7QT: 7 Scenes from Summer

I've been meaning to post this for awhile, but I'm running out of time before summer officially ends!  So bear with me for a little flashback trip over some highlights from our summer:

1.  Our grand road trip/move from beautiful Idaho to Minnesota (also lovely - but completely different!)

There is nothing like Montana.

2.  We bought a house!  Yikes/yay.  This is our porch.  Not our furnishings.  I need some serious interior design help!

We have a picket fence!  Does it get more suburban/quaint than that?!

3.

Beach week.  Heavenly!

4.

One month of city life in Minneapolis.  We walked everywhere and it was a great [loud] adventure!

5.

A trip to the Sculpture Garden!

6.

Lots and lots of lake time.

7.

Another glorious trip to Florida!  We are already making the most of the direct flights. =)

Bonus pick: back to running/jogging/walking together in our new double Bob.  I love my sweet running buddies!

On we go to Fall and all things apple/pumpkin whatever.  The lake cabin is all closed up so we're looking forward to doing some more exploring around our local area.  Have a wonderful week, y'all!

Check out more Quick Takes here! 

[Belated] Scenes from our Fourth of July

 

The happiest fisherman on the lake.  I thought he would last about five minutes out there, but they were fishing all morning!  He caught two sunnies!

 

Ridiculously Happy Baby loves the feeling of the grass between his toes.  And the taste!

How sweet! 

Now, for the choke hold hug....

Family photo on the boat with husband's soaked shirt...best we could do, we were in and out of the water!

Say CHEESE!!

Hope you had a fabulous Fourth!

Outside Family Fun (in the Summer)

Well, now that fall is "officially" here (it is still 75 degrees outside, yes, in North Idaho!), this will be my final post extolling all the wonderful things we got to do during summer.  Until this summer, we have been real sticklers about M's bedtime, which often means that he goes to bed two hours before the sun goes down!

This year, I tried to make more of our summer nights.  D works hard all day in the office, and I haven't forgotten how that goes, so it has been nice to have some adventures when he comes home from work.

I tried to stick to quick, simple meals so we could get back out the door, and relaxed a little bit on bedtimes - at least once M didn't go to bed until 8:30 (which is shockingly late for us)!  He doesn't always make it up by sleeping in, so we don't do it every night, but as we get closer and closer to the weekend, it becomes more important to do some fun things together.  We've taken to calling Thursday evening the "little Friday" - so we have a little bit of fun on Thursday to celebrate the approaching weekend.

Here's how we spent our summer fun, without spending all of our dough too!

Family bike rides or walks to the splash pad - the splash pad in our neighborhood doesn't open until 11, but it stays open until 7 pm.  So it is great to hit it in the evening after an early dinner.  Plus, it counts as a bath!

A face not made for selfies ;)

The concerts in Riverstone Park on Thursday evenings!  These don't start until 6:30, so we can easily finish dinner before riding down there.  Plus we get in about 5 miles of biking! #fitnesseverywhere

Dispersed camping.  While I was unnecessarily a stress case on our last camping adventure, I do want to go camping again!

Friday Pizza Picnics at the Beach.  When we lived in Virginia Beach, we used to go take Chick-Fil-A and magazines to Chick's Beach and eat dinner and read on the beach as the sun went down.  It was the most relaxing way to start the weekend, and IT. WAS. AWESOME.  We aren't very fancy now, are we?  Our Idaho variation on that theme is to take pizza to the beach.  M loves to play in the sand, and he may or may not eat very much/get totally soaked.  But it is even more fun as a family of three!

Exploring in the Woods.  There is a small pine forest near our house, and M loves to go walking in the woods.  He loves finding sticks, pine cones and squirrels, and even the occasional excavator or two (since the area is actually being developed into another neighborhood!)

I heard they also had free family movies in the park downtown, but these were just too late in the evening for us, so we never made it to any of those.  Maybe in a few years!

We're still trying to get our evening walks and bike rides in as it turns (a little bit) cooler.  Forest exploration is even more fun and interesting now that the leaves are changing.  What are your best ideas for family fun outside in the fall?

Cooling Off

Do you ever have a run where you just feel like you can't get going?  That's how I felt this morning.  My legs felt sluggish before I even started today's tempo run.  I pushed myself, but it just seemed like a lot more work than last week!

