{pretty, happy, funny, real}

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~


Pretty:

The last (good) strawberries of this season meet the first (good) apples of the next season. Yum.

Happy:

A little dottery bowl I painted for Bethany with lyrics from the Scrubs musical. Basically, it's a flying-your-geek-flag way of saying "Hey, I'm glad you're my friend."

More pottery - Noah drew a sun with pencil (which burns off in the kiln), I traced it, and then he added fingerprint dots. I'm currently having a love affair with eating black bean soup out of this bowl.

Funny:

We bought Noah some cute froggy rainboots. He LOVES them so much that he's been wearing them every time we leave the house, including when he's wearing shorts and a tee because it's over 90 degrees out (fall in So Cal is a little... warmish sometimes).
On this particular morning, we had a breakfast date with my BIL and SIL who were visiting from Texas. On our way out the door, Noah decided to accessorize with his sunglasses and this shiny green necklace he'd gotten as a party favor months ago (and not played with or looked at in a long time). He found the dandelion in the front yard.
Great sense of style, no?!

Real:

Farm work is easier when you have a tractor... We harvested our butternuts (and one of the last bell peppers of the season) a few days ago. Noah was delighted to help.
(The makeshift fence on the right is protecting our freshly seeded grass.)


Pretty, happy, funny, real is the brainchild of these ladies here, who are encouraging their reader to find contentment in the everyday perfection and imperfection of life.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} pumpkin patch edition

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Last week, we met some friends at the pumpkin patch. It was a beautiful day, the kids got along great (as did the adults, haha), the petting zoo was filled with gentle creatures (it was the least scary petting zoo I've ever been to), and we only lost the kids in the corn maze for a very short moment. I call that a win.

Pretty:

I loved looking at the orange fields all around us.

pretty pumpkins

Happy:

Noah riding the tractor-pulled wagon

He loved picking up the pumpkins. It's serious business!

friendly, tame, soft, clean goats

 Funny:

self-portrait with a goat - because why not?!!

Lisa and the squash phone

"I like dis one!"

Real:

passed out on the way home

This nap? He fell asleep around 4pm and slept until we got home just before 5pm. It was 9:30 by the time he finally fell asleep for the night. So while this made for a peaceful ride home, it totally ruined my evening. Oh well - it was a small price to pay for such a fun day at the pumpkin patch!


Pretty, happy, funny, real is the brainchild of these ladies here, who are encouraging their reader to find contentment in the everyday perfection and imperfection of life.

our epic road trip, part 2

On day 3, we packed up early and headed back towards civilization. Our first stop was the (very busy with Sunday visitors) General Grant Tree, which is the second-largest sequoia.

Those giant sequoias are really impressive, but it's hard (bordering on impossible with my photo equipment) to actually capture their hugeness in a picture. As a matter of fact, it's hard to grasp just how tall those trees are even when you're standing right in front of them. Impressive, as I said.

Noah included for scale (and cuteness) - he is 37 inches tall (about 94 cm) and very cute.

When you "hike" to the Grant tree, the paved trail leads you by a fallen tree that can be walked through, which Noah really enjoyed.*




The next stop on our Tour de Sequoia National Park was Montecito Lake, which was pretty and pleasantly deserted. I'm not a fan of crowds, and we encountered quite a few people since we were visiting famous spots on a Sunday.
 
While all of the famous trees are fenced off, the less famous ones are more accessible, so we stopped at the side of the road and explored for a bit.

bad lighting, but one big tree!

 Stay tuned for the next installment - the one with the bear!

*While the hike-y side of me rolls her eyes at paved hiking trails, the until-recently stroller-pushing side of me as well as the side that highly approves of making things wheelchair-accessible applauds the paved trail. Yay for being accommodating!

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Pretty & Happy:

I've been doing some knitting with super-exciting, beautiful Noro yarn. It's Japanese and expensive, but the pattern called for it and when I saw it in the yarn store, I couldn't resist it. I bought it for the hat I made for myself, but I had (more than) enough left over to make a stocking cap for Noah. He's not a huge fan of it (*sigh*), but he does like to play with it. It's a little big, so he can actually pull it down over his entire face, which cracks him up.
Yesterday was the first real rainy day for the season - it rained all day and it was pretty chilly, so it was the perfect day to wear my hat for the first time. So much fun!
 
Funny:

I think they're funny little Halloweenish guys now that they're done, but this was one of those crafts that simply frustrated the living daylights out of me. It sounds so easy - you just use masking tape to tape off faces on glass jars, then you paint them with orange acrylic paint. Let them dry, remove the tape, stick in a tealight, and done.
Easy enough, I thought. (Famous last words thoughts.) I had plenty of glass jars that I'd saved from food. Sure, the paper labels were still stuck on them, but those would be easy enough to remove, right?! Wrong. I let those jars soak in hot water while Noah and I played at the park, but I still spent an hour scrubbing and rubbing and scraping bits of paper and glue off the jars. Meanwhile, Noah was excited to do a craft and kept asking me if we could start yet. Now, Mama? How about now?
Next, I needed to tape off the jars. Which... took another hour. And then I put 15 minutes on the timer, told Noah not to leave his room until the timer went off, and laid down in bed to recover from all that unforeseen work.
Then, Noah painted jars for FIFTEEN MINUTES. That was it. *sigh*
So, in retrospect: I should have stopped the label-removal-craziness and asked google how to do it right. I'm sure there's trick. And obviously, the craft wasn't really age-appropriate for a three-year-old - I wish I'd thought that part through.
Now - if I were to do this again, I'd just have Noah paint the jars orange and then paint the faces on with black paint later. Or mod-podge tissue paper onto the jars, which would eliminate the spottiness issues we had with the paint.

