Mummified Forest Creature

There was a forest behind a chain link fence next to the field that Arwen was playing soccer on.

It had a pad locked gate behind which a foot trail led off into the woods.  Noah tried to squeeze through a small gap between the gate and the fence but couldn't get his head through.  Larkin tried and couldn't make it through either until she realized that it widened slightly toward the ground.  She got through and took off saying, "Come on Noah."  I said he'd better go keep her safe and luckily he was able to squeeze through at the bottom as well or we might never have seen her again. It was a creepy forest.  Noah found some awesome treasures including this mummified forest creature.

First Day of School

School is here again and all the kids are excited.

Larkin is excited to start preschool and was asking about her uniform.  Poor little girl just misses the cutoff for this year.

Noah and Joshua are in the same class this year.  That will be so fun for them.  Noah is excited to show Joshua how fun Spanish School is.  We're hoping that between Noah's exuberance and Joshua's grumpiness, they'll keep each other balanced.  

Joshua came home and showed off a little Spanish after his first day.  He's doing great.  He told us he has crushes on three girls...cute girls equals a great school for Josh.  

Noah was pretty worried that the cute girl he had a crush on last year might have forgotten him  She didn't.  He was a happy camper.

Arwen, who was terrified to start a new school last year, was super excited to go back this year!  She has a great group of friends and a teacher she adores...and a crush.  Man, I need to watch out for all these Nielsen  kid and their crushes!

Hood To Coast 2012

Aaron ran Hood to Coast a couple of years ago and another similar type relay last year (Epic).  He has always come home saying how much fun he has running a ton after not sleeping at all :)  So this year when his running buddy got a H2C team, I told him I'd like to do it with him.

 Aaron's sister Meghan flew up from Cali to run in our van with us.  She is super fast and was so much fun to have run with us.

 Here is van 2 of our team called, "The Running Dead."  The 3 other boys are the brothers of Aaron's running buddy (Peter) and were so much fun to have in our van.  They kept us laughing for the two days we were stuck in a van with them.

 Here is Aaron after his first leg.  He had the hardest leg in our van and was the so fast.  He averaged 7min 29sec miles on his 3 legs (19.68 miles).  And he did all his super speedy running with a bad sinus cold.  I was so proud of him!  When Aaron decides to do something he always does his best and I love that about him.

 Meg was helping me stretch before my first leg.  I have to say that his was my least favorite.  It was in the upper 80's and I had 6.5 miles to run.  It was miserable.   I loved my 2nd leg at 5 in  the morning in the mist of a town called Mist. It was a beautiful 5 miles and felt great.  I was just tired by my last leg.

 I always struggle with blisters, but have found that duck tape helps me from getting them.  The problem was it was a lot hotter outside than I usually run in (I go at 5 am when it's cold!) and my tape slipped because I got sweaty and my feet suffered.  The picture above is from my first run, you should have seen my socks after my 2nd run.  They were so bloody.  Thank goodness for the first aid tent that cleaned my feet for me.

 I didn't eat too much before my run because I was so darn nervous, but really wish I had.  I was starving on my run and my pb&j and banana tasted so good after.

 Here is our whole team at Seaside at the finish.

 I'm glad I did H2C, but it was hard for me.  It was hard because I knew I had a team that I couldn't let down and I felt bad because I am not fast and felt like I was holding them back.  Running is such a test of mental strength for me and I found that going on no sleep and driving in a van trying to make sure we were at where we needed to be at the right time was so stressful for me.  I just wish I was faster and could stop listening to my head telling me that it was just too hard. But I did finish, so I guess that's something.

 It was a blast having Meghan here to run with us.  She is amazing and such an athlete.

 Yea!  He totally deserved his medal!  Which he promptly gave to Noah when we got home.

As for the awesome zombie tattoos, part of the fun of H2C is dressing the part of your team name.  We put these on to cross the finish line running like zombies.  It was great fun!  (We stopped to get fries and a shake on the way home and I couldn't figure out why the drive-thru lady was being so weird.  Then I got home and looked in the mirror and realized why!  Creepy!!)

If would have asked me right after if I would ever run H2C again, I'd tell you no.  But after thinking about it a few days later I'd like to try it again and beat my times and over come the mental aspect of it.

