We headed out last Saturday for our first family camping trip. The original plan was to join the Seattle Cruiserheads Rimrock trip on Friday night, but I thought it would be better to not have the family’s first camping trip start out with setting up a tent at midnight so we opted for a Saturday morning departure.

We spent most of last week unpacking boxes looking for camping gear and then purchasing some new gear for family camping. We bought a new family tent, king size air mattress, pump, battery powered lantern to replace the ever fragile and dangerous propane one, and some other random do-dads.

After a painful trip to GI Joe’s on Friday night to get last minute stuff, we staged all the gear and went to bed.  In the morning, we loaded the 100 series and headed out around 9am.  We made a pit stop for a breakfast of champions at McDonald’s (custom McGriddles) then Peet’s for coffee, then hit the highway.  We stopped in Yakima for lunch at what turned out to be an Azteca-like mexican restaurant called El Porto or something.  From there we hit a couple of stores looking for a fishing permit, but struck out everywhere. The last place I went to in Tampico said “we don’t get permits around here, we just go fishing.”

From there, we hit the forest service road and made our way to Blue Lake.  It was a much longer drive than I anticipated.  Amanda manned the Delorme Topo on the laptop–which convenitently died just as the road started forking.  We spent some time trying to get it to work with the inverter with no luck, so we ran several of the roads eliminating them one at a time.  After striking out over and over trying to find the route, we worked some more on getting the laptop to work–which fortunately for us it started working.  We finally made our way to Blue Lake.  We arrived just after 3:30, just as the cruiserheads were getting here.  It was a long day in the car.  After a little rest, we got to setting up the new tent

And Thomas went right to work with the dirt.

We had a nice dinner and most of the cruiserheads called it an early night because they had a long day on the trail. I stayed up with Andy for a while and then hit the sack. It got pretty cold at night. Amanda and I froze our asses off, but the kids did great. We kept checking on Thomas thinking he was going to be a popsicle, but he was an inferno all night. The tent worked out well, but we need to upgrade the sleeping warmth technology.

I made a huge breakfast of pancakes, bacon and coffee. We ate and then started breaking camp. The cruiserheads bailed quick as they were going to take the trails to Hwy 12, but we took our time and headed out the way we came in. This time we stopped for a few photo opportunities like this one:

Our neighbor Willy gave us a sweet purple Star Wars princess bike. I took Thomas up to the top of the street to test out his new ride.

The training wheels had seen better days…the right one is essentially useless. We did a few laps and Thomas only ate it twice. By the end he was starting to get the hang of peddling and stopping; however, his response time needs serious improvement. He had a good time and and that is all that really matters.

So we are moved into the new house and finally had time to download the pictures and videos from the cameras.  Here is a video of Charlotte’s first meal.

Our resolution of blogging more is failing miserably. We promise, once we are done with house remodel hell we will get more active. In the meantime, we did post several videos to youtube a few weeks ago. You can check out the collection here.

As for the title, that is one of Thomas’ favorite things to say right now.

Thomas brought me a present using his moffett forklift and delivery truck tonight.  He pulled up the truck and said I have a delivery and pulled out one of his foam blue blocks and said I have a box for you.

Me: What’s in the box?

Thomas: I got you a present.

Me: What is it?

Thomas: A new phone screen.

Me: [Shocked that Thomas knew I broke my phone screen and was on top of it enough to get me a new one]  Wow, thanks Thomas!  That is a great present.  Where did you get it?

Thomas: I got it at Target.  I was in the red aisle and I got you a red phone screen.

Me: When did you go to Target?

Thomas: Because they had them there.

Me: How did you get there?

Thomas: I took the mobile crane and went there.

Me: Where did you park the mobile crane?

Thomas: In the other parking lot I guess. [off to play with his mobile crane]

Me: Well thank you very much Thomas.

My phone is still on its last legs, I have a Q on order to  replace my Treo, but I am really not looking forward to life without the touchscreen.

We are not really good at keeping this thing updated even though there is lots to report.

Charlotte is really filling out, here is a picture of her practicing her Dr. Evil pose.

Thomas is really digging being a big brother, even if his little sister can push him out of the way.

Overall we are doing great. We are looking forward to moving into the new house, but enjoying condo living until then

It has been very hectic since the last blog post.  We survived the holidays and are continuing to live through the never ending house remodel thatI have been spending every free moment either working on or worrying about.

Last weekend I threw caution to the wind and went on the Redfin Whistler trip.  It wasn’t as spur of the moment as I normally roll, because Alex and Matt made the plans for the trip several months ago–a time when the idea that we would still be homeless in February seemed preposterous.  The spur of the moment part came in learning that we could actually get into our storage unit which resulted in me spending four hours unpacking and repacking the storage units to retrieve my gear.

When I asked Thomas what he thought about my trip he had the following to say

Overall the trip was a blast.  We left Seattle Thursday evening, made great time to Whistler.  Hit the slopes all day Friday and Saturday and headed home Sunday morning just in time for have Thomas teach me about football via the superbowl.

I swapped out the orange theme picture with the screwdriver picture.  As Alex pointed out, the size isn’t quite right for a Wordpress header art which is typically 192 x 740 pixels.  We will roll with this image for now, but we are on the lookout for a new image.  So let us know if you have any suggestions.

We have been trying to keep up with the requests for new photos as well as get some pictures to send out with holiday cards.  Amanda went so far as to go buy a dark velvet-like blanket to simulate the black velvet cloth they use in a photo studio to do a photo shoot of the kids last week.

Here is one of Charlotte demonstrating her impressive neck muscle control

Here is one of Thomas and Charlotte almost looking at the camera:

I came home the other night and Thomas was going on and on about oranges on our blog.

I explained to him that was the way it came by default and that we should pick out a new picture together.  He was very excited about his new orange phillips screwdriver that he wanted to have a screwdriver as his picture.  We found this really cool picture on flickr.

To which Amanda of all people said we should make this all web2.0 and have people vote on which picture to use.  You heard the lady.  What should we use?  Or should we just stick with the oranges?