some good ol fried food we headed to do our first hike to see the Elwha Dam that had just recently been removed.
If your a friend of fish this project will interest you. It has been a major movement in the Pacific Northwest to get the power plant removed and to try to restore the natural Chinook salmon (and other fish) that inhabit the river. The before pictures and after view was breathtaking. The river is slowly rebounding and I can only hope that one day will be close to normal.  There is a 2 year fishing ban in place to also help the habitat return to normal.
After our hike it was nap time and we decided that we needed to make a plan.  Continue towards the coast or head back towards the Sound. We decided to head towards the sound and after a little research on the ol iPhone we had a place to stay. Seriously, how did people travel years ago without their iPhone?
We arrived at the Inn on Port Ludlow and were presently surprised.  Up until this point in the trip, the epic adventure had been anything but.  The Inn turned that all around.  It is the “off season” so we were among a handful of guests.  There was a private beach in the bay and the tide was out.  We checked in, brought our stuff to the room and headed out to play.   Stella ran her heart out, dug and checked out the sea life along with Thomas and Elin.  It is an added adventure bringing Stella with, but it is so worth it. 

As we were playing on the beach we noticed an eagle flying over the bay.  A closer look and we saw it was a bald eagle with a fish in his talons.  Pretty amazing, and I didn’t have any other camera lenses with.  Sooo, I could only zoom up a little bit and boy was I disappointed.   We watched the eagle for a few minutes and then another eagle came to check things out.  It was either an immature bald eagle or a golden eagle (or something along those lines). We were also able to go find baby dungeness crab, sea anemones, shells, mussels, and oysters.  Playing on the beach was hands down the best part of the trip. 

As the sun started going down we wrapped things up and headed in for dinner.  Conveniently there was a cozy restaurant in the inn and we ate before heading up to get the kids cleaned up and ready for bed.   When the kids went to bed Mike and were able to have a little down time.  What did we do, we drank wine and watched Pit Boss on TLC.  Not going to lie we had a few good chuckles and before long we were both crawling into bed to snuggle our littles.  Sunday morning we were up and heading back to the restaurant to cash in on our 2 free breakfasts, this is why I love the offseason.  We tried to get a family photo and we did partially succeed. We also had a few great outtakes! My favorite photo of the whole mini vacation is the kiddos and Stella on Saturday night.  I can’t wait to get it into a frame to remember this great getaway!

SIOUX

Right in the heart of Ballard is a pizza place called Zayda Buddy’s.  Right when you walk it you feel like your back in Minnesota.
They serve cheese curds, tater tot hot dish, green bean casserole and patunkin' (fries with gravy and cheese).
Better yet they have cold beer and root beer flowin' WHILE the University of Minnesota played the Sioux! Yay for hockey on at a local bar!
We got the kids in their gear, er wait Thomas didn't want to wear his, and we headed to the bar.
We sat across from some other Sioux fans who aged Mike and I a bit when they said they were 2010 and 2011 graduates. Or maybe it was the two kids in tow, either way we aren't spring chickens any longer.
When the kiddos we at full cooperation capacity we pulled the plug and headed home for bath time. Rewind 5 years and we'd have been closing down the bars drinking away a Sioux loss.  Instead it was off to do bath time and bed time. To be honest bath time was so much more pleasant and didn't linger the next morning with a disastrous hangover.