Anywho - August is when we finally get some nice hot summer days up here in the Northwest.  We went down to Higgins Point to cool off on a recent weekend morning.

Higgins Point is at the end of the Centennial Trail, the paved path that we use almost daily for biking, running or walking. 

 The water is cold and clear and we found a nice secluded spot to swim for a while before everyone else in town showed up.

It was a nice, quiet morning down at the lake!

Answer Me This: Summer, Please Don't Go, and More

 Happy Wednesday, folks.  How is your day going?  We had a great play/run date this morning, and we're headed to a birthday party tonight.  No party like a toddler party!  I really enjoyed my workout this morning - I did 2x10:00 at 80% effort with a 2 minute recovery, warm up and cool down.  Felt hard and good, and I was glad that I could maintain a steady pace for both efforts.  Here are some more thoughts about me....

What do you still want to do this summer?

There is SO MUCH I still want to do this summer!  Luckily, it seems like summer in North Idaho runs from July-September, so I think we've still got some more warm days for fun in our future.  I do think that I want to give camping another go, though!  I keep hearing great things about camping on Kalispell Island at Priest Lake.

  You have to rent a boat to go there, which would make it extra fun because then we'd get to tool around the lake, and D would get to fish, which he loves.  
 

We're on a boat!

On the topic of boating, M has been pushing his toy mower around the backyard and yelling "I'm waterskiing" and then "hit it!"  I think he is ready for Camp Sea Gull.

 What's your favorite kind of pie?

I am not a huge pie person, but I love to make them for Thanksgiving!  I made an apple-cheddar pie, which I did like, on two occasions.  The second time was for my then-neighbors, after they had a new baby, and the husband came back over and asked me if I made a mistake because there was cheese in the pie.  Guess he was #notafan!

How much sleep do you need each day? How much do you get?

I think I need 7-9 hours.  I usually get 7 these days, and we are so lucky because M hardly ever wakes up at night and is a great sleeper!

Do you prefer to swim in a pool, lake, river, or ocean?

I am 100% a beach girl but I actually don't love to swim in the ocean.  When I was younger, my sensitive skin would react to the salt water/sweat/sunscreen combo, so I was a yucky mess!  We lived on a river growing up, and occasionally swam/kneeboarded in it, but I was always a little nervous about the gators!  Now I live in the lake city, and the lakes around here are refreshing and beautiful, but I might have to go with a clean, highly-chlorinated pool as my top pick, ha! 

Do you know any poems by heart?

Nope, but I got M a book of poetry that we sometimes like to read from.  He really likes looking at the illustration that accompanies the witch's spell from MacBeth, so we are both slowly memorizing that because we read it together so much while he looks at the picture!  

 

 Do you use the public library?

Most definitely!  I love the library.  Our downtown library is in a great, beautiful, sunshine-y building, and it has a great children's section.  

Our beautiful downtown library

 source

My husband and I were just talking the other day about how great libraries are, and it brought to mind all of the hours that I used to spend at the library with my siblings, it was a great place to pass the time between school getting out and before practice/piano lessons/dance lessons started.  

The old library building in my hometown - now it's an arts center.

 source

We lived out in the country, so it didn't make sense to drive all the way home and then back to town between school and stuff, so we spent a lot of downtime at the library.  I think libraries are fantastic public resources.  

How about you?  What fun activities are you trying to get in before summer is over?

Huckleberries

I'm still not sure if this is an Idaho thing or not, but we went tromping around in the woods recently to pick huckleberries!  This was a first huckleberry adventure for our family!

He had the time of his life, eating more berries than he picked!

 Huckleberries are little blue/purple/red berries that grow in the wild - similar to blueberries to me, more so in appearance than in taste.  We have some friends who love to go pick them, and we understand people can be very secretive about where a "good spot" to find them is, so we accompanied them on a journey to a "new to all of us" spot.

We think we found the spot, after driving 6 miles up a bumpy fire road.  M had enough of the bumps and was ready to get out of the car!

We picked some berries, but not much.  According to our more experienced friends, this spot wasn't all that great.  But it had amazing views!

Huckleberry Pancakes

The next day, we made huckleberry pancakes with huckleberry sauce.  Yum!

A Family Reunion in Numbers

1

Grandmother, whose memory was honored and toasted, as she passed away this past year and wanted us all to gather together this summer.

