Of course, it wasn’t just us. We had the whole family involved: Kathleen, Dave, Amber, Joshua, Adrianne, Cody, Corey, Willow, Wesley, Aidan and Jillian (I think that is roughly by age).

The train heads down the tracks a short ways, stops near a small waterfall and then heads back the other way. While the train is stopped the engine is moved from one end of the train to the other. So our car was the first on the way out and the last on the way back in. The perfect combination if you ask me.  The train cars are from the early 1900s and in surprisingly good shape. When we were kids it seems to me that the engine was steam and the cars were more open, but I guess things have changed a little.

Starting at one end Santa comes down the train and sits with each of the kids. He takes their seat and does his usual thing. Wesley was really excited that he got to be the first kid on the train to sit on Santa’s lap. And Jillian didn’t scream at all this year!!

From the opposite end of the train as Santa comes Ben the banjo player. He plays and everyone sings carols.

We had hot chocolate, apple cider and lots of fun.  Look at these faces and tell me they didn’t have a great time.

 

More than being really difficult, the trouble with going homemade is just how long it takes. First we made the dough. This was fun and Jillian was a big help. But then you have to bake the shapes three times for each house. The roof and long side get baked twice and the other side of the pan, the small sides and chimney, get baked just once. But you can’t bake them back-to-back because the pan is hot. You have to wait for it to cool and that takes hours. So, for each house it took me three days. I’d make the dough and then bake each side a night. Then repeat the process for the second house. I wanted my own house, but I was too lazy to make any more.

Once all of the pieces were baked I took another day to assemble the houses so they could dry and be sturdy enough for the kids to work with. We used a pretty standard royal icing recipe and it gave us structurally sound little houses.

Finally, a week later, we were ready to decorate these little guys. Amber bought a ton of candy and there was plenty to go around. Interestingly, even though we divvied everything up 50/50 some strange things happened. Some of Wesley’s candy bowls were empty even though hardly any of them were on the house. Where did they go?

To start with we let the kids go there own way. Once they had made good progress Amber and I each started adding little touches and giving the kids some more complicated ideas. They each came up with great ideas of their own and copied from each other when they saw something they liked.

They had fun. Here they are with the finished product. The houses had to be moved to the mantle almost immediately since pieces of candy were being removed even before the frosting was dry.

 

They are ready to celebrate!

in the tv room

the green room

vests, bandanas, eye-patches & gold earrings for everyone.

the goodie bags

the kids and I made repurposed crayons in pirate shapes.

looking in to the front door area

arr...

arr...

arr...

arr...

After a lunch of macaroni & cheese, pasta salad, green salad, rolls & fruit… it was time to hit the piñata.

Wesley starts us off.

Then Addison

Jillian

Stellanne

Aidan

Lilly

Ben

Aidan

then Wesley again with a strong finish!

they quickly filled their treasure chests.

Then it was cake time.  To see more about the cake you can see the post I did about it here.
Before we sang to Wesley, the kids who wanted to – got to launch the cannons too.

Wesley launching the cannons.

a nice and powerful jump.

Jillian launching the cannons. The small black dot near the edge of the table is one of the cannon balls.

Singing "Happy Birthday" to Wesley. (not quite sure what Jillian is doing...)

Wesley is still talking about his party and had such a wonderful birthday!

Thank you to all of our guests – you really made it magical for him.

 

Joshua’s cannon design was great and really launched his hand carved cannon balls.  Wesley and Jillian both loved playing with it before it went into the cake.

Then I needed to put it in the cake…

Wesley wanted blueberry cake, so I found a blueberry bunt cake recipe and made it in 9×13 pans.

Here is how I created it:

Joshua thought to reuse this blue basket for the base. He then cut a piece of thin wood to fit in the basket for a strong base for the cake.

Here is the sculpted cake with a blueberry cream cheese filling between the layers.

I had to use a lot of skewers in the cake to keep the layers together.

I put on a thin crumb coating, then Joshua and I put in the cannons. The green thing is the launching pad taken from a game we have called FroggO.

The stern of the cake ship.

The bow of the cake ship.

The "front" of the cake with the cannons facing out.

Then I used brown gel coloring to make the cream cheese frosting brown.  Blue water was added then ocean animals were glued onto the basket to make it look like it is really in the sea.

The front of the cake.

The sails are made out of chopsticks and fancy paper.

The stern of the ship. The rigging, wheel and ladder are made with melted chocolate.

"W"'s and upside down "w"'s and the #6

The back side of the cake.

There is even a plank...with shark infested waters.

The bow of the ship.

Close up of the bow.

Hours spent:
Building the cannon & carving the balls – 2 hours
Baking the cake and making the frosting – 3 hours
Carving & decorating the ship – 5 hours
Total hours spent: 10. 

 

When we went for kindergarten testing another kid had his backpack… So I started to think of ways to make it more unique.  And since it is mostly white – I was worried that it would become mostly brown in no time.

So I decided to color it.  At first I was just going to color a few.  Then that evolved into coloring them all.  Then Wesley wanted the background area a color too…

Here is my finished product:

Wesley LOVES his Mario backpack even more now that when he picked it out from the store.  I have to say… I love it more now too. 

I can’t wait to see it on him tomorrow for his first day of kindergarten!

 

They were so cute riding together.

Wesley mostly rode the .32 mile loop.  He rode around at least 6 times.

After a couple of laps around the park they cooled off in the sprinkler.

And blowing bubbles.

Filling her tub so she can get Wesley.

She is throwing her water onto me...

Then they started dumping water onto their heads.

I love how he is holding his nose.

Full dump with no nose holding.

Then I tried to get a picture of them together…this is the best I could get:

Jillian: 4y 0m 24d Wesley: 5y 9m 11d

Then they warmed up in the sun.