Saturday Afternoon

The weather had cooled down enough today to play out in the backyard.  I'm hoping it holds out for Hood to Coast this weekend.

Here's a picture of Joshua and his now "finished" tree house.

I love the colors he choose.  Brown of course had to be the main color.  The green is to match the leaves of the willow tree.  But most of all I love the door.

Lulu did a little swinging while the boy's played in the fire.

Noah and Joshua were rummaging around upstairs and eventually, after emptying all the drawers, ask for help finding black clothes.  Why?  They were playing spy.  Probably they were Tongan spies because they ended up using the shirts as lava-lava's.

I marinated a couple of pieces of chicken and then roasted them on a stick over the fire for lunch.  Only I told the kids it was a skinned rat.  (We like to watch "Man vs. Wild" and Bear Grylls is always doing crazy stuff like that.)  Arwen got home from a game party and I told her we roasted "rat" but then told her it was really chicken.  Joshua got really upset because he thought it really was a rat and chicken wasn't nearly as awesome.  Gross adventuresome kids!  

Oneonta Gorge - Sandy River

We went to Nike on Saturday to pick up our Hood to Coast packet.  The kids had a fun time playing in the fountain and trying samples of "running food."  From there we headed up to spend the day in the Gorge.

Here we are on our way into Oneonta Gorge.

It was pretty hot up here by the road but when we got into the gorge it was perfect.  We spent an hour or so playing by the mouth of the gorge and snoozing in the hammock, balancing rocks, exploring trails, and splashing in the river before we ate our lunch of bread and cheese.  

After lunch we braved the log jam.  Getting over was not that bad.  The kids were pretty good at staying put when I told them to hold on so I could go ahead and shuttle them one by one to the next safe spot.

After the log jam it's easy going in the shallow water for quite a ways.  We just meandered and splashed around.  Then we hit the deep spot.  Noah was excited to swim through the deep part until he was neck deep in the freezing cold water.  I perched him on a rock to drip dry on the other side and decided that I didn't want to do that 3 more times.  Oneonta was crowded and there was a steady stream of people braving the deep cold water with yelps and screams as the freezing water got deeper and deeper.  No one was scaling the rock wall to avoid the water and I took that way back to get Joshua.  He latched onto my back and we took the wall back to Noah.  By the time I was headed back to get Larkin the wall had become a popular alternative to the drink.  I had to go over or under people that were less confident on the wall with Larkin and Arwen.  Even if you are no rock climber the worst that will happen on the wall is you'll end up in the water where you would have been.  

Here we are at the falls.  It was freezing.  The air was full of freezing mist from the falls and it was windy.  Noah really wanted to swim in the pool under the falls and tried to get to it but got frozen as he got close.

He finally got brave enough to swim just after the deep spot on the way back. 

There were a lot of petrified people on the log jam and the way back and not much movement.  We had to take some crazy routes to get to the other side.

On the other side of the tracks there was sun and shallow water.  We found this little "coffin" and all the kids put on their sad faces.

Noah fighting the current.

Eventually we made our way to sandy river to do some swimming.  It was hot and we hiked a bit to find a good place to swim.  The river here was shallow enough for the kids all the way across.

Somehow I managed to keep all the kids sunburn free and fed all day.  We even found an apple tree on the way to the river.  It was protected by thick blackberry brambles.  After being punctured who knows how many times I was able to get two of them.  They were delicious.  

One Night After Bedtime.

One night after bedtime screams of terror spilled out of the kids room.  Taking an easy guess I call Noah down stairs, but Masked Underwear Sock Bunny came down the stairs instead.  What little princess wouldn't scream in terror with this sneaking around her room?

Timbers Game

Sarah, Arwen, and I had a fun night at a Timbers game the other day.  We lost but it was still an exciting game.

Taking about exciting games, did anyone see the USA vs Canada Semifinals Match?  That was the most nerve wracking game I've ever seen...it couldn't have been scripted better.  I went home and re-enacted the whole game for Arwen and Sarah then showed them the highlight reel.   I had to rewind a few times after saying "Did you see that?  DID YOU SEE THAT?"

Washington County Fair

Posted by Noah

In the garden part of the fair we got this piece of paper and we had to find the foods that were on it.  And if we checked them all off you got to pick your own carrot and eat it.  And you get a pencil.  It was fun.

