Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens & some good southern cooking

Wow! What a weekend! Sean and I had originally planned on making a trip to Forks, WA and hike to Second Beach, but we thought we'd save that trip for when we have a little more time. Mount Rainier was the next choice. It's been on our list of things we wanted to see while we're in the area and it's much closer than heading to Forks.

Mt. Rainier from afar

We headed into Mt. Rainier National Park from the Nisqually entrance and headed up to Paradise Area. We wanted to find an easier trail for the kids this time around (the last one ended up being a few miles longer than planned and initially a little steeper than planned) and this area had many easy, short trails.

Kids running down the path.

This guy was pretty happy to finally make it to see Rainier finally :)

Summer wanted to go a little further to try to reach snow and Sean was more than happy to take her a little further with her. She has been nicknamed our "hiking buddy" during a few of our hikes.

In the meantime I took the other three back down and ended up walking over to the Myrtle Falls area.

Myrtle Falls to the right & Mt. Rainier to the back left of the boys.

Sunset as we left Mt. Rainier.

Such a beautiful area even at this time of year! And we were quite lucky that the weather was on our side and the roads were good to go. This time of year it's required that all vehicles carry chains due to weather variability. That would have really screwed up our trip had it been snowing at the mountain on Saturday since we don't have chains.

The weekend adventure continued as we made our way west so we could visit Mount St. Helens the next day. Since we really didn't plan this until Saturday morning, we found a hotel and place to eat in Chehalis that evening.

After filling ourselves with the hotel breakfast, we hit the road and stopped at the Mount St. Helens Visitor Center about 5 miles east of Castle Rock. We watched a video about the eruption and checked out the information they held there.

The negative about visiting this time of year is the fact that many places were closed along the way. I was looking forward to taking the kids to the Forest Learning Center (I had read many great reviews), but it had closed the end of October.

The Science & Learning Center at Coldwater was open so we stopped there to waste a little time hoping that the clouds/weather would clear a bit for us to have a chance at seeing the mountain. We had also noticed that it was getting pretty chilly out. And as expected, it was getting cooler as we gained elevation.

The Johnson Ridge Observatory was also closed, but the road was still open to get to it so we thought we'd take a chance to see the mountain from the viewing point there. No luck. It seemed worse. I did get a shot of Mason and Sean in front of the observatory. We three were the only ones that left the van in an off chance we could see anything. Everyone else didn't want to brave the cold to do the same (we had sweatshirts, gloves and hats, but it had dropped to 40-41 degrees once we arrived at the top).

Below is a snapshot I grabbed from a Mount St. Helens volcano cam two days after we had been there. It gives you a real-time view of the mountain. The shots are taken from the Johnston Ridge Observatory. I can't believe we were soooo close to it and we couldn't see it that day. Makes me sad :(

The idea was brought up to wait it out for awhile to see if things would clear, but how frustrating would that have been if we waited an hour or more and it still was out of sight. I guess there will need to be another visit some day.

Our journey was coming to a close and it was time to start our way back to Woodinville. One thing that we've been wanting to do is to eat at a place that was on the show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Sean found one that was in Tacoma called Southern Kitchen. It sounded great and the menu looked good for everyone so we tried it out.

Oh my! Our food was wonderful! No complaints from any of us (I don't think). I would definitely go there again if I'm ever in the area. And the waitress we had was great, which is always a bonus.

That ends our weekend. It was short and sweet, but we packed a lot in and it was a lot of fun!

If you like to look at pictures, I've added links below to our Snapfish albums. The pictures from our day traveling to Mount St. Helens aren't the most exciting because of the weather :( Sorry.

Mount Rainier - Canon

Mount Rainier - iPhone pics

Mount St. Helens - Canon & iPhone

Halloween 2014

Halloween was a little different for us this year. Originally we had planned on being in a house by now, but unfortunately we aren't yet, so many of our Halloween/fall items are still in storage. The kids and I were able to find one tub with a few things in, but the tub we really needed was too hard to access so we have minimal decorations.

Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkin patches aren't quite the same either. I'm assuming some of the reason they are limited to going all out like we are used to is due to the rain they get here so I'll try not to be too irritated. And it may be that we just haven't found the right one yet. On any note, we still tried to have a little fun.

