Last August Waldo’s sister Christy and her son Jude visited. We were going to go to the zoo, but it was so crowded we couldn’t find a place to park. We decided to just play in the park right outside the zoo and feed the geese the popcorn we brought for them. Then we went to the aquarium.
Incoming!
I’m done.
Not me.
Oh wait, me too.
A few weeks before Thanksgiving I got a text from my sister Jolene (who lives in CA) asking if we were coming home to visit for Thanksgiving. I told her no immediately, because well, we’re broke. She responded that I could at least talk to Waldo about it before I shoot the idea down and that it would be really cool if I came because Jody (our other sister and Jolene’s twin, who lives in OK) and her kids were going to be there too.
So Waldo and I talked about it and after he said no (because we think very much alike), we started looking at how much it would really cost. After all of the figuring we realized it wouldn’t be THAT much money since we could stay at my Dad’s house and most of our food would be taken care of because of the holiday. So I texted Jolene and told her that as long as there were no major blizzards on the mountain passes we had to cross, we’d be there.
A week or so later we found out that Jody bailed on us, something about needing to work. We forgave her, but it would have been so much more fun if she’d have been there. Jolene figured that since Jody decided to stay home we wouldn’t take the trip either, but Lily was so fricking excited that we couldn’t change our mind even if we had wanted too.
We, or I should say Waldo and his Dad, kept a close eye on the weather reports for the week leading up to our leaving. Everything looked good so we headed out Wednesday morning. The drive went great surprisingly well. We got rained on a tiny bit, but the only snow we saw was way off in the mountains no where near us. Then we got to Donner Pass and hit some rain and a lot of fog.
You should be able to see a whole lot further then you can here.
We got out of the fog fairly quickly and then it looked like smooth sailing. Boy were we silly to think that driving to California the day before Thanksgiving would be a good idea. Right outside of Sacramento we hit the bumper to bumper holiday traffic. It sucked! It was also the point where I took over driving, Waldo finally wanted a break. He says it was a coincidence, but I’m still not sure.
We finally got out of the crazy traffic about an hour or so outside of my Dad’s house. Thank goodness we finally got to my Dad’s and out of the car. We took Lily in the house and sat her down and told her to tell my Dad about her trip and we went out to the car to get our stuff. I know this doesn’t sound like anything worth mentioning, but for Lily this is a first and is totally amazing. We felt this was a good sign as to what was to come on our trip. I’m going to spare you the suspense and tell you that Lily got totally overwhelmed by half way through Thanksgiving day and went back to her standard shy self. But she still had a great time.
We went to my Aunt KK’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.
My Memaw and Pop were already there when we arrived, along with Kk and her husband Dixon. My sister Jolene and Olivia were suppose to be meeting us there, her son Max was already there too.
KK and Pop
Me and Uncle Dixon
Me and KK
Memaw and Pop at Thanksgiving dinner
Olivia was the only one that Lily cared about seeing so the fact that Jolene was taking her time was killing her. Finally we got ahold of Jolene and I told her I was coming to get Olivia and then she could take her time. Max went with me and it was very nice to get some alone time with him. I can’t believe he’s 16. It’s true what they say, kids grow up way too fast.
Olivia
Pop, Olivia and Lily
Very quickly Lily and Olivia were off to play in the playroom. It was so cute, seeing them together again.
Lily and Olivia
Olivia spent the night with us at my Dad’s, in fact she stayed with us almost the whole time we were there. The girls loved it.
Lily and Olivia accidentally sort of matchy matchy
Sleeping princesses
It works out great that Lily’s carseat is still backwards because it made it easy for them to talk and share tablets. This was how they spent all of their time in the car.
Happy travelers
Friday morning we went to Memaw and Pop’s for chocolate gravy (a huge tradition for our family). My Mom met us there.
Olivia and GG (my Mom)
Olivia
My Mom, KK and Memaw
Jolene did some Black Friday shopping so when she got to Memaw’s she tried to get some shut eye. HAHA, silly girl.
