sorry for the long absence. I’ve been busy, mainly just trying to keep the lid on things around here. It is summer (finally) and we’ve been trying to spend a lot of time outside just soaking it up.
anyway, by way of getting down to business, here is a (somewhat photo-journalistic) recap of what the last month or so has looked like:
1. First, we went camping. It was the middle of june, and seemed like a reasonably safe time to plan a camp-out, and so we went to the coast for a weekend of hiking and car-camping.
unfortunately, the weather didn’t really cooperate.
cora was a really good sport about it. and yes, that is a full-body fleece bunting. in june.
It helped that it was so pretty. It is hard to believe that we live in a big city but are less than 2 hours away from All Of This.
which came in handy when we packed up after only one night and went home to eat thai takeout in our living room in front of our fireplace and appreciate how dry it is inside our house.
2. Also, in May, Cora’s cousin Grey turned 1.
the party was somethin else. Grey’s mom, (my cousin) Carrie, is really good at that sort of thing.
cora’s favorite part was the bubbles. and, obviously, the party hats.
3. Then, a couple weeks later, uncle ben challenged uncle henry to a rib-off.
ben was feeling smug. and ready to go to town on those ribs.
We ate an ungodly amount of ribs. In fact, somehow between the four of us we polished off four racks of ribs, a pot of beans, a large bowl of potato salad and a lot of beer. There weren’t any leftovers.
Henry won the rib-off, but just barely.
4. Last week Cora and I took another trip to Lake Tahoe to visit my parents (who increasingly just think of/refer to themselves as Cora’s Mimi and Granddaddy) and also my dear friend Stephanie who was out for a little vacation.
Lake Tahoe is pretty breathtaking in the summer. The lake changes color (navy to teal to aqua to silver back to navy) over the course of the day, and is perfectly clear… you can see (supposedly) sixty feet below the surface.
my hair is getting progressively shorter. I should probably take Henry’s approach for a while and just not go to the hairdresser.
that red house is my parent’s new digs. their house is altogether adorable and homey, and the view is magnificent… camp is just below them.
we had a great time. it was so good to catch up with stephanie and just get to relax at mom and dad’s. henry stayed in portland and got a lot of studying done for his licensing exam. I’m glad he got so much work done, but I would just like to say *for the record* that travelling alone with an infant is hard work. especially when both parent and child have come down with respiratory infections and are feeling tired and surly.
5. Otherwise, we are just going on about our business. Spending a lot of time in the yard trying to keep Cora from eating dirt and grass and pushing her in the swing… cooking a fair bit (though I have hit a creative slump in the kitchen and begun to hate it– I’m hoping to have a breakthrough sometime soon)… working on a revolving list of house projects that include sanding/painting the ginormous round dining table I scored off of craigslist recently… watching Cora flirt with the idea crawling and enjoying her increasingly coherent babbling and laughing. Here are a few more recent pictures of her for Those Of You who keep asking:
and I think that about does it. I’ll try to be a more responsible blogger in the future and not cream you in the face with a whole month’s worth of posts.
but, on the other hand, considering it has taken me a whole day just to put this one together, maybe not…
in short: we went down to visit my mom and dad last month for a week at their new digs on the banks of lake tahoe. my dad is the new director of zephyr cove retreat center, and got a pretty sweet little cabin on the lake in with the package. enjoy a post long on pictures and short on discussion, as the pictures speak for themselves.
