During our trip to Utah...Brent had but one objective:
To climb a mountain. One of the big ones. And so he did...with his brother Jonny.
The Pfieferhorn:
Early start.
great cellular reception!
FANTASTIC!
They met this fun family on the top...
I hope our family is like theirs someday.
(Could we ever persuade our kids to spend Labor Day doing this?)
ah! Salt Lake City. How I miss you.
...and we are loosing gravity, Houston.
The hills ARE alive!
(with the sound of music)
Yes, the nursery theme is "The Wood Between the Worlds" too. I still need to post pictures of it, but it's not quite done. I need someone who does a little bit o' vinyl.
The diapers are g-diapers. We are liking them so far. We are using them at home during the day only. And we are stuffing them with pre-folds and hemp inserts instead of the ridiculously expensive 'flushable' inserts.
(Again with the innovative baby product reviews...someone should be paying me!)
Little Ollie...all ready for bed. He loves to be swaddled and will fall asleep with the pacifier.
(Alright...since I'm on a roll, I'll also say that I love 'The Happiest Baby on the Block' DVD. Ollie does wonders with 'the 5 S's'...check it out from the library)
brothers...
You can do this with the seat. Or you can face it forward. Reclining, not reclining, footrest up or down.
OR
Take the whole seat off all together...and put your car seat on instead. Cool!
I LOVE this stroller! I plan on doing a LOT of jogging this year. Half-marathon next spring anyone? Canyonlands? Odgen? Salt Lake? I'm making myself accountable to YOU bloggerland.
Best of all...this stroller was CHEAP as far as cool strollers go. Kolcraft Countours...and I give it 5 stars! The frame without the seats actually folds up small enough to fit in the minuscule space behind the third row of seats in our Highlander. The last stroller I bought was a Phil and Teds (also a cool stroller with the second seat) and this MUCH cheaper stroller is much more durable.
8.28.10
Brent has been asking
(well begging) me to drop him off at the top of Larch Mountain so that he can run 7 miles down the trail, through the forest, and down to the bottom of Multnomah Falls. At first we just planned on leaving the kids with my sister and doing the run together. But then I got pregnant. Twice. And then Brent decided he would go it alone. But after Elsa died I had a really hard time letting him out of my sight. Seeing him off for work was hard enough. But running down a mountain by himself (albeit only 7 miles) where there are wild animals, or he could run too fast and skid off a cliff, or some crazy person could attack him...those images just didn't work for me.
But then I told Brent that I wanted a new stroller for Oliver. And BAM! Guess what he pulled on me? "You can get the stroller if you'll drop me off at the top of Larch Mountain tomorrow." So...
...we took a sweet 2 week, 5 day old chubby cheeked baby and drove on up to Larch Mountain...
(a place where, it seems we went quite often during Ollie's pregnancy)
And Brent consented to hiking up to the top of the mountain with us first...I want to get back in shape, ya know! (Hiking to the top of the mountain consists of a long paved pathway and a bunch of stairs...about a mile each way).
boys on stairs
view from the top: Mt. Hood
and Mt. Adams (I think)
(You can also see Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Jefferson from Larch Mountain.)
I LOVE that ring sling! I can hike and breastfeed at the same time. (Sorry if TMI!)
It saves us a lot of sitting around and waiting time.
(The top of Larch Mountain is fenced in for your kids' safety...sheer cliffs on 3 sides!)
Just before Brent's big descent. (Time for me to pray.)
Brent's BIG adventure...camera in one hand, GPS in the other, cell phone in pocket (!)
(Nice hair, Kramer!)
the road less traveled, the path less taken
(that's where Brent wants to be)
the soft glow in the wood
All the while he was running in Brent dream land, I was driving down the mountain and around to the Old Colombia River Gorge Highway...to the bottom of Multnomah Falls to pick him up. I did indeed say a prayer (yes, I know that I was being very paranoid...but I've lost my dad and my daughter both too young and both very unexpectedly), and I felt peace and comfort. It was a beautiful drive. Imagine driving through scenery like in the pictures above (the kids are all quiet). And feeling a general sense of happiness, well-being, and spirituality. Like God and Elsa are loving me both at the same time. And I am happy. It's the first time I feel TRULY happy in a long time. And I know the depression is officially over. I am able to remember the joy and the excitement that we felt in moving to Oregon again...the greenery, the landscape, the beauty. I realize that I made it. I made it through the hardest year of my life.
I pull up to the Multnomah Falls parking lot. It is a busy day...many tourists. I get the kids out of the car and feel the rush of excitement that I felt the first time we came to Multnomah Falls. We all hike up to the bridge, and we keep on hiking until we meet up with Brent...safe and sound. He is beaming.
(This picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. I was too lazy to dig up my own picture from my files.)