A bit of playing on the playground was next.

Monkey Bars!

40 minutes of bike riding rounded out the rest of our visit to the park.

We sure did enjoy our last day of summer vacation!

 

They put up this new sign while we hiked.

Sauk Mountain may be my favorite hike. It is short, with great views the entire way, and with only a little effort you get up above the tree line. I’ve hiked it more times than I can count. Sometimes alone, sometimes not. Last Friday we hiked it all together and it was great.  The weather was perfect and it wasn’t that crowded (sometimes the parking lot gets so full you have to park down the road a long way from the trailhead).

We took it really, really slowly. The GPS says we averaged 1.08 mph for the trip (that includes the descent). When we stopped at switchback number 10 for lunch we’d already been gone longer than it takes me to hike it alone. But, and somewhat to my amazement, both kids hiked all the way to the top without needing to be carried. They needed some encouragement, but they made it. It took two hours and five minutes, but we made it! Hurray!

Excited to be on the summit!

Wesley on the summit.

Jillian on the summit.

Near the summit there was still some snow. This was a huge, exciting thing for the kids. We insisted they not slide around until we were on our way down. Good thing, too. They got so cold they both had a few tears. I think the time in Texas may have softened them up.

Getting really cold hands in the snow.

The area around the lake was also covered with snow. And the lake itself had more ice in it than I can ever remember. Wesley when he got to the top and looked at the lake and mountains said “Wow! This is so beautiful!”. Hopefully he won’t complain so much before the next hike.

Ice in Sauk Lake

On the way down Jillian did get to ride. This made the descent a lot faster. And for a mere $1 bribe, Wesley walked all the way down to the car. The best $1 I’ve spent in a long time.

We didn’t see any Pikas this trip. But we did see a chipmunk or two (Redmond was furiously flipping over rocks trying to get at them) and several Marmots. This one just stood up the entire time and looked around. He didn’t scurry off until we were 25 feet away.

Marmot doing a Meerekat impression.

Like I said, it was a nearly perfect trip. The wildflowers were in bloom, the kids were cooperative and in good spirits and even Redmond was well behaved.

Bicolor Lupine

He loves to hike even more than me.

And of course the view was wonderful.

Looking East over the Skagit Valley

We even got to see the Elk east of Lyman on our way to drop the kids off at my mom’s house. It was a great trip and I can’t wait to do it again next summer.

Our hike on Google Maps.

 

At the East entrance to the tunnel

The tunnel is 2.3 miles and almost perfectly straight. It is also nearly pitch black and 55 degrees inside compared to the bright sun and 75 degrees at the entrance.  Armed with sweatshirts and nearly all of the flashlights we owned we had a ton of fun walking in the dark.  The kids managed to walk all the way in one direction and a portion of the way back.

Not ones to let nearly total darkness stop us from taking pictures we did manage a few inside the tunnel (thanks to a very bright flashlight).

About midway down the tunnel.

Without the flashlights it looks like this:

The view most of the way.

At the west end of the tunnel are some picnic tables and probably the nicest compost toilet I have ever had the privilege of using.  The view isn’t bad either.

Looking East over I-90 from West end of tunnel.

At the ends of the tunnel you do get a bit of light and you don’t need your flashlights right away.  It does get dark pretty quick, though.

Heading back to Hyak.

The trail, especially after the recent work, is so wide (you could drive a train on it!) and flat that we played games on the way back. Running and chasing, hiding and general goofiness ensued.  The only major concern is bicyclists. There are lots of them. Bikers outnumber walkers at least ten to one.  Most have lights and most probably wish they had brighter ones. We didn’t have any problems, but we were sure to move over and give them plenty of room.

Isn't she beautiful!

And how do you celebrate a successful hike on the I-90 corridor? In our family that means root beer floats from XXX in Issaquah. Well the kids had root beer floats. I had a root beer shake and we all shared some fries and onion rings.

Tasty onion rings at XXX.

If you want to hike the tunnel it is now open. It had been closed for the last several years for repairs. And don’t forget that for safety reasons it isn’t open in the winter. They gate the tunnel closed November 1st through the end of April.

Just for fun I tracked the hike using the gps on my cell phone. Just curious what it would do. You can see that we started at Hyak, magically popped out at the other end. The big empty section between the blue lines is the tunnel. It is so apparent on the map because they keep the trees cleared for the power lines that run over the top.

Google map of our hike

From the GPS we know it took us exactly 3 hours and 4 seconds to make the 5.6 mile round trip journey.  You can take a look at the interactive map and view the data here. Heck, download it into google earth if you want.

Hike information: Snoqualmie Tunnel – wta.org

 

The Strawberry Hello Kitty Cake

All of our yummy snacks.

All set up for our pin the bow on Hello Kitty game.

Goodie bags for the kids. They included: a Hello Kitty coloring book that I made, bubbles and strawberry milk straws.

We had tattoos.

All of the kids put some on.

In the backyard we played catch

and horseshoes.

Then we played "Pin the Bow on Hello Kitty"

Wesley is ready to go...

Here is where everyone placed their bows.

Next we opened gifts - and boy was Jillian loved!

this one is from Wesley.

Blowing out her candles.

Super yummy cake!

Most the kids who celebrated with Jillian.

Then Jillian opened one last gift... a big kid bike and a new helmet!

With Yaya, Papa and Aidan.

With Grams and Aunt Ashley

Our attempt at a family photo...

Here first ride on her new bike.

Happy Birthday Jillian.  You are one lucky girl.

And thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us.  Jillian has been talking non-stop about her “Special Day” and how much she loved it!

 

No.  Today it is a cloudy, rainy and cool 62. 

We made the most of the weather.

I made the kids a cool fort:

Happy kids!

While they played in the fort – I cleaned the house.
Well, at least the kids had fun.