Lost Lake

For Megan's six month birthday we decided to take her on her first camping trip: a weekend outting to Lost Lake.

We had a wonderful weekend fishing, canoeing, and hanging out with the Gingeriches. As you can see, Megan found the fishing particularly exciting.



The fishermen were quite successful, catching 11 trout plus a crawdad!

Camping with Megan was fairly easy, although we definitely didn't travel light! We had the Pack'n Play, a bouncy chair, a huge baby backpack, and a diaper bag in addition to all the regular camping gear. Fortunately, we had a BIG tent that accommodated the Pack'n'Play easily. Aside from sleeping in four layers of clothes, it was just like home to Megan.

Truck Driver

Since going back to work, Mac and I have been sharing vehicles, or maybe it would be more correct to say, using each other's car. Though both car titles are in both of our names, the truck is Mac's and the Corolla is very difinitely mine. But the carseat only fits in the Corolla, and so I head off every day in the truck.

Getting into a vehicle after Mac has driven it requires a slew of adjustments: The seat is too far back, the backrest is too far reclined, the rearview mirror is out of alignment, the radio is on way too loud, and the air conditioner is on way too high. Additionally, I have to make several mental adjustments. The Corolla has manual transmission and I often find my left foot on the truck brake as it searches for the missing clutch. His radio presets are all wrong, particularly that hard rock station residing at preset number two. And I can't tell you how many times I have tried to unlock the truck with the Corolla key.

Mostly, I hate driving the truck. It is a gas-guzzling behemoth of a vehicle more suitable for a monster car-rally than a daily commute. Entering the truck requires acrobatic agility on the days I wear a skirt and the thing requires almost a bus length of curb space to parallel park. It's no easy manuever to get it into a regular lot either as it doesn't exactly have a turning radius to brag about.

But every now and then a wave of pleasure washes over me while driving the truck: I kick ass! I could mow down any little Honda or Saturn out there. I am king of the road!

My satisfaction lasts just until those Hondas and Saturns swiftly and easily pull into a parking space ahead of me while I fumble around to get my vehicle parked properly; then I want my Corolla back.

Six months!

It's hard to believe but Megan is six months old already!

SOLD!

We sold our house yesterday! We got $1505 more than we were asking but we lost our washer, dryer and refridgerator in the process. You know what that means: NEW APPLIANCES!! We are excited that things moved so quickly and we hope that all will go smoothly with the inspection (today at 1:00!), especially after seeing my parents and my sister going through so much angst with the sales of their homes. Now if only we can keep being meticulously clean...

Food for thought

Today I deemed Megan "close enough" to meeting the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation of no solid food until six months. I figured I've done my part to earn my exclusive-breast-feeding gold star (or maybe two - one for each nipple!) and so today Megan had her first go with rice cereal.

Megan thought the high-chair was keen. She still hasn't mastered the whole sitting-up-without-face-planting thing and so she really liked being upright and up high to watch all the kitchen action. That action consisted of turning dehydrated white flakes into a gloopey colorless paste suitable for toothless consumption.

Megan seemed pretty ambivalent to the cereal. She had a few bites but wasn't really begging for more nor was she fighting it off. However, she was very interested in my bagel later in the morning so I don't think she is going to give up on this eating thing just yet.

Displaced

Tuesday we had five people come view the house in addition to the Realtor preview. We spent a lot of the day displaced from the house, but Megan didn't seem to mind.

Noah's Ark

This weekend we loaded up our ark (ok, it was really a Toyota Tacoma) with all the species we wanted to keep after the 40 days and 40 nights of escrow.

We took about 75 plants down to Salem including several big hydrangeas.

The hydrangeas got planted along the house and the rest of the stuff got planted in a temporary location behind the garage. Unfortunately, the hot weather and transplant stress may have caused a few fatalities; I guess only time will tell for certain.

We also moved the chickens down to Salem this weekend. Tuesday we learned a little about the downside of living in the wilderness: we found Ruby's remains as some local creature had obviously had a big chicken dinner. Ruby had been quite sickly of late and had stopped laying about two weeks ago; however, we still feel bad that her death was so violent. We also fear for Pearl, who is the youngest, healthiest and strongest of the batch, but is nonetheless still just a dumb chicken.