picture of the week

Yesterday, as you know, was New Year’s Day. Will took the day off from work and wanted us to do something awesome as a family. We chose to visit Wildlife Safari, a “roaming zoo” about 150 miles away from where we live. I plan to do a longer post on our trip next week, so I’m not going to talk about it much here, but I wanted the Picture of the Week to be a bit of a teaser of things to come. 😉

Why, yes, that is an emu attacking our car!

Have a great weekend!

Blessings,

It’s officially the rainy season here in the Pacific Northwest. To “celebrate,” we purchased the boys (all of them, including Will) new rain boots, and a raincoat for Small Fry (which he is not wearing in these pictures – these were taken before we left, and we bought the coat while we were out that day). Will and Small Fry have never had any, and Seahawk and Munchkin either outgrow or wear out theirs each year. Mine are two years old but still in good shape, so I didn’t get new ones. When Will brought the boots home one night earlier this week, Small Fry was so excited! The kids were already in bed but not asleep, so Will let them out to try on their new boots. Small Fry and Munchkin got matching pairs; this is likely the last year Munchkin will have “fun” ones before he’s into the bigger sizes that come in black.

The morning after Will brought them home (the only way to convince Small Fry to go to bed was to promise him that he could wear his boots again in the morning), it was raining, so we all put on our jackets and boots and walked to the store. Small Fry absolutely loved going out in the rain with his boots on. There’s something magical about walking (and jumping) in puddles and staying dry!

Blessings,

Wendy

Love.

We’ve been walking a lot lately. Small Fry usually rides in his stroller, but he would almost always prefer to walk as well, and sometimes we let him. It really all depends on how big a hurry we’re in to get to where we’re going. The other day was one of the happy days when he got to walk, and the three boys were just too adorable walking in front of us to not document.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Blessings,

Wendy

We’ve been having quite a bit of car issues lately. I’m not going to go into the details here, but suffice it to say that we’ve decided to focus on biking rather than driving, at least until the rainy season hits. Then we’ll reevaluate. My previous bike was a pretty good one – a 70s or 80s beach cruiser that we picked up from a thrift store about a year ago. It was great for getting us back into biking, because it was really just a grownup version of a kid bike (one speed, pedal brakes). As we’ve been biking more and more lately (Will and the boys for the past several months, me for the past couple of weeks), it was clear that a single speed bike in our town just wouldn’t cut it. You see, you don’t notice it in a car, or really even on foot, but our town is quite hilly. Getting to downtown was fine; coming home was the problem (it’s about 3 miles each way). Pedaling a single speed bike up those hills was hard. So a couple of weeks ago, we started bike shopping. We found this one at the local big box store, and Will and I both immediately gravitated toward it. We’d look at it a couple of times a week, and we even got permission to take it for a test ride (around the outdoor – but fenced in – garden center). We just knew that this was destined to be my bike. So we saved up, got a few windfalls, and finally bought it. And let me tell you, it’s an absolute dream to ride! The hills are still a bit of work, but nothing compared to what they are on the cruiser. I couldn’t be happier with this new purchase!

And in case you’re wondering, since the photo was taken, we’ve taken the rack off of the back and replaced it with a baby seat for Small Fry. That little guy just adores going for bike rides!

Blessings,

Wendy

P.S. In case you’re interested in the details, or want to get one of these for yourself, it’s in the Schwinn 700C family of city bikes.