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.
Part of the reason I’ve been so quiet here is that my little family went on a vacation. We decided we needed to see our chosen family and road tripped it to Montana. Unfortunately my BFF decided to move to Portland about 6 weeks ago so we had to change our plans and shorten our Montana time so we could stop by Portland on our way home. More on how that turned out later.
Waldo and I know our child. She doesn’t like change. So we started prepping her with excitement for our trip ahead of time and it was working. She was so looking forward to seeing ‘our friends’ and staying at motels and driving and driving and driving. Then the night before the big day she asked why Daddy was showing Papa something in the office. I explained the Papa was going to take care of Kitty while we were gone and I guess that was the first time that we thought to mention the fact that Kitty wasn’t going with us. She melted down. She was already missing Kitty. Oh woe is me. Life will never be worth living again without kitty being with us. And on and on. I finally asked if it would be ok to take some pictures of Kitty to have with us and whenever she was missing Kitty she could look at the pictures. “Oh, Mama, that is the best idea ever.”
She never asked to look at the pictures once. Out of sight, out of mind I guess.
For the weeks leading up to the big day I thought about what all we needed to bring, I planned, shopped, schemed and baked. Oh how I baked, but more on that later too. One of the big things I was worried about was keeping a 3 1/2 year old happy in the car for hours at a time. I decided to take a page from our December plane trip and bought Lil some new things that she wouldn’t get till we were on our way and I’d space them out, giving her one at a time when she really needed something new to do. It was like friggin Christmas over here. Except so far we’ve kept Christmas much lighter present-wise than I did this trip. We didn’t really buy anything expensive, but a nice selection of things that I thought would keep her occupied and make her use her brain/imagination. It worked great and I still have a few of the trip toys tucked away for the future.
One of the things that I wanted for the trip was a little backpack for Lily to keep all of her stuff in and I wanted to sew it. Waldo helped me realize I didn’t have time for another project mainly due to the high volume of baking I was planning. So I asked Waldo’s Mom if she would make the backpack and she agreed. I found the pattern on Pinterest (of course) and the Fancy Nancy fabric at Hobby Lobby (but not on a Sunday of course) and it turned out so adorable. Sorry this picture mostly sucks, its the only one I have of the backpack.
The drive went surprisingly well. We stopped for potty and leg stretching breaks often and did a little sight seeing. This picture was taken at the edge of Idaho and it was a bit of all three.
We had stopped for lunch in Riggins, ID, which is the hometown of one of my best girlfriends, Paula. More about Paula in a second.
One of the things that I made sure Lily had on our adventure was a lot of drawing options. I picked up a last minute notebook from Target on our way out of town. I gave it to Lil at lunch and she loved it.
After lunch it took a few hours, but soon we were out of Idaho. This was Lily and Waldo at Lolo Pass. They were in Idaho looking at Montana.
Hello Montana!
Our first overnight stop was Missoula Montana. Waldo lived there when he first moved to MT 16-ish years ago and I’ve visited the city a number of times so getting there made the fact that we were in Montana very real. It was very exciting.
The most important thing on this trip was visiting with as many of our friends as possible. Our first friend visit was breakfast with Erin. I’m not 100% sure, but I think the last time we saw Erin was when she visited us in the hospital after Lil was born.
After Erin we went to visit my friend Paula (the one who grew up in Riggins, ID). Paula has a little girl; Emma, who is 2 weeks older than Lil. The last time we saw Paula was Emma’s baby shower almost 4 years ago. Even with that long time between visits you would never know it, we fell back so easily into our old conversations and patterns. It was amazing.
Paula and her husband Steve have their daughter Emma and a 18 month old boy named Brady. Brady went down for a nap right after we got there.
Emma wasn’t interested in taking a picture with us at all. After Paula put Emma down I should have put Lil down and taken a picture just the two of us, but it didn’t even occur to me until days later. I’m slow like that some days.
Emma was cool with this picture though.
We spent about 2 1/2 hours with Paula and her family. Lily and Emma played on opposite ends of the living room the entire time. As per normal Lily wanted Waldo or myself right next to her while she played so I sat on the floor and talked to Paula. At one point Lil sat on my lap and I handed my phone to Paula. I was so impressed with this picture she captured.
As we were leaving I snagged this picture of 3/4 of Paula’s family.
Spending time with Paula makes me miss her so much more than I already did. She commented I think more than once that she wished we were neighbors so our girls could play and so could we. I feel the same way.
After leaving Paula’s we headed out on the road again. We drove to Whitefish, which was our ultimate destination. It was only about a 3 hour drive and we were so glad for the short drive, especially since Waldo and I had made the trip between Missoula and Whitefish so many times in the past.
We stopped at a McDonalds to grab a quick bite to eat and use the restrooms. Lil saw the play area and was intrigued. She’s never played in any indoor play places before so we let her for a few minutes.
As soon as other kids headed for the play area it was time to leave. She wanted nothing to do with them, which is very usual for her.
After we got to our motel and brought ALL of our stuff* in we had time to kill so we went to a park. I lived down the street from this park for 8 years and I always dreamed of the day my kid would get to play there so it was great to see my Girl at the park.
I’m going to stop here since this post has gotten out of hand and it so picture heavy. Part 2 will also be picture heavy so I don’t want to clog up the internet tubes too much.
*I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of all of our luggage together. I believe we had 11 bags, 4 boxes, 1 ice chest, my purse and a few other odds and ends. Crazy!
A few days ago David (my father in law) decided to dig up one of the potato plants to see how it was coming along because the top was starting to die. The potatoes were perfect. I couldn’t believe something so perfect could grow from a cut up piece of sprouting potato that I almost threw away.
Because Waldo’s sister Christy and her son Jude were coming we didn’t get a chance to dig up any more potatoes till today. Jude totally helped and the kids (along with Grandpa) had a lot of fun.
We dug up all of the white potatoes and picked a few orange tomatoes. In a week or two we’ll have a bunch of russet potatoes too.
