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.

 

Excited to see that Santa brought him the pillow pet he wanted.

8:17 Goes and wakes up Jillian

8:17 Jillian is happy but much calmer than Wesley that Santa delivered gifts.

Here is how the next 23 minutes is spent:

Redmond jumps high for his toy from Santa.

Wooden airplane was on his list...

Proud to have her glass duckie ornament. She wanted a duckie thing from Santa.

"Santa brought me a new snow-globe! I have one again too." Her snow-globe was broken earlier in the week and was very happy to see Santa knew she needed another one.

And then she realized that Santa brought her the doll stroller she wanted!

The excitement that Wesley had for each item was simply amazing!

Santa brought her duckie chopsticks 2 years ago - but they broke. She was very happy to have another set.

Hugging the silly putty - so happy to have her own.

Content with her pillow pet.

Then Joshua and I opened our stockings.  But there are no pictures of us…

What a great way spend 35 minutes. 

 

Our decorations

Jillian's Ready

Wesley's Ready

Trying to cut a gumball in half.

Taking a break from decorating for a little snack...

Even Redmond got some icing.

What a mess we made!

Jillian's house - front view

She wanted a dog.

Jillian's house - side 1

Jillian's house - back

Jillian's house - side 2

Wesley's house - front view

Wesley's house - side 1

Wesley's house - back

The sled Joshua made for Wesley's house.

Wesley's house - side 2

The kids waited a whole 24 hours to eat parts off.  They would have eaten it sooner – but they wanted to show Papa and Yaya.

 

Redmond was enjoying every single smell along the way!

About 1.25 miles up the trail is where the beautiful twin waterfalls are located.

The next 3.5 miles of the trail lead to a campground.  Along the way we saw so many huge banana slugs, a few garter snakes, a mouse, a chipmunk and a few birds.

Wesley would have been in slug heaven!

Not only do you have amazing trees, plants and rocks to look at – since the trail follows the river you get to see it often, but you hear it almost the whole time you are hiking.

I am a slow hiker…I did not make it to the end.  We had to get to Adrianne’s birthday party.  So at the 2 hour mark, even though I knew I was almost at the end, I turned around.  I took the backpack and the camera and started the hike back to the car.  Joshua wanted to get the end (and I wanted him to also) so he and Redmond would run ahead for 10 minutes and hopefully the would get to the end.  They did.  They only had to run for 4 minutes.   They got to the campsite area and then ran back to catch up with me. Our hike back went well.  It always seems faster when you are going back.

No kids to take pictures of so...

I have to include these pictures of Redmond.  Good thing he was on leash the whole time.  He would find a smell and just want to GO to find it.

 

Wesley was running to catch up when he took a fall. So we made it six whole minutes before we had tears and blood.  Just a small scrape on the hand, but it sure must have hurt.

Because of the recent rains the river (South Fork of the Snoqualmie) was really flowing. There were a half dozen or so kayakers taking advantage of the extra volume.  The kids were really intrigued.

Once the trail started heading up hill Jillian ran out of steam. She ground to a halt. Apparently she doesn’t have a low gear. From this point on there are no pictures of her on the trail because she is riding on my back.  Despite the fall, Wesley was a trooper and wanted to keep going on. Even when he said he was tired, when given the choice, he wanted to keep going over returning to the car.  Here he is next to a big moss covered rock. He spent a lot of time on top as well.

Jillian woke up when we got to the overlook for the lower falls. She didn’t actually want to get out and walk, but she did make me turn sideways so she could see.  Here is Wesley getting a little wet from the spray of the falls. At this point the kids got fruit leathers. Food is a good motivator.

Even after climbing up the many and rather steep steps from the lookout Wesley agreed to keep going to the bridge over the river between the falls. We agreed granola bars would be had there.  We also agreed that on the way back I would carry him on all the uphill stretches as I’d done on a few of the harder sections on the way to the bridge. On the way we came across this log. Wesley was really taken with the stumps and fallen logs. Especially the nurse logs. He pointed out all of them.  You can see he is holding his hand a bit gingerly.

At the bridge Redmond was a little freaked out. He wouldn’t sit near the edge of the bridge and he wouldn’t put his back to the edge of the bridge. I’m not sure he thought it was all that safe. Here he is exactly in the middle, the only place he would sit for a picture.

After the granola bars we headed back to the car. Despite being mostly downhill, there were plenty of uphills for my taste. I was huffing and puffing and we were garnering a fair bit of attention. Especially from people who saw me carrying Wesley and then couldn’t help but say “Oh, two of them” when they passed and could finally see J on my back.  Wesley saved a native snail from sure destruction by moving him off the path to a safer location.

To keep Wesley motivated on the way back to the car (I was at this point out of snacks) I told him I had a surprise for him. I gave him clue after clue. We got all the way to “It has ice cream, is some type of drink, it is fizzy, brown, and called some kind of ‘float’”. I think he must of been exhausted because he could not for the life of him come up with the answer. I finally gave in a few hundred yards from the end and told him. He and J who was awake again by this point were very excited.

