Robin's Nest

Breakfast for hungry babies, June 19th.

We've had a special treat watching this family of robins right outside our apartment building.  The nest is just above my eye level, which means I can lift Kate up so she can have a good view.  Kate had been pretty sick and we missed the day the eggs hatched, but when I noticed the babies I gave her a piggy-back ride outside to see them.  We waited very quietly and after a while Mama Robin came to feed them (after chirping at us angrily from the sidelines for a few minutes).  Kate was entranced. She said, "That's a miracle!"



June 23rd.  The babies are getting bigger!



Mama is still suspicious.  I had to wait her out for about twenty minutes.





June 25th.  I never did get any more feeding pictures.  I hung out for an entire hour, but Mama just wasn't going for it. 



June 26th.  Something must have happened to one of the babies--there are only three now. 



Watchful parent.




The babies fledged on June 27th (the kids' half birthday!)  I was heading out to run some errands and stopped to check the nest first, and just happened to catch the last baby standing on the edge of the nest, looking uncertain.  I grabbed the camera and got a few shots before he fluttered out. 





We didn't really see the babies after this. Their parents continue to feed them on the ground for a couple of days, but apparently they decided that right outside an apartment building was not the best place to do it. Kate asked me what will happen to the nest now. I told her they might use it again, or they might decide there are too many people around. Enough with the paparazzi!

Andy's Preschool Non-Graduation

It's the end of Andy's first year of preschool! We think it's been a good experience for him--he doesn't really come home and tell us about his day, but he seems to enjoy it (he gets excited about riding the bus and jumps up and down when he sees it coming). He's been sick and missed a few days, but he got to go for the last day.



The kids had a couple of songs prepared, which they performed in the lunch room for assembled parents. Andy didn't enjoy this part. His teachers told me that he knows the songs and often sings them to himself when he's playing in the classroom, but never sings with the group.They are a bit cacophonous.  (My sister Betsey, as a child, dropped out of preschool because she couldn't stand the singing.  Andy seems to have a similar auditory sensitivity.)



After the two songs we went out on the playground and let the kids run around a while, then went into the classroom.  Reading is Andy's favorite thing to do during free time.



He likes to look at the braille books for the two vision-impaired students.



Andy gets his certificate.  All the students had hats, whether they were graduating or not.  (Andy still has one more year to go.)  The matching shirt was completely unintentional. 



Andy already knows a lot of things (he's great at reading and counting), but he's working on things like communicating, interacting with other kids, and following directions in the classroom. Andy has some great teachers!  We appreciate their efforts with our unique little boy. 

Snow on Mt. Rainier

We never really got any snow this year. And the kids have never had the experience of playing in deep snow, which seems like a grievous omission, so on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend we packed everybody up and headed up Mt. Rainier.  (The last time we were there was also Memorial Day weekend, eight years ago when Kate was just five months old.) 



The visitor's center at Paradise.



We ate our lunch by the pika picture (awwww!) and then went out to play in the snow.



The sky was cloudy but the glare off the snow was still pretty uncomfortable.  Doug has photo gray lenses that darken automatically when he goes outside.  The rest of us are not so lucky.  



Kate says, "This is not working!" Ha. I think she was expecting to be able to be able to dive and burrow  through the snow like a cartoon mole.



The view (gorgeous!)



We spent the whole time passing Andy back and forth, as he didn't like the glare, didn't know what to think of the snow, and didn't have snow pants. Andy's on the small side, but still gets heavy when you're trekking up a snowy ridge at high altitudes!



We found a little cave for Kate the Snow Dragon.



Andy actually fell asleep at one point.

Kate was able to do some belly sliding on her winter coat (see video at the end) and got completely soaked.  We brought along dry clothes for everybody, which turned out to be a good thing.  

Heading back down the mountain...



This little fox came right up to the car and looked at us expectantly. I think somebody's been feeding him.



We stopped to check out this waterfall.



End-of-the-day pho. Just the thing after snowy fun.



And here's a video of Kate belly-siding down the mountain.

It was all great fun and completely exhausting.  I was glad we did it on Saturday rather than Monday--we needed the recovery time!  We're thinking of going back this summer when the wildflowers are blooming. 

High Tide at Titlow

I wanted to get a picture of Grimmie in front of the Narrows Bridge, so I asked Kate if she'd like to go down to Titlow Beach with me after school. It was a lovely sunny day, but windy and chilly. We went down the beach and around the point toward the bridge.



I had discovered that I couldn't get Grimmie and the background in focus with my 50mm lens, so I thought I might have better luck on a sunny day. It was still tricky.



We ran into some friends who used to be in our ward.



There's a pretty wooded area on the bluff above the beach.




Back down to the water. It was really windy. Grimmie kept blowing over.




Coming back we discovered that we'd been cut off by the tide. There's a spot where the rocks jut out farther, and the water was all the way up. I thought about trying to climb across the rocks (which didn't look easy with Kate and my camera bag), or going the long way around through the woods (wasn't sure how long that would take, and it was getting close to dinner), so I decided to just wade for it. My shoes were already in pretty bad shape anyway, and I'd been saying for months that I needed to get some new ones. So I rolled up my jeans, hoisted Kate up on my back, and waded into the sound. 



Looking back--you can see the place where the rocks stick out into the water. It's only cut off when the tide is all the way in.



Back at the beach entrance, we tried a couple more pictures of Grimmie.



I like this one best! We didn't even have to go down the beach at all. But we had a nice day and a fun little adventure, even if I did completely destroy my shoes.