The next part of the fair we went to was the barn.  And we got to see lots of birds and types of stuff.  And we got to see bunnies and we got to touch a chicken or something.  And we looked at some swans and it was really fun.  And after that we went to another barn with cows and it stinked really bad and we tried to get out as quick as possible.  The pigs were in a barn that was like a shed and we got to watch them and there was a 283 pound pig.  And there was another pig that was 48 lbs.

After the animals we went to the reptile place and it wasn't that stinky and we got to see lots of animals and I got to see a turtle and baby turtles and a snapping alligator turtle and it just looked like an alligator.  And I saw a python and got to touch a snake, two of them.

After that we went to the Ferris-Wheel.  And me and my sister Arwen went on it.

Then we got stuck on the very top and when my sister Arwen said it went fast I got nervous.  But it didn't really go fast, it only made me nervous because she said it would.

We had a bunch of these french fries that were called curly fries and there were tons of them and me and my brother ate most of them.  And also my Dad thought we couldn't finish them all but we did.  They tasted really good.  We also had an elephant ear and a funnel cake.  And the elephant ear was the one with sugar on it and the funnel cake had powdered sugar on it.

...It was very hot.

Eagle Creek - 4th of July

What better way to celebrate America than hiking one of the most beautiful trails that I've ever been on.  The Eagle Creek trail through Tunnel Falls and up to Twister Falls.

This is how I spent my fourth of July.

I got lost...  Well actually I was just on the wrong trail.  The Tanner Creek trail is just one valley over from Eagle Creek and is a 3 mile loop to Wahclella Falls.  I'd done the same thing a few years ago taking my brothers to Tunnel Falls.  Only after backtracking a little to figure out where I'd missed the trail did the déjà vu kick in.  On the way back I also realized that I didn't have any money for a forest pass.  The only free parking around was were I parked.  I saw a trail marked 3 miles to Eagle Creek Recreation Area, so I went for it.

This little guy reminded me of Joshua, when we are on hikes he'll save little critters from the trail so they don't get stepped on.  He would have moved this little guy to safety.  Though there was no one on this stretch of trail  anyway.  Probably because it went straight up and over the mountain to the next valley.  I took another wrong turn taking the high road that gave me a nice dead end aerial view of the trail head 900 feet below.  That one cost me 2 miles and 1800 ft. of elevation change.

So after an 8 mile false start I was finally on the trail.  It's 7.5 from there to Twister Falls.

I took my first brake at Punchbowl Falls.  Took off my boots and waded in the water.  Stacked some rocks and took a little nap.  I must have looked worn out and skinny because someone offered me a sandwich.  I accepted.  Actually I overheard a family asking if anyone had a knife so they could cut a tomato.  No one did so I went over and dug through my backpack and found mine and offered it to them, the sandwich and some fruit was their thank you. 

Arwen will be proud to know that I found plenty of food in the wild too.  One of my favorite shows to watch with her is Man vs Wild.  We have fun planning outings (in the back yard) where we'll try some of the stuff he does on the show.  Well other than the snail and the sandwich the only edible things I actually came across were berries.  I found and ate Huckleberries, Salmon-berries, Thimble-berries, and the most delicious...wild Strawberries.

These little guys had all the flavor of a large hood strawberry concentrated into a little bitty berry.

I spent a lot of time on the narrow cliff hugging trails hunting for these instead of watching my step.

Here's the view from High Bridge ~13 miles into my hike.

A few miles latter I was at Tunnel falls.

The Hobbit in me loves this tunnel.

I lugged my tripod up all this way and figured I might as well use it.

If you squint at this picture the bright area makes a cool spiral.

Here I am just above Twister Falls taking my next break.  By this time I smelled like I'd taken a shower in stale sweat and dried off with a wet dog.  Doing the math I'd be getting back to the car around 9:00 so I didn't hang out here to long.

10.5 miles latter I was back at the car with enough daylight to see that I was the lucky one not to get my windows broken.  There was glass a few spots over from me.  I don't have anything worth steeling anyway, I should just leave the car unlocked.  That 's the problem with free parking.

Though it felt like 10,000 feet of elevation change I don't think you can trust it.  With much of the trail carved into the side of cliffs a few meters to either side changes elevation by hundreds of feet and a GPS is just not accurate enough to keep me on a narrow little trail.