Sleepy Jolene
Lily got super overwhelmed during breakfast because of all the noise so Waldo had to take her outside for a little while to relax. The family on my Mom’s side is very loud when we get together, well some of them are anyway. After breakfast we took a bunch of pictures.
Me
Me, our Mom and Jolene
Me, Memaw, Mom and Jolene
Me, Memaw, Mom, Pop and Jolene
Me, Lily, Memaw, Max, Olivia, Mom, Pop and Jolene
Olivia stayed with us the rest of the day and the girls couldn’t have been happier. After we left my Grandparents we went to visit my cousin Melissa and her family for a few hours. I realized when we got home that I didn’t take a single picture of Melissa and her family and I was so mad at myself I could have spit.
Saturday we decided to take Lily and Olivia to the zoo. Jolene, Max and KK met us there and we had a blast. The weather was perfect, the zoo wasn’t that busy and we had good company. What more could we have asked for?
Lily and Olivia
Waldo and Lily
Lily, Waldo and Olivia
Olivia, Jolene, Max and Me
Lily feeding her old friend
Lil
Olivia and Lil
Max and Olivia, such sweetness
Max and Olivia
Lily and Nosey
Max
Lily and Olivia
Waldo and Lily
Jolene and Me
Lily and Olivia
Right before we moved to Idaho the Zoo had just started working on a new Sea Lion enclosure. We finally got to see it all finished and I have to say that it was awesome. You could see the tank from above, level with it and below the water line. We got there right at feeding time and we probably could have spent a lot more time than we did, but Lily had to potty and we all wanted lunch.
After the zoo we went to lunch and then to my Grandparents to tell them goodbye. It’s so hard to say bye to everyone and especially them.
Pop, Me and Memaw photo-bombing us.
Memaw and Me
Back at my Dad’s Lily and Olivia helped get the Christmas tree decorating started.
Lily, Olivia and my Dad
Oh pretty
Little Christmas Elfs
I loved how much fun the girls had together, and we hated saying goodbye to Olivia. I’m so glad my sister was ok with giving her to us for a few days. I hated saying goodbye to the rest of my family too, but Olivia was the hardest.
My Dad and Me
We did finally say goodbye and headed out for home. The drive home was a lot better than the drive in. There was some fog in central California which didn’t surprise us at all. We did have to make a stop at a Target in a small town an hour or two from my Dad’s house. We left Lily’s Hello Kitty cup at my Dad’s and so we had to get her a new one. Otherwise it was smooth sailing all the way home.
I can’t wait to see my family again, but for now I’m so glad that we are home.
I was cooking the other day when Lil asked me to take a picture of her. Then she asked to take some of her own. This is some of what I found when I looked through what she took.
I love that she was making faces at herself in my phone and taking pictures of it.
She had been drawing with sharpies on foil that morning and she took some pictures of that too.
Here’s part 1 of our little vacation to visit friends in Montana.
We woke up on our first full day back in Whitefish and after a little work for both of us* we went to visit our friends Anthony and Maggie. We spent a few hours with them and had a blast. I don’t know what on earth was wrong with me, I didn’t take a single picture of them. I can’t believe it. I did take a few pictures of Lily and Waldo while they were playing video games there. Silly me.
After a few hours with Anthony and Maggie we headed to see Jack; who is the main person that we wanted to see. While he didn’t stop me from taking pictures of him, he threatened bad things if any of the pictures ended up on the internet. So boo. Here are some pictures of Lily instead.
While Waldo, Jack and our friend Malcolm talked about boring boy stuff Lily and I played with her dress up Olivia set.
Lily has only seen Jack once in the last two years, but she’s heard so much about Uncle Jack that she was so comfortable with him. She wanted nothing more than to play with him or at least near him. She wanted to show off, it was really cute.
That first night in Whitefish Jack and Waldo went out and played neerdy games with other boys and Lily and I hung out in the hotel. The next day we went to breakfast with Jack. Lily was true to form and wanted to show off her cute Hello Kitty.
