November 2012

November was a busy month for travel!  Rob arrived from Namibia right before Halloween and just got time to settle in before Kathryn and her parents left for Brooklyn.  Meredith married her partner, Jordan, and Rob was left behind in Idaho with the kids for a few days.  When Kathryn returned to Idaho, she did laundry and packed for the family trip to Seattle to see Grandma and Grandpa Weber.  From there we drove on to Portland to see Cho, Amy, and cousins.  

 

Fast food is still a bit of a novelty after being in Namibia.  Ryan loved his Burger King crown and the Mario moustache "prize" from his meal.

Justin finally found a tree that he could climb.  Grandma and Papa have a lot of trees, they are just primariliy really tall pine trees.  The cherry tree is a cinch to get up and down.  The boys thought climbing was more fun than raking.  Who can blame them?

Yep, we ate out again.  Ryan wrote IHOP on the back of the kids menu.  IHOP is a favorite with the boys.

We stayed near the Space Needle in Seattle.  The boys liked riding the monorail.  The driver let them sound the horn before we left.  They thought that was cool.  Grandma Weber joined us in Seattle and then we drove out to their house in Port Hadlock, WA.  The boys enjoyed the ferry.

The dinosaur exhibit at the Pacific Science Center was one of many cool exhibits.  We spent many hours at the museum and the boys would probably move in if they had the opportunity.

Seattle Aquarium is not really worth the visit in my opinion.  Perhaps we have been to too many really good aquariums.  The boys loved playing with the aquatic themed flannel board more than checking out the exhibits.  There were a few interesting things though.

I thought that the boys would enjoy seeing the diver cleaning the giant tank in the aquarium.  They wanted to move through at a rather fast pace.  A bit surprising since aquariums are generally popular with them.

Justin enjoyed the window seat Grandma and Grandpa Weber have in their living room.  It would be fun to have a little reading and writing nook for him to settle in.

In Oregon the boys enjoyed playing Pokemon with their cousins.  They really enjoyed just about everything as long as they could be with their cousins.  I wish we lived a little bit closer.

Cho and Soup at the OMSI.  Science can be a hair raising experience.  We go to the OMSI almost every time we go to Portland. 

Krispy Kreme is always an important stop when we visit cousins in Portland.

My kids don't like pizza, but they love Out of This World Pizza, which they call Pizza Planet.  It has so much for them to do and the pizza is decent which is nice for the adults. :)

Back in Coeur d Alene I took the boys out for an eagle watching picnic.  We saw a few eagles and had a great time despite the cold weather. 

Cake Recipes

Justin has been playing with a wooden Melissa & Doug birthday cake toy that I recently gave him.  He has enjoyed selecting the toppings for it, adding candles, and serving cake to various stuffed animals.  Of course he often needs my advice before he can decide what should go on the cake.  It was getting old fast.  I decided to make up some recipe cards so he could decorate the cake on his own.  He LOVED being able to follow the recipes I made up.  Yay!  Of course he still needed my approval before serving the cake, but it bought be a few extra minutes before interruptions.

The cake has six pieces, so Justin likes to have six stuffed animals to serve.  He gathers up his choices and sits them around the table.  He puts one on each chair and two on the table.  He told me that it was okay that some were on the table because there were six animals and six cakes but only four chairs.  I suggested that some animals could share chairs.  He looked at me like I was stupid and told me that then there would be eight animals and reminded me that he had already told me there were only SIX pieces of cake.  I thought about explaining what I meant, but I was pretty sure that I would still be wrong as far as he was concerned.

The recipe idea would also work well with the Melissa & Doug pizza party set.  I chose the cake over the pizza because Justin is ALWAYS pretending it is someone's birthday.  I don't think that we need both sets, but I can probably make more recipe cards for something else.  He seems to really like them.