We stopped in Issaquah and went to the XXX Rootbeer Drive-in.  An awesome place on every level. Highly recommended. The people were so friendly. First the kids climbed up into a coin operated wagon train and the waitress came over and dropped fifty cents in from her apron to fire it up. Then, when we ordered, she gave the kids two bouncy balls by tossing them against the window and letting the kids chase them down in the restaurant.

The kids loved the stools at the walk-up window. Because of the weather the place was much less busy than usual. We could have had a booth, but the kids loved those stools. So we got our drinks to go. Drinks by the way, which came with a plastic camel on top of the ice cream for Wesley, and a giraffe for Jillian.

Jillian’s float is the small one. Wesley is drinking his. Mine, only 40 cents more than theirs, was immense. Redmond got to help me finish it in the car. Such a friendly place and very family oriented (We were shown to the bathroom by a very polite 9 or 10 year old girl in waitress uniform and related to somebody working there). I think we will have to make at least one more trip out there this summer.  And yes, by the way, the whole restaurant is that packed with stuff.

 

We woke up today to the unusual, if not totally rare, occurrence of snow in Austin. It started with the typical hard icy rain/snow mix and at first we thought that was that. But then after a bit it really did snow. Real snow. Big flakes that actually stuck to the ground, and get this, accumulated. We had about 1.5 inches of accumulation by midday. It continued to snow the rest of the day, but because it had warmed up it didn’t really stick much after lunch. We did what pretty much everyone else in Austin did. We took full advantage.

Because of doctor’s appointments, sick children and other considerations (not least of which is that no one in Texas can drive if they are even predicting snow) I ended up at home rather than at work today. So Wesley and I had a great time. Jillian was pretty sick and though she came out a couple of times she didn’t have nearly as good a time as we did. We started with a good old fashioned snowball fight.

He really, really liked having snowball fights. Look at his face. He was loving it.

We took a break and made a little snowman. This was before we got most of the snow. It could have been bigger, but served its purpose. He later knocked it off the deck with a couple of snowballs.

This was about as much fun as Jillian would have: standing around near the door and looking before getting cold and going inside.  It took us longer to find her boots and mittens than she was actually outside.

After getting hit with a few too many snowballs we did a bit of cardboard sledding (we don’t actually own a sled) and then played some snow baseball.

After the snow fell a bit more heavily Amber and Wesley made a snowman in the front yard. It was really quite nice, complete with carrot nose and rosemary hair.

Like his smaller brother in the backyard, this snowman was not long for the world. His enemy was not global warming, but a charging Wesley.

It is nice that we finally got a “real” snowfall. It was quite a bit a fun. It gave us an excuse to drink hot chocolate and cider and just have a really good time. Wesley would have stayed out until his arms froze off. Even Redmond, who normally refuses to go out in the cold and wet did his share of playing with us.

I ended up doing more yard work in the snow than I’ve done in nice weather of the last few months. I learned that if you snow covered overhead branches you will get a face full of snow and wet when you least expect it. I also learned that said branches, rather than landing gently on the roof and needing a tug to get them off, will come careening down every which way and you’d better be prepared to move.

 

At first we just trudged through some mud and didn’t get too wet or dirty.

Check out the mud caked to her shoes.

What is Jillian pointing at? Vultures. Lots of vultures.

We saw at least 50 vultures on two towers.

We were staying pretty dry until we crossed the creek. Because of the rainfall the creek was running higher than usual.  The only thing to do? Fall in of course.

Wes fell in a hole and got really wet.

Once you get wet you might as well get muddy.  Really, really, really muddy.

This was just the start.

Time lapse of the kids in the big mud puddle.

We had a fabulous time. We stripped the kids naked before they got in the car and had to tie Redmond in the back of the wagon to keep his muddy self off the seats.  I hope it is muddy next time we go.  A lot better than the trips in the 100F+ temp this Summer.

 

For all of Jillian’s crafts and her earlier pumpkin she has wanted happy face pumpkins, Wesley wants mean or angry faces, and Redmond just wants to eat them.

Both kids did  a good job assisting in the gutting of the pumpkins and neither was too grossed out (different than last year).

The finished product. From left to right: Jillian’s Happy Face, a Redmond inspired dog paw, and Wesley’s Angry Bat. He drew it on the pumpkin himself. I just did the cutting.

 

I made his line out of a piece of string and his hook out of a clothes pin.  The bait we packed was just bits of things we found in the kitchen.

So right after dinner, the whole family walked over to the pond.

Ready to GO!

Using a bit of lettuce as bait.

Getting ready to cast his bait into the pond.

Our bait: dry pasta, veggie straws, lettuce, cheese ravaoli & onion.

Wesley is trying out different fishing strategies & Redmond really wanting to play with the ducks.

Trying to share with Jillian - but he could not bring himself to do it.

Now it is Jillian's turn to sit on the ledge.

Today, Wesley asked if he could go fishing again…I wonder if it is time to get a real fishing pole!