Later that day we decided to take Lily to the park to feed some ducks. We bought some cracked corn (I had no idea this was a real thing, I thought it was just part of a nursery rhyme) from the gas station across the street from the park. The ducks liked it, but I wish we would have had bread to feed them. Ducks seem to like it better. Oh well, it was about the experience and spending time together, not the duck food.
BTW Lily’s shirt says ‘My Mom is Totally Awesome’ because you know she is. 
This next picture is my favorite of the whole trip.
This one comes in a close second.
You will have to employ your imagination a bit here and add some cute pictures of Lily, Waldo and Jack on a bridge feeding ducks. Or a really really good picture of Jack squatting so he’s at Lily’s level talking to her while she feeds ducks (my 4th fav pic of the trip) or the three of them at a picnic table. He’s making you miss out on a lot of really good pictures. Luckily for me I have printed those along with a lot of the ones you see here on my blog into a collage that I love.
After feeding the ducks got old we had a little picnic and Lil feed the rest of the cracked corn to the sea gulls. They were very interested in the corn.
That evening Waldo and Jack went out to get drinks and Lily and I did the hotel hang out thing again. He didn’t get full on drunk because he’s not that into drinking, but he got a nice buzz and I got some really cute buzzed texts from Waldo.
I should take the time to mention that Waldo had been coming down with cold symptoms all day and by the end of the night Lily was right on his heels. This was such a bummer because we had decided to leave Montana a day early so that we could drive to Portland and visit Becky (my BFF) and with this cold we weren’t sure how that was going to go.
The next morning we were suppose to have breakfast with our friend Jess and Jamison and their little Teagan. But by then the threatened colds had blossomed completely so we called off breakfast because I hate spreading germs especially to little ones. Instead we spread our germs to the general public and had breakfast at the restaurant Jack works at so we could get one more goodbye with him.
Jack made Lily a butterfly pancake. He made her a very over the top Mickey Mouse pancake the first morning, but I didn’t get a picture of it before Waldo cut it up.
I’m betting the kids at the other table were jealous since all they got were standard round pancakes. One of the benefits of knowing people in high places. When Jack came out to see if Lily liked her pancake we were able to give him the little canvas she drew him. I didn’t get a picture, but it was really cute and she wrote Mama on it all by herself. She added an extra letter, but hey she’s 3.
On our way out of town we stopped and saw our friend Gil for a few minutes (he was in the middle of a meeting) and then we headed out. Our plan was to get as far as Spokane that night and then get to Portland the next afternoon. While we were driving to Spokane we discussed our options and we made one of the hardest decisions ever and that was to go home after Spokane and not to Portland. It just wasn’t fair to Lily to spend another sleepless night in a hotel and it wasn’t fair to me either. At the time it was the best and really only right decision to make for our kiddo. The plan was to go to Portland for the weekend in September. Well that had to get pushed back because Becky was going to be moving so we decided that Mid-October was best. Now it looks like that won’t happen either. I’m so bummed and wish that we would have said ‘lets go to Portland anyway, screw the kid’, but oh well.
Here’s a view of how we spent the night at the motel in Spokane. Note the tissues and sad people.
Overall this was a great vacation, the only thing that would have made it better was getting to see more friends. I can’t wait to do it again.
*I guess you could call it job security, but Waldo and I are the only ones that do certain parts of our jobs so we still have to do them on vacation, sick days, every day really. Excluding weekends and some national holidays I haven’t had a full day off in over 3 years. I guess I can’t really complain because a full day for me is about 3 hours, but still.
***All pictures on this trip were taken with our phones so some of the indoor pictures are a little…bad. Sorry.
**Edited to add: Waldo informed me that my sequence of events is a bit off. I decided I don’t care. I got all of the important facts, just maybe not in the right order.
