April's Adventure

This post is a few months late, but I found the pictures on the camera. We tried to drive up to Mount St. Helens the beginning of April, but the roads were closed because of the snow, so we just drove around and found a few other things to do. Click on the picture to make it bigger

Top-left to Bottom-right:  Hyrum with a snowball, Josi throwing snowball at Hyrum, 3 Elk in the trees (we saw a lot that day),
The Dude walking down the dock, Ben trying to throw Lysha in the lake, Josi wading in the lake shoes and all (good thing she rolled up her pant-leg), the view on the drive, another view, Hyrum throwing a snowball at Ben, Josi throwing a snowball at Jayme, Ben chasing Lysha with snow, a great Lysha face and kids playing in the snow.

This Week's Adventure

Yesterday we tagged along with Ben on his sales calls in Olympia. It was a long day and the kids were tired of being in the car and I was pretty carsick most of the time playing navigator and personal assistant.
On the way home there was a park Ben had seen during a previous day of sales calls that he asked if we wanted to stop at. We agreed and this is where we stopped.

Tumwater Falls

There is a walking path all the way around it that comes from a grassy park area to the top of the falls on the right (top pic), around across the front (middle pic), and across the bridge to the top of the falls on the left(see bridge in bottom pic). This walking path has grates in it that have excess water running under them from the falls. Josi and Hyrum were like a couple of dogs that had just got out of their kennel or off of the lease. They were running everywhere. Hyrum ran out onto one of these grates and when he realized there was water gushing beneath his feet he freaked out, like he was going to fall through. He quickly but cautiously worked his way to solid cement and ran off. Every so often he would forget himself and run onto one of the grates and freak out again. It was pretty funny.

Next we ventured over to the grassy park area. Right in the middle was this sand ocean with two cement and pipe boats.

Walking the Plank

Captain Hyrum

Sand Angels

Swimming

-complete with breath holding and "coming to the surface" for air

Of course Ben takes out the laptop and gets back to work, ha ha.

If was only for a few minutes though; he was out playing on the boats with the kids.

*Josi is NOT mooning the camera, if you enlarge the picture you can see the stripes of her pants)

Out and About

We didn't bring much with us to our new place and the kids and I were getting a little bit of cabin fever the first day. We decided to go out and explore the neighborhood. Our place is right at the front of the neighborhood, so we headed deeper in. The street we live on has "no outlet" and at the end we discovered this park. It has a couple of baseball fields and a lot of open area with a gravel path running through it.

The kids chased a squirrel up a tree.

It sloped up a few feet to a big black plastic covered barrier running along one edge of the parkwith a narrower paved trail right next to it. Standing on the gravel trail it looked like it was just a big wooded gully that is so common in the northwest. So, we mainly stuck to the gravel path. After a few minutes of walking, chasing squirrels and picking up rocks and sticks we noticed a space in the barrier above us, so we decided to check it out. We found a staircase and pathway leading down to the river which had been running along the barrier the whole time!

 At the end of the path was this little beach.

It is not sandy, it's just mud, but the kids still had a great time drawing in the mud with sticks.

(Note to Nana: whenever we get a chance to go to the beach, Josi wants to take watermelon. She tells me everytime she thinks about watermelon or the beach)

Here is a shot of the staircase when we headed back up. It was so fun, like a secret little path. You feel like you are in the middle of the wilderness until you get back to the top of the stairs. I decided the path along the river would be perfect for running and a few days later I went running and discovered that there are several of these little beaches along the river. Looks like it would be a good place for tubing.

On the walk home the kids dragged sticks and hands along the fences.