Last weekend, by the joint power of the miracles of flight, corporate apartments, and people to watch our kids, I got to spend two and a half days with two of my very favorite people in the whole wide world!
Here's our attempt at taking selfies at every remarkable tourist attraction in Seattle...
We ate as much wonderful Seattle food as we could fit in our bellies!
We visited the sights
We especially enjoyed the girlie sights (Steve: you went to a whole museum full of blown glass? Ugh)
We got sunshine, wind, rain, and clouds - the full Seattle spectrum
The Space Needle was windy...
...but beautiful!
We tried to hit all the sights, but I think we might have missed a few - probably time to plan another girls' weekend!!!
A few weeks ago we spent a completely perfect Fall Break weekend in Goblin Valley. Seriously, everything was fantastic - we got a great campsite in our favorite area of the BLM land outside of the park, the weather was cool at night and warm during the day, we had zero van issues (miracle) and we got to meet up with old friends who moved away from Utah a few years ago (read: our kids had more kids to go romp with - a win all around!).
It was really, really hard to pull just a few photos from the weekend to share with you, but I'll try to be brief. Credit to Sarah on most of these.
Rainy looking great in her campsite
The best part about camping at Goblin Valley is that there's unlimited climbing starting about 20 feet from the van!
The dogs get to know their temporary desert home.
The children roam freely
We plan outings (Jamie plans, others mock)
We marvel at God's creation
Of course, we had to hit Goblin Valley State Park, where we rather miraculously located the Shaffers.
We explored several new-to-us canyons this trip, which was a ton of fun. It meant more driving with our "lap dogs" but it was well worth it and we discovered several hikes we'd love to do again. First was Big Wild Horse Canyon.
Again, Rainy was magnificent
To boldly go where no Volkswagen has gone before...
Big Wild Horse Canyon is... well... a lot bigger than Little Wild Horse Canyon
Really big.
Ben discovered his own mini-arch!
WanYing discovered a much bigger one!
Next was can't-miss Little Wild Horse Canyon. It was super-impressive as always, but I'm sure glad we did it first thing in the day because by the time we were exiting the canyon hordes of fall breakers were descending.
We also explored Crack Canyon, which ended up being an amazing off-the-beaten-path jewel.
There was ample climbing to be enjoyed as well as several slot canyons.
Our Fall Break trip was perfect - lots of dirt, lots of romping, lots of climbing, and lots of time with good friends. Now to plan the next adventure!
Our Pokemon Halloween is ready to go! We have Vulpix, Pikachu, Ash Ketchum, and a poke stop.
Ladies and gentlemen, we proudly present The Making of Halloween 2016:
Step 1: The Inspiration
Our house has been fairly Pokemon-heavy for the last few months. A daughter in upper elementary and a son in middle school who has a phone make us the definition of the target demographic for Pokemon Go and the entire Pokemon franchise. The Pokemon theme was an early decision.
Step 2: Which Pokemon?
We looked through pages of images of Gen 1 Pokemon to find critters that met our stringent qualifications of:
Vaguely bunny or bear-shaped for ease of sewing (Mom's rule)
Completely adorable (girls' rule)
We decided on:
Pikachu
Vulpix. It turns out that this color scheme is for a "shiny Vulpix" but, whatever, it matched the fleece colors available at the fabric store.
And we started sewing! (necklaces by WanYing)
Step 3: Assembly
For weeks our dining room table has looked like this - some combination of fabric, sewing machine, solder, and LEDs. I think it's a happy sort of strange equilibrium state for us.
I attacked the Vulpix first because I was intimidated by the six tales situation. I think it turned out pretty well, except that Sasha can only sit if perched at the end of a chair. A small price to pay for fabulous.
Vulpix - check!
And so we began Pikachu
Final steps- eye and ear placement
Tah dah! The Pokemon are complete!
Step 4: Programming and lots of swearing
But the saga was not over, no, not by a longshot. There were still 217 LEDs to get moving into poke stop-like colors configurations, attached to a Raspberry Pi, strapped to a kid, and attached to a three-wheeled unicycle.
Hours... and hours... and hours of programming later, the poke stop was complete!
The whole ensemble!
Here's a video of the poke stop during the daytime:
But it's all so much more spectacular at night with the rotating poke ball and transition from blue to magenta!
Our work here is done. And now there is only candy.