I mentioned in my vacation part 1 post that I did a lot of baking for this road trip. I went on a crazy baking rampage for a few reasons. 1 I’m trying to limit and eventually cut out all processed foods from our diets, we’ve always been really good about this for Lily, but not so much for ourselves. 2 We are pretty careful what we feed Lily so by me baking my head off I was pretty confident that she would continue to have health-ish snacks. 3 I fricking love to cook/bake and this was an excellent excuse to go crazy. Pretty much any of those things would have done it for me, but when you put all 3 together I pretty much gave myself license to go buck wild.
For weeks before the trip I scoured Pinterest and pinned anything that fit the bill. Oh yeah, I had pretty tough criteria. Mostly healthy, little to no sugar, yummy and within the realm of what I could do with what I already had and my skills. Most of the time I’m very happy to try a new recipe if it looks great and especially if I get to buy a new gadget for it, but I was trying to keep the cost down because this vacation was already stretching our budget.
If a recipe fit into my list of requirements I’d print it and put it in a stack. I was shocked that I only printed 5 or 6 recipes and ended up making almost all of them. I also made two of my standby recipes, on planned and one last minute addition.
I had what I was going to make and when all planned out because I only have so much time that I can devote to the kitchen every day. The first thing I made were homemade wheat thin type crackers. I had never made this recipe before and wasn’t sure how well they were going to turn out. I mean they have vanilla and paprika in them. (Oh and the recipe calls for vanilla paste which I’ve used in the past and loved, but didn’t want to shell out $10 for at the moment, I just used vanilla extract and it worked out fine.) That just seemed too weird for me. Boy was I wrong and I’m so glad I was. I made my first batch (the only batch I had planned on making) and gave Lily one to try out. I then sat down to chat with Rita (my Mother in Law) and before I knew it Lily was back for more and then again back for more and again and again, till I cut her off. I took a few to Waldo while he was working (bonus point for him working at home, he can taste test recipes immediately) and he loved them too. I looked at the jar I had put them in and realized that about half of my batch was gone and I’d need to make more for the trip. If you even remote like wheat thins you should make these, you will thank me.
The next thing I made was the standby recipe that I had planned. I have been making the goldfish crackers from Smitten Kitchen for a few months now and they are a huge success. Don’t get me started on the quest I’ve been on for a reasonably priced micro cookie cutter, I don’t care if it’s a fish or not, I just don’t want to pay $15 for a 1″ cutter. So I ended up buying at least 4 different sets of cutters and spent probably around $20. I don’t understand my logic sometimes. But hey, I have like 18 really small cookie/veggie cutters. Oh and if you are interested the ones that I liked the best were Japaneses Bento veggie cutters, one or two of them are the closest to the real goldfish cracker size. I know, I bought a small box of real goldfish crackers and compared. I tell you, once I get invested in a quest for perfection I get a little crazy.
The standby recipe that I didn’t plan on making, but made anyway was my eggless banana bread muffins. Rita pointed out that I had some really old bananas on the counter so banana bread mini muffins happened. In the end I’m always really glad to have these little muffins around. Lily and Waldo love them, they have very little sugar in them and they are easy to make. Sorry I can’t find the recipe anywhere.
The last strictly healthy recipe I made was granola bars. I have been on a quest for great granola bars. Waldo doesn’t care much for regular broken up granola, but he loves them in bar form. I think I found the holy grail of granola bars with this recipe. I added a few things to the existing recipe and left out the sesame seeds (I forgot them, I didn’t leave them out on purpose). I added about 1/4 cup of quinoa flakes and about the same of unsweetened coconut shavings. Everyone that tried them (I made just about everyone we know try all of my treats) loves these the best of all.
The last thing I made has little to no health benefits to them. I wanted to make something easy, fun and delicious to eat for breakfast (or whenever) in the car. I’ve also always wanted to make scones and this was a perfect excuse. I made Glazed cinnamon scones. They are sort of like scones shaped cinnamon buns. Yum.
For me making all of these yummy snacks was a great way to prepare for and get excited about this vacation. I love making yummy food that my people will scarf up and if it impresses my friends all the better.
I can’t believe I didn’t take any pictures of any of these snacks in the making or finished stages. Lame.
