Fun on the beach

 

There's the one I threw, Mommy!

 

Throwing rocks

 

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

We celebrated Mother's Day on Sunday with a day of exploring.

The three of us headed out to the Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands to take advantage of some of the most beautiful weather we have had since our move here...high 70's and not a cloud in the sky. We had a picnic at Fort Ebey State Park, on top of a dune that overlooked the water with the Olympics in the distance.

Nora especially enjoyed the seashore. She has developed a penchant for throwing pebbles into the water. I have posted a couple of her in action.

 

Doggy

Nora loved kissing the doggy at the coffee house we stopped at this afternoon. 

Ladylike?

I guess we're going to have to work on this at some point ;-) 

Chatterbox

Nora's ability to put words together into sentences has really taken off. Every day she is learning more new words (although the definitions of some of them still require translation). Tonight's new one was daddy juice (beer).

We have the good fortune of living just a few minutes away from Trader Joe's (our faaaaavorite grocery store). The cashiers there give Nora stickers and balloons every time we go. It's a sick marketing ploy but it works incredibly well...Nora wanders around the house asking us for loon? ticker? loon? yeah!

Another one of her favorite activities is chatting with Nana, Papa, Grandma and Grandpa on the webcam. Last night, when Grandma sang "The Wheels on the Bus" to her, Nora insisted that they sing "the kids on the bus go UP and DOWN" over and over again. Every time they sang "UP" she stood up, and when they sang "DOWN" she would flop down onto the chair.

Grandma tried to sing a different song, but Nora refused...she just kept saying "up dowww, up doww!"

Zoo?

Another of Nora's favorite places. The zoo here is amazing! 

Yummy!

I had to include both of them...they are just too cute. Nora looks so proud here. 

I love Pad Thai!

Here's Nora enjoying some Pad Thai with Daddy on Saturday after going to the Children's Museum.  

I love bath time!

Nora is an absolute freak for the bath right now. "Bat" in Nora speak could be every night or even a couple times a night if she had her way. This picture was taken on Daddy's new camera phone. Nora is sitting outside the bathroom and her bedroom. It seems that she and Daddy
had an excellent time while I was in Las Vegas having an excellent time of my own.  

Bubble!

Playing with bubbles is Nora's new favorite thing to do. Anytime we open the patio door, Nora perks up and says "owsye? baboo? owsye? yeah! baboo! baboo! peees? baboo!"

She has come up with a few "enhancements" to the English language. Here are some most commonly-heard "Nora-isms" along with their translations:

baboo = bubble
baby = Nora
bikey = a bicycle
daayi bikey = motorcycle (any motorcycle!)
daayi = daddy
eesye = inside
henno = hello
owsye = outside
pee = please
poo = pool
sidididilee = Sydney the cat

 

The ears are clear!

Nora had her first post-op checkup on Thursday and we were relieved to hear that her ears are now completely clear for the first time in months. The tubes did the trick.

Tonight we had dinner at a Thai place in downtown Kirkland. It was a beautiful sunny evening so we sat outside. Nora hasn't been eating very well this week, but she tore into the pad thai without any hesitation tonight. When the waiter brought it to our table, she got excited and said "noodle! noodle!"

She was also sure to say "hiiiiiii" to every single person that walked past us on the sidewalk. She could run for mayor if she keeps this up!

Asleep in the back seat

After a hard day of wandering around the mountains, Nora got a long nap in this afternoon.

 

Horse ranches and Mount Rainier

 

Spring in the mountains

 

Check out my new sunglasses!

 

Mount Rainier

Here is Mount Rainier as seen from the Paradise Visitor's center...to get an idea of the scale of the snowbanks, check out the people standing on top of the one to the bottom right.

 

Back on the road...Mount Rainier

In the four months since we've been here, we have covered three of the cardinal directions...West (to the Quinault rainforest and the Olympic Peninsula), North (to the Skagit Valley for the tulip festival), and East (to Ellensburg, where Auntie Pea will move this fall). Today was the day for us to tackle the South...Mount Rainier.

Today was an auspicious day for this, mainly because it was the first day since last November that we have not had a single cloud in the sky. The temperature was in the high 60's-low 70's today, which made it the perfect day to make a run for the mountain (errr...volcano).

We packed a cooler full of goodies and headed down I-5. All of us had a great time checking out the magnificent sights of the Cascade Range and Mount Rainier National Park (the second national park we have visited in a week!) Within 2 hours we were up in the mountains, twisting and turning around the switchbacks and narrow two-lane roads inside the park.

Despite spring's official arrival in the Puget Sound area several weeks ago, the snow in the park was impressive...banks rose 10-15 feet on either side of the road. Once we reached the visitor center (at an altitude of 5000 feet, and aptly named "Paradise") we stumbled out of the car, our heads dizzy from the thin mountain air.

We had a nice picnic lunch at the visitor's center and drove as far as we could until roadblocks stopped us...many of the roads here are only open during the summer months (July-October).

Nora kept us all entertained and helped point out all of the things that she was seeing..."mountain," "water," "pretty". She also seems to have established quite a fondness for Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia" which she demanded we play over, and over, and over, and over again on the way home.

The next few posts are some highlights from the trip...enjoy!

 

At the falls with Grandma