2

GaGa+Papa, who hosted and cooked for us ALL!  

3

little R cousins, in their matching jammies!

4

R relatives, 2 adults and 2 kids, tubing behind Papa's boat!

7

great-grandchildren present and playing in the lake

30

descendants of Gramma & Granddad, present at the lake, watching home movies from the 1930s narrated by Granddad

10,000

lakes in Minnesota, but ours is the best

Plus countless rides in the paddle boat, s'mores roasted over the fire, cocktail cruises in the "giant ferry" (M's name for the pontoon), games of SkipBo, and memories and laughs shared.  Thanks to all for a wonderful week.

Independence Day: Camping in a Grizzly Habitat

Hello!  I hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend!  Its my favorite non-religious holiday - I love celebrating this beautiful country that I am fortunate to live in.

This year we celebrated with a VERY rustic camping trip in northern Idaho - yes, even further north than we live now! ;)

We drove up to Priest Lake hoping to catch a first come, first-served campsite on the lake (i.e., "camping light" because you can get running water/restroom access, but really, my style of camping.). All the brochures promote Priest Lake as "the crown jewel of Idaho" so I figured it was time to see for ourselves.

Turns out, they were right - it IS beautiful!

Every campground that we passed on the lake was totally full!  I was shocked.  D remarked about how funny it is that we now live in a state where everyone camps.  Very different from the East Coast!

We headed north up Plowboy Mountain towards a "dispersed camping" spot that D had stumbled upon while hunting last fall.

On the way up the mountain, D tells me that we should "manage our expectations" which really turned out to be code for "be prepared to live like a pioneer for the next few days." =)

After a 6 mile bumpy drive up a dirt Forest Service road, we arrived here:

There were a lot of good spots to set up our tent, and it also had a fire ring and a lot of wood already chopped and ready for our camp fire. 

He just loved playing in the tent!

 And it was about as quiet and peaceful as you can get!  It was a very nice spot and we all had a lot of fun there.  It was definitely off the grid, so my husband was thrilled, but I laid awake all night long trying to devise our escape plans in the event of an emergency (i.e., bear attack)!

Bear locker provided so the bear will only eat you, and not your food.

We toasted our nation's independence by exploring the mountain, roasting hot dogs over the fire for lunch and dining on a gourmet venison dinner. 

Grass-fed, lean, and all organic too!

We didn't see any big game, mostly because M & I did our best to scare them away with our normal noise level, much to D's disappointment.  Although two cars drove by our camp site and stopped to tell us that there was "fresh bear scat" just around the curve from us, and asked if we had seen any bears.  Yikes! #toocloseforcomfort

 M loved exploring and playing in the woods and we all got a chance to get some fresh mountain air.  It was a beautiful weekend, but we were thankful to get home to our showers, a/c and cozy beds. =) 

Icy cold stream won't bother this guy!

 After we came back down the mountain, we did one short hike along the lake shore.  It was really beautiful, M splashed in the water and we found another awesome beach camping spot.  Hope we can get back to claim that one next time!

Awesome little beach on the west side of Priest Lake

 It was definitely an adventure, we'll be back to do some more exploring of this pristine area!

Anyone ever been to Priest Lake?  Seen a bear?

The Beach

Well, we are back home from a wonderful trip home to Florida.  We were lucky enough to spend a week at St. Augustine Beach, and a few extra days with my parents.

It was a wonderful trip: mornings playing in the sand, surfing, boogie boarding and breaking up fights over the little toy boat. =)

M took wonderful, long naps, so I got to read The Fault in Our Stars and The Bell Jar.  I enjoyed them both, but was really glad to have finally read The Bell Jar.  I thought it was a fascinating, and sad, book.  Have you read it?  I would love to hear what anybody else thought of it.

Our running trail in my hometown.

I got 5 runs in total: stroller runs in the state park, a solo run on AIA, and a couple runs on the beach.  There is nothing better than an early morning run on the beach!

M with his partner in crime.

The best part was getting to see M enjoy playing with his cousins - he really enjoyed himself, and it made me so thankful for the gifts of this special time together.  As soon as he woke up, he was basically asking to wake up the cousins so he could play with them.

What beach trip is complete without mini-golf?

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for a wonderful beach vacation!