Crafty Ellie!

Ellie has been taking an art class over the summer. She loves to make things - anything. She doesn't particularly mind which medium she uses, so long as she is making something. She just loves to create. So art class was an easy win for her!

She has loved art class. It conflicts with our choir schedule during the year so we can't do it year round but I might try and sneak a few more in there once school starts. I've watched her literally skip into the studio, she's so excited to go.

Here are some of the things Ellie has come home with this summer - minus a couple of projects which have already been given away to their intended recipients, because if there's anything Ellie loves more than making things, it's giving away her handmade things to people she cares about.

Watercolour on paper

Acrylics on canvas

Paper cut outs on wood

Some weirdy plastic paint I don't know the name of

Paper collage

Last year when we came home from England, she had decided that hedgehogs were her new favourite animal and she asked if we could make a hedgehog pillow. I said yes and promptly did nothing about it. One day I gave her access to my pinterest account  - which, in hindsight, may have been a big mistake. Within hours she had found a tutorial online on how to make a hedgehog pillow, and so this week we finally got around to making it.

She is so proud of Hedgie! He does look pretty awesome. I did some of the sewing on the tighter curves, but she hand-drew every pattern piece on that thing, and did most of the sewing!

Funnily enough, the week that we made Hedgie, it was hedgehog day at art class too!

When Adam's away...

Adam is away from home this week. It was youth conference last Thursday to Saturday, then he was home for a day, and then off to scout camp at 4:30 last Monday morning. They were catching the 6am ferry to Catalina, hence the early start, which I hope I never have to do again! It has been a long, long time since I saw 4am....

The house feels a bit empty without him! Nicholas is loving it, he is playing uninterrupted with all of Adam's legos which he doesn't normally get to touch. Adam also has a remote control helicopter which has seen quite a bit of use this week. I hope that Nicholas is looking forward to having Adam back, but I suspect not, because all the good toys will be on lock down again! 

Midway through the week I got an unexpected bonus - pictures of Adam obviously having a high old time at Camp Emerald Bay. I don't think he's missing us one tiny little bit!

Camping, waterfalls and mountains

After a couple of days of camping we drove over to see King's Canyon. Although our campsite was officially in King's Canyon National Park, it's not actually attached to the rest of the park (like Kolob and Zion) and so we decided we'd better go see the place that we were allegedly staying in! I do not like mountain roads and so I was very, very nervous on the drive over, because they were some of the windiest, scariest, steepest mountain roads I've ever been on!

The kind of view guaranteed to give me the heebie jeebies. This was mild. There are no more pictures of mountains because I was white knuckling it the whole way!

The scenery was just so impressive - craggy mountains all around us. At one point we had been descending for a while, and we were on a bend in the road and there were two massive peaks on either side of us and for a few brief seconds it just felt overwhelming - they were too big and we were so small and insignificant in our tiny little car. And this is why we go out to nature, for the change in perspective. I'm not so sure I want to experience that particular change in perspective too many times, though. It was a little overwhelming!

After about an hour of crazy mountain driving we were at a lower altitude and the road followed the course of the King's River. It was so pretty! The water was rushing over big rocks and boulders in the river bed and it was just lovely to watch.

When we got to King's Canyon we headed to Roaring Falls which was a forty foot waterfall. And even in a historic drought there was plenty of water coming down off that rock! It was quite a sight!

After Roaring Falls we had planned to go walk around Zumwalt Meadow, a little further up the canyon... so we got to the car park and unloaded everyone and set out on the trail. It started to cloud over really quickly and while we were still on the trail on this side of the river a couple of drops of rain fell, and pretty soon it was raining properly! We had told the kids we would let them play in the river, and so we ended up playing in the river in the rain - but nobody seemed to mind! 

We could see the meadow from the river and it looked lush - big tall green grass - so I really wanted to explore it and we set off on the trail again. It was only a short distance away but just as we got to the meadow we heard thunder and saw lightning and the rain really started to come down. After a few minutes it was properly chucking it down! So we went about twenty feet into the meadow to say we'd been (even though I am a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see more of it) and then we rushed back to the car.

 By the time we got back to the car park it was a torrential downpour and everyone was soaked! I was a little worried about driving back over the mountain on wet slippy roads - but by the time we were out of the canyon (only about five miles) it was totally dry and looked like there hadn't been a cloud in the sky in weeks.Which was fortunate for my mental health!

The following day we packed up - it is amazing to me how long it takes to properly pack up a campsite! - and got on the road, only to sit in an hours long traffic jam. Thank goodness for car movies. A five hour drive turned into an eight hour drive but nobody complained. They are such good travellers!

Vacation Dad rounded out the week by taking us all to see the mummies exhibition at the Bowers Museum. It was fascinating - and Jeff has found a museum companion. Ellie stayed with him the whole time, read every word, and was fascinated by the whole thing. Adam and the littles and I were done almost an hour before they were, and we didn't rush. And with that, Vacation Dad went back to work, and we are back to normal. We had a lot of fun in Vacation Dad's week!