Real:

We got home from our vacation (in a rented minivan) to this. Bummer. My dad coached me through driving at a snail's pace to the gas station, then filled up the tire for me so we could go to the grocery store to fill the post-vacation void in the fridge. The next day, my parents, Noah, and I spent five long hours at Sears and in the mall (killing time while we waited). They were supposed to find and fix the leak (it's part of our warranty), but they couldn't find it and then they pointed out that the front tires were worn dangerously low (and unevenly), so we ended up buying four new tires and having the alignment adjusted. It was lengthy and expensive, but I actually learned a lot about tires. It was exactly the sort of decision I would have stayed out of had I had the choice, but when I realized I had to be the wo-man of the hour, I lived up to the challenge and actually felt sort of empowered. And the difference in driving the car was actually amazing, which surprised me.


Pretty, happy, funny, real is the brainchild of these ladies here, who are encouraging their reader to find contentment in the everyday perfection and imperfection of life.   

our epic road trip, part 1 (aka the one where nobody barfs)

Right after Labor Day, my parents flew in from Germany. The same week, we rented a minivan and hit the road.
 
We witnessed this beautiful sunset somewhere along my least favorite road in the universe. I had used google maps to plan our route, and we followed our directions through Bakersfield and Visalia, then made a left onto the CA 245. At first, we drove along orchards and farmland that were quite beautiful. Then, suddenly, the road became sort of hilly. "Papa is playing rollercoaster!" said Noah. And then I said "Slowdownifyoudon'twnatmetobarf. Please." And then we crawled along at a top speed of 35mph because it was all I could handle. What followed were hours of driving along a road so windy that we were pretty much the only car on it. Everyone who knew this road was driving along the flat land elsewhere. I spent hours staring straight ahead and focusing on not throwing up. It was miserable.
When we finally got off the 245, it was only to get onto the 180, which is also pretty windy. And by now it was dark and I was tired, but every time I closed my eyes, I felt sicker, so I forced myself to stay awake and stare and FOCUS.
Staying awake had one advantage: I saw all the wild life that was crossing the road and trying to get run over by a car! I'd never before witnessed the "deer in the headlights" effect on an actual deer! It was quite astounding, really: Five or six does started crossing the road as we came driving crawling along. One had gotten about half-way across the road, and she just froze and stared for a few seconds before she bolted back into the dark forest.
Next up was a cow (!) that was nonchalantly wandering along the road. (Three other adults also saw the cow, so I'm sure it wasn't an illness-induced hallucination.) It was big and slow and seemed to consider walking out into the road right in front of our car, but then thought better of it. I'm really not sure what a cow was doing wandering around Sequoia National Park at night, but it was there.
When we finally got to our hotel, it was 9:30. We forced ourselves to unload EVERYTHING from the car (bear safety) and then collapsed into our beds.

The fun part of arriving so late was getting to explore a totally new place in the morning. The lodge is right by the Kings River, and it's beautiful. The foresty nature smell is basically intoxicating.

After breakfast at the Snack Bar, we headed out for a hike.Sadly, the after-effect of my car-sickness of the night before was that I felt sick-ish as soon as the car started moving. I KNEW it was only in my head, and that helped me not let it spoil the day, but fun it was not. At least this was a quick drive - Cedar Grove Village is pretty far into the canyon at Kings Canyon National Park (after about a 15 minute drive, you get to "Road's End," which is named aptly). I didn't realize how far away from other civilization it was when I booked the hotel (I think I'd have looked for something more centrally located), but I'm glad I didn't because I really enjoyed being away from the (obnoxious) touristy crowds (Giant Sequoias, I'm looking at you!).
We drove about 10 minutes to the trailhead for Zumwalt Meadow and started our hike.
 

Big rocks all around - it's a canyon after all!

Noah hiked happily most of the time. When he asked to be carried, we simply said something like "WHOA, look at that tree! Do you want to go see it?" and about 95% of the time, that totally did the trick.
We encountered more wildlife:

On our way back to the lodge, we took a quick detour to Roaring River Falls. It's a quick 0.3 mile walk on a concrete path from the parking lot. In other words, the ideal hike for a tired three-year-old and his entourage.

Later that afternoon, The Husband was nice enough to take Noah out to the river so the rest of us could take naps. While they were out there, Noah nonchalantly grabbed a snake (!) out of the water. We're assuming that it was a garter snake, which is pretty harmless. Still - it was a bit unsettling.
Overall, though, a pretty good first day of vacation.

rules for hotel/store/snack bar