Mason is catching Summer in height :)

After our first attempt to a pumpkin patch, we realized we probably needed to go get rain boots for everyone (well, for the kids). It gets a little muddy around here.

I even had to help this girl get out of a messy situation :)

Treats for the Cousins

The kids and I wanted to prepare a Halloween surprise for their cousins. They miss them and we thought it would be fun to make a special treat to send them. Where did we go for our idea? Pinterest, of course!

We also sent a plastic Halloween canister full of Beggin' Strips for Marley and Cocoa. Mom has been watching Marley for us since we moved and the kids have been missing him immensely as well :(

Trick or Treat

I was a little stressed thinking about trick-or-treating since we are still in an apartment and not in a neighborhood yet. We ended up taking the kids to downtown Bothell to get it done and it actually worked out nicely. They filled their buckets quickly and we didn't have to walk blocks and blocks to do it. 

What made a great finish to our night out was what we found when we got back. The neighbors on the first level of our building made Diagon alley. Hagrid greeted everyone and directed them into the alley.

Upon entering, they were to sit in the chair and let the "sorting hat" determine what house they belonged in. The kids had a hoot with this.

* Update: I guess it's being argued that Noah was put into
Gryffindor & not Slytherin. We we aren't 100% sure.

After grabbing their treats, we headed upstairs to order pizza and get our treats ready.

Witch cupcake kit was found at Albertsons.

Graveyard Dirt Dessert - courtesy of Pinterest

After filling ourselves with all of our goodies, we followed with tradition and put in a Halloween type movie: Ghostbusters!

Birthday Weekend in Leavenworth

Obviously I'm a few weeks behind on this post since we trekked to Leavenworth four weeks ago! Sean and I had stumbled across an article or something regarding Leavenworth's Oktoberfest celebration that they host. It sounded exciting and it was a great weekend to make a getaway so we hit the road.

The river alongside the road and the amazing fall colors lured us into pulling over to peek at things.

After enjoying a little bit of nature, we continued on to Wenatchee (hotels were booked in Leavenworth by the time we decided to go there for the weekend so Wenatchee was the next best thing), which was around 30 minutes southeast of Leavenworth. We hit a Mexican restaurant just down the road from the hotel before settling in for the night. The waiter talked us into the larger margaritas :)

The next morning we stopped at Stutzman Ranch to pick apples. This was a first for us and we really enjoyed it. Next year we'd like to go back during the summer and pick their rainier cherries.

Our day was off to a great start and to keep it going, we hit a candy store that was on our way from the apple farm to the Oktoberfest celebration in Leavenworth. Aplets & Cotlets Candy Kitchen is in Cashmere, WA and we made it just in time for a mini tour. 

Anyone a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia? If so, you'll be excited to hear that they make Turkish Delights here :)

Now it was time to get to the real reason why we headed east: Oktoberfest fun! We were a tad on the early side so the kids did a little rock climbing to waste time.

Sean found the perfect sign for Madison to pose by. I'm sure many other parents with teenagers can relate to this once in awhile.

If you can't read it after enlarging the picture it reads, "Raising teenagers is like being pecked to death by chickens." She was more than happy to take a picture by it as if she's telling us she agrees.

The line was quite long to get into the Oktoberfest celebration area and we thought we might miss the keg tapping, but we made it. First thing was first: purchasing our steins to fill with beer :)

The boys did a little bit of chicken fighting. . . or I guess

it's more accurate to say chicken pecking.

Summer and Sean danced to the chicken dance.

We all had a great time, but it did get a little long for the kids so we headed back to the hotel to relax and order pizza. We are already planning another trip back over Thanksgiving weekend or sometime before Christmas to see the Christmas Lighting Festival and the Village of Lights. Leavenworth is such a neat little town.

What a perfect weekend! We hit the road in the morning to get back for Madison's softball game and Noah's soccer match. Before getting too far, we had to stop to take a few pictures of scenery that caught our attention.

We had taken so many pictures that I've included a link to our Snapfish albut with all of our photos from our Leavenworth weekend (both iPhone and real camera). That way I didn't become too photo crazy on this post :) Enjoy!