Sunday afternoon

This afternoon was one of the nicest days we've had thus far, so we went down to the Nature Reserve that is about 30 miles south of where we live.  Then we stopped at Ryan's job site so he could show us the progress  and so Jack could play in the skid. :)

the Nature Reserve 

Loving the hike!

All boy...throwing rocks and sticks into the running water

It's been cool to see such a variety of landscapes

More rocks...

And...the real reason we're here :)
As with pictures of the mountains, this picture
doesn't do justice to how big this really is.

Trip up the Columbia

On Saturday we took a day trip up the Columbia River.  It was a beautiful drive.  We stopped in Wanatchee for a walk along the river and the Farmer's Market, where we picked up some varieties of pears  that we don't see at HyVee back home. :)  Then we headed up the mountain to Leavenworth--a cute little Bavarian villiage where we had lunch and a bakery treat and checked out a few little shops.  We found a great apple orchard on the way down the mountain--it was fun to do something just for Jack.  He's been such a great sport on our trips.  From there we drove up to Lake Chelan.  It was a pretty mountain lake, but didn't compare to our drive up the river.  Could have skipped the extra time driving, but oh well!

Headed up the river

The Columbia River at Wantchee 

Walking by the river 

Leavenworth
All the shops and restaurants had this cute style 

There were some fun little shops in Leavenworth,
like this Nutcracker shop

Jack's favorite part of the apple orchard

Shopping at the orchard :)

Our Place

I can't remember who, but someone asked for a few pictures of our place.  You may have already seen this much from other pictures, but this is it...I took one picture and turned around and took the other.  ...unless you really wanted to see the bedroom and bathroom.  We did a little rearranging.  For example...though very nice looking, decorative plants take up entirely too much room when you have a little guy in a place this size.  Not complaining about the size...honestly...it's been rather refreshing actually!

"Happy"

When Jack is happy...i.e. he likes what he's eating, what he's playing, what he's seeing...he says "happy! happy!", sometimes accompanied by "happy feet"...i.e. dancing feet or for the Helmkamps "Missy's prance", as Ryan calls it.  He has been a very happy little guy since we got here.  He seems to enjoy the change in scenery.

Oatmeal w/ a View
(our front windows look out to the lake) 

I cleaned out the little closet in the kitchen for Jack to play in.
It's his new "house"...luckily it hasn't crossed his mind that mom & dad
crawled into his "house" at home to read to him...not gonna work here!

Fewer toys actually seems to be better...he's already spent hours w/
his tractor.  We'll see if it fails to entertain him after a month!

This should have been with the vacation pictures...
Jack was very interested as Ryan showed him pictures
of what we were going to see on vacation.  "Moutmouns"
(mountains) is a new vocab word for him now.
Pretty sure he wouldn't have picked that up in Iowa!

Weekend Trip Part 2

Mount St. Helens

We're right at the beginning of the snowy season in the mountains here and unfortunately we got in on the first snow in the Cascades on our trip to see Mount St. Helens.  For those of you who are familiar with our fogged out 4th of July at Mt. Rushmore...we were amazed at how similar Mount St. Helens and Mt. Rushmore look in the fog/snow. :P  We decided we will probably need to warn our kids that when we try to go see something cool there's a good chance it might be covered in fog!  We decided to save Mt. Rainier for another weekend so we could actually see it.  We're not holding our breaths though, as there may be snow at those altitudes from here on out.

Of course pictures never quite do justice to sights like this.
This valley was pretty impressive and I'm pretty sure on a clear day
you'd be able to see the mountain up the valley.

In lower elevations we hit some of the fall colors just
about perfectly--(you can kind of see them in this picture.)

The mountains were beautiful in the snow!  I was very thankful for our trusty truck
and such a good driver so I could just relax and enjoy the view.

At the top at the observatory-(Mount St. Helens in the background).
This was actually our second try--the first time you couldn't see ANYTHING,
so personally, I was quite impressed with the bottom 2/3's we saw by the time
we headed back down the mountain!

The valley below the mountain.

The base of Mount St. Helens

Waiting for the movie to start at the observatory.

Highway 12

This highway would have made the trip worth it in my mind.  So fun to see the changes from one side of the mountains to the other and at the varying altitudes.  We hit snow at the top of the pass and I can't tell you how beautiful it was covering the perfectly straight, TOWERING pines that lined each side of the road.  We hit a little less dense forest on the way down and followed a creek for awhile, so we decided to stop and play.  The last part of the drive was through a more open valley with rocky mountains towering on each side.  (Obviously the dry side of the range.)  This is the way we'll take back to Mt. Rainier if we go.  I'll be happy to make the drive again, even if we don't do the hikes we want to or see quite the view we're hoping for.  I was awesome!

There wasn't a whole lot of room to hike up and down the shore,
so we did what we could and then just played in the rocks.

Jack would've stayed playing in the rocks
much longer than we did, had we let him.

Jack was thoroughly impressed with throwing sticks into the creek.
When he saw these pictures he kept saying "ticks! ticks!".

Part 1 of Our Weekend Trip

Snoqualmie Falls

The Space Needle

Jack enjoyed the ride up the elevator the most.  He wanted "more" as soon as we stepped off.

Downtown Seattle

Enjoying the view from the top.

The Sound

The Needle

Our WA Backyard

Sunset

Sunrise