Can't stop! Having too much fun! (Friday)

 Whew Friday was busy! We piled everyone into the car first thing for the babies' 9 month check up, then took everyone to an Indian buffet restaurant.

 Theo and Lily actually really loved the food!

Avy and Ellie, less so. But naan and rice pudding are always favorites!

After lunch we bought groceries from Cash ' N ' Carry, then took the girls to ballet class!

This started off a bit slow (I was doing more dancing than they were, trying to get them comfortable) but they quickly warmed up when the teacher brought out ribbons to dance with!

The teacher had each kid gallop to one side of the room and back (the others sat against the wall waiting their turn). When it was Ellie's turn she eagerly scrambled up and told the teacher, "I'm the GALLOPER in our family!" Heh.

Meanwhile Dave had been entertaining the babies outside in the community center. Lily apparently climbed up and down the stairs a bunch, and ended up climbing all three flights when we left. She napped real well ;)

Back at home, the babies went down for a nap while Momma, Daddy, Avy, and Ellie did some yardwork. The babies woke up and were understandably disgruntled at being left out of the fun.

Outside, the girls were working hard! They jumped in no complaints, and I left them like this for almost an hour while I fed babies and made dinner for everyone.

Came out to announce dinner and found Dave helping the girls finish up.

They got it all!

They even tamped down the branches!

I love that little character.

After dinner we had a little bit of time for dress up - definitely Avy's new favorite game!

 

Wonderful day, all the kids did great. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Having Daddy home is fun (Thursday)

Daddy doesn't like to sit around at home and with the gorgeous weather we've been having I can hardly blame him. So, after some rough-housing we piled everyone into the trailers with some snacks and set off on a 16 mile bike trip.

We drove to Marymoor Park in Redmond then used a fabulous bike trail they had there to bike the 8 miles up to Woodenville. We then pulled over to a park that was on the bike trail and let the kids run around for a while.

Or snooze, or munch, your choice! Then we biked everyone back and drove home.

And did some dress-up!

Great idea Daddy!

RV Trip: B Roll

I should have been doing this along the way - uploading pictures from Dave's phone! Anyway, here's a quick blast through Dave's perspective of the trip.

Lily early in our trip, testing our stairs barrier (we later gave up on this and both babies learned to handle stairs):

Cute bug.

Eek, me! Getting ready for a hike up the dunes.

Kids burning off steam at one of the camp playgrounds.

Mom and Dad took a break, Theo and Lily are filling in.

Lily testing the deliciousness of playground mulch.

Taking it easy

After our long trip we decided to kick back, sleep in, take it easy...heh. hehhehheh. hahahahaha!

-sigh- I crack myself up. Nope, babies woke up before dawn and Dave decided he wanted to try attachment parenting so he brought them into bed to snuggle. Hah snuggle - those were the squirmiest, happiest, most awake babies I've wrestled in a while. We gave up on sleep ;)

After girls got up we returned the RV then piled the kids into the bike trailers and went to a new grocery store for some produce.

Avy's nifty new socks (thanks Nana!)

Ellie feeding Lily after our grocery run (Avy's doing the same for Theo in the other trailer).

After dropping off the food at home we reloaded the kids and biked over to our local park for a couple of hours. Daddy pushed the girls on the swings for a long time while I fed and tickled and photoed cute babies.

Then home again for dinner, book reading and bedtime! Weather's supposed to be lovely this week so we'll probably do it again a few times :)

Time for reflection: The things I have learned

Now that everything is unpacked and kids are rediscovering new/old toys, I took a moment to reflect back on our trip. Some of my takeaways:

• Bags are your friends! Take so many bags, you'll use them to sort laundry, separate socks/underwear, toys per kid while driving, snacks per kid while driving... so very many bags.
• Shoes come off at the door, just like at home. If not, you end up with babies with perpetually black stomachs/knees and shoe prints on your sheets (yep, we found those).
• Check diapers every hour, change them every two. This took us a couple days to find a rhythm, and in that time we ended up doing laundry in the morning and the evening for extra fun. By the end though we hadn't had an accident in a week.
• Don't check out too early, most RV camps have great playgrounds. Kids burn off steam beforehand and after and the drive is much calmer.
• Drive less! 3-4 hours seemed to be our longest successful days (we did one 7 hour day and that was rough). Also I now wish I'd planned for us to stay in some places for multiple nights - we would spend a decent chunk of our time putting up and taking down the beds when in Simi we just left them up and ate elsewhere. There were so many places we barely explored but deserved more.

My biggest takeaway though, now that we're home: My goodness we have a lot of stuff. After spending 3 weeks with 1 butchers knife and 1 paring knife, a dish/bowl/fork/spoon for everyone, 1 pot and 1 frying pan, and 1 cutting board, I look around the house and think "this is way too much". We got in the habit before leaving of using 1 knife for fruit, 1 knife for veggies, 1 knife for meat, etc. In the RV you just chopped everything up and wiped it down if necessary. 

We'll see how it goes, people have a habit of falling back into patterns, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did another minimizing pass here soon!

Day 21: Home again home again, jiggity jig

We're home! We had plans to visit Silver Falls on this last day, but after the sand dunes we did some online investigation and discovered they're not really stroller-accessible. We'll visit them in a few years. 

So, that last day was just driving home! Not too bad, just under 4 hours, but everyone was glad to be home. Our wonderful neighbors had mowed our lawn for us and taken great care of our fish (they even named him! He's now Ralph). Thank you Jeanie and Loran!

After unpacking the RV. It looks like the end of a yard sale...

Theo's not sure what to make of all this space, so he's sitting in a basket.

Bedtime at home! Everyone was exhausted; the girls crashed hard and slept 14 hours. The babies were more energetic:

Peekaboo!

It's nice to be home :)

Day 20: Sutherlin, OR to Jefferson, OR

We're on our way to the Oregon sand dunes! The girls loved the beach in California so much that we left the I-5 and drove to the coast. It was a little hairy, driving without cell reception (Google Maps doesn't save offline, we discovered), but the view was gorgeous. We drove alongside the Umpqua river which had an appealing flat-rock riverbed; we were very tempted to just pull over and explore! The beaches called us though.

Pulling into the dunes!

The entrance to the beach was a dune, straight up. Dave was a good sport and played mule - look at that front wheel clear air!

At the top. Dave: "I think there must be some erosion here." Me: "Why do you say that?" Dave: "Well, otherwise they made this sign only readable for people my height...."

At the top of the dune. It was gorgeous.

Beautiful waves, but also really cold. We stuck to the dry part of the beach.

The kids love building sand castles anyway.

Lily had learned back in California that sand is not delicious, and she remembered this time too. She still had a blast playing with it though. Gave her a makeshift bucket (shoe) since she kept wanting her sisters'.

Lily exploring. Dad's trying to call her back in...

Lovely beach. It was windy but not too cold.

Dave took Theo out to the water's edge.

Back we go to the car!

Here's where you really understand the steepness of that dune.

...and appreciate Dave (I tried to help; I went backwards).

On the other side of the dune was woody shrubbery, then forest. As we drove away we were driving through forest but there would be random spots where the forest would break and a sand dune would pour through. Very surreal.