Camping, trees and meteors

Day 2 of Vacation Dad's reign started with frantic packing for camping! We were a little behind as there was a long power cut on Sunday night so a lot of food prep did not get done. But we hustled and were out of the door only a couple of hours behind schedule! We were headed to King's Canyon National Park - which is right next door to Sequoia National Park. Our friends had already booked to go to Sequoia but we were able to align our schedules and bookings so that we could all go together - way more fun for the kids!

The campsite was interesting. I liked it - big rocks dotted about a pine forest. It was really pretty! Jeff wasn't too impressed - mostly because the only space big enough for our giant tent was on a slope. That made life a little interesting! We spent the first night slowly sliding off the air mattress, and having to periodically shimmy back up to the top. We switched positions with the kids the next night... but then the same thing was happening to them! I woke up in the middle of the night one night and did the check down the line of sleeping heads - kid, kid, empty mattress, kid....  it's always Kate. Every time we go camping we have to have a conversation with Kate about how she's not allowed out of the tent at night without a parent (there have been a couple of early morning escape attempts). Before full blown panic set in I found her - she had slid down off her mattress and was huddled under Nicholas' feet on his mattress!

On our first day there we set off to find sequoias. Our campsite was literally across the road from Grant's Grove which has the third biggest tree in the world (by mass, not the tallest). So we went off to see it! It is hard to describe just how immense these trees are. The pictures don't do them justice at all. They are just massive.

After Grant's Grove we decided to hike to Big Stump - one of the leaflets the park service hand out when you arrive showed a historical picture of the Big Stump (a logged sequoia) with a ladder up the side to get to the top, and so foolishly we were looking for that particular feature on the trail. We never found it! We did find several big stumps - pretty enormous stumps they were too! The kids had a great time climbing all over them.

But we were not convinced that these were the stumps we were looking for so we kept on... I 'm so glad we did, because further down the trail we found the most gorgeous little open meadow. It was so pretty, with long grasses and wild flowers everywhere. It was the site of a logging mill from the 1890s, and there were five or six big stumps in the meadow, so we called it good and headed back to camp for lunch.

There was evidence of the drought everywhere - trees are dying all over the forest. It was sad to see.

 

On the way we stopped to see how many people it would take to stretch around a living sequoia - this is one of my favourite pictures of our trip. They weren't even half way around the tree!!

The afternoon found us down at the other end of Sequoia National Park to see the biggest tree in the world, the General Sherman tree. It was an unbelievable size!
 

We're tiny!!

There were many more sequoias down at this end of the park. Grant's Grove where we started out in the morning is an isolated little grove of seqouias but down at this end of the park they were dotted about all over the landscape, so despite the hour's drive on windy mountain roads that it took to get there, I am glad we went.

The kids particularly enjoyed driving our car through the Tunnel Log - not something you do every day!

Camping is a lot of hard work... the campsite was so dry it was the dustiest and dirtiest we've ever been while camping!

Just look at those legs!

Usually by day 2 I'm wondering why we bother - and then we sit out around the campfire at night and watch the sky, and it is all worth it. We had an amazing view of the sky. It was so clear we could see the Milky Way. On our second night there, I had a whole crew of kids on a bathroom run, so we were down at the bottom of the hill. I was quite late, about 9:30 I think, and we had just left the bathroom and were starting to walk up the hill when someone in the campsite started yelling. You could hear it spread through the whole campsite - site by site people joined in and pretty soon the whole campsite was yelling and howling. One of the kids asked me what was going on and I said 'I don't know! Midnight yell?' and then Adam said 'Look at that!' and just took off running. I looked up to see a giant fireball screaming across the sky. It was big enough that we could see it flaming, and it had ten or twelve little smoke trails behind it... clearly smaller pieces that had broken off whatever it was. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen! The whole campsite yelled and screamed until it passed over, which took a long time. It looked like every disaster movie you've ever seen and I honestly thought that when it landed it was going to wipe out Seattle or something.... I've never seen anything like it in my life and probably never will again. While I thought it was a meteor it was amazing but apparently it was Chinese space junk burning up on re-entry.... less impressive but still quite a sight. And the Delta Aquarid meteor shower the next night was fun to watch too!

Legoland

This was Jeff's week off work, and he was determined - DETERMINED - to have fun. So even though I thought it was bonkers to go to Legoland the day before a camping trip, that's what we did! I hadn't told the kids before hand (never tell them anything until it's 100% firm!) and so Legoland was a surprise. We had such a good day and did things we don't normally do - bought park food and souvenirs. It was pretty clear to the kids that normal Dad was gone and vacation Dad was in charge. Adam even leaned over and whispered in my ear at one point 'Vacation Dad is fun! How long can we keep him?'

We have a system at theme parks. Jeff and Ellie are speed demons and will ride anything. Adam and I hate all speedy things and won't. So we split up into two mutually satisfied little groups and get things done!

Nicholas thinks he likes rides. He likes rides right up to the point where he gets on them, and then he quickly realizes that he has made a huge mistake. Then he sits there quivering and terrified until he can get off... he did this at Legoland and as the ride ended Jeff asked him if the ride was fun and he said 'It was AWFUL!'

Despite that minor hiccup (happened a couple of times) we had a great day at Legoland. It was perfect for the little two, and Ellie is happy whenever she can get on a couple of big rides, and Adam is not too cool yet to have fun there either. So it worked for everyone!