Stratford Family

Now it’s time to share our photos from the second part of our trip in Idaho. The 6 hour drive from Seattle was pretty easy as we were all exhausted from touring the city. Although Pfeiffer didn’t sleep and had a few emergency running to the bathroom trips on the way we made it to Hope just in time for dinner. Our last trip to Idaho was three years ago when C was 18 months and I was prego with P. On that trip we had a lot of fun, but we tried to do too much, driving all around seeking out fun destinations. This trip was the opposite, we stayed at the house and played on the dock and just relaxed – it was so fantastic! We spent lots of time on and enjoying the view of Lake Pend Oreille.

I did a lot of this:

and the most relaxing activity – paddling out and then laying in the little boat letting the current bring me back to the dock

the girls did a lot of rock collecting, driftwood collecting, moss collecting…..more fun than noisy plastic toys!

we said hello to so many cute deer, there are certainly more deer than people who reside in Hope, they came to say hello

the girls had lots of fun drawing and playing with Uncle Jeff, and I thoroughly enjoyed his cooking, which meant I didn’t even have to cook one dinner!

the neighbor let us borrow his canoe and we had some fun adventures paddling around to the little rock beaches – I’m happy to report my shoulder held up to its first real physical test post surgery, I was a little sore, but just muscle sore, no shoulder pain!

and the most fun part for all of us was playing in the water off the dock

we had such a wonderful trip – most of all thanks to GiGi for sharing her gorgeous home with us so we could share in the beauty and relaxation.

thanks for the fun Idaho, we’ll be back!

And now for the slideshow:

The first leg of our adventures was a quick and easy flight from Long Beach to Seattle – PLou’s first airplane trip and she did great. We took a taxi to the hotel and were off adventuring by noon. We stayed at the Ace – a small boutique minimalist hotel with a really nice staff who seemed amused by our noisy children rather than annoyed (which is more than we could have hoped for!) Our first day took us to the Sculpture garden where Charlotte took her notepad and pencil around drawing all the sculptures.

After some lunch and a rest at the hotel we headed out to Pike’s Place Market and a walk to meet Jeff who had arrived on a later flight.

That evening we went to the pizza spot across from our hotel, which was pretty tasty and then headed down to the space needle to check things out. They had little carnival rides awaiting us tourists and the girls and I took a carousel ride. Then we walked down to the Frank Gehry designed music museum, it was closed but provided a great backdrop to a song and dance number by the girls.

And then walked the maze painted on the ground for about 10 minutes.

A busy but very fun first day!

We decided to take a Duck Tour on our second day to see all the sights. Unfortunately the sun comes out in Seattle around 2pm, which we didn’t really prepare for but we had a fun and frigid tour of the downtown area and Lake Washington.

After our tour we searched for a warm spot to have lunch and ended up at Bambino’s a super yummy wood fired pizza spot. I’m still dreaming of the white pizza with olive oil ricotta and mozzarella – simple and delicious! Speaking of food I should mention that our hotel was across the street from an amazing bakery with the best cookies, scones, and treats – Macrina. My souvenir from the trip is their cookbook so I hope to re-create some of the yumminess.

We recharged with a nap and ventured to the Downtown Library designed by Rem Koolhaas. If you haven’t noticed we love modern architecture and this building lived up to the hype! I could have wandered in this library for hours, expect for my two noisy children who no doubt disturbed all 10 floors of people studying. The children’s area was vibrant and fun to explore. The rest of the floors have a slightly inclined ramp that you can follow up to the top – love this!

We took a bus to the Capitol Hill area to visit a park and pretend we were locals on the playground. The park just happened to be across the street from Molly Moons for ice cream – the flavor options were fantastic!  Charlotte’s Raspberry Hibiscus sorbet was the best, but I enjoyed my Salted Carmel with chocolate sauce as well!  After our treat and took a taxi back to the hotel.

Greg and I got to leave the girls with Uncle Jeff and have a mini date night down the street from our hotel at Black Bottle for a nice bottle of wine with a view and good people watching. It would have been perfect if those little monkeys would have gone to sleep, but we did get to finish our wine just in time for Jeff to call us in for re-enforements.

Our last full day in Seattle began with a trip to the Children’s Museum, where we took in story time, the cultural exhibit and an arts and crafts time.  We met up with Jeff at the Ferry station and headed over to Bainbridge Island for some exploring. Pfeiffer was disappointed to discover the Ferry Boat did not actually have any any Fairies on it – sweet little girl! The island was quaint and we enjoyed the time on the water to and from Seattle. Jeff picked us some blackberries, we walked through the little town, got some candy from the candy shop and enjoyed the sights of the island.

The girls had a great time watering some plants with these watering cans.

On the trip back to Seattle I decided we must enjoy some fish ‘n chips before departing the next day, so Greg put his iphone to good use and found us the perfect pub just off the ferry landing. We discovered that a pub is a great place to take the kids to dinner nice and noisy  - just like us. We enjoyed the tunes, fish ‘n chips, and cold beer at the Owl and Thistle.

Below is a slide show including the above and the rest of our adventures in Seattle – thanks for stopping by to share in the fun of part 1 of our trip. Adventures in Idaho coming soon…

I got to spend a lovely weekend with some friends at Gigi’s desert house. We did a lot of relaxing, talking, eating, drinking and even mixed in a little dancing. It was a wonderful little break despite the blazing temps. I was even a bit too relaxed to take many photos – thankfully my friend Andrea did a great post about it on her blog with lots of fun photos capturing the weekend.
This one pretty much sums it up for me:

The multi-colored print is my fab new swimsuit!

We had the most amazing trip to Yosemite this past weekend that we’ve decided we may be making it a yearly adventure! Our friend Cathy organized the trip to Housekeeping Camp, where she has been going for years. The location is amazing, right along the river with stunning views of both Half Dome and Yosemite Falls. So pretty I nearly forgot I was camping! For those of you who know me well you know that camping is something I do for my kids, not generally because I enjoy it too much, but I dare say that may be changing. This trip was with 5 other families and we split up the breakfasts and dinners, so I only had to cook once which was fantastic. The kids loved being in nature, and little miss social butterfly Charlotte absolutely loved hopping on her scooter to visit her friends. We “hiked”, relaxed, explored, and excluding a little car sickness the trip went very smoothly.
Here are a few of the highlights – with more photos in the slideshow at the bottom.

At Mirror Lake just below half dome. Yes, we do camp in pink!

The girls loved playing on this fallen down tree at the beach just steps from our camp.

Pure joy playing in the mud.

Greg and Charlotte by the river.

More climbing on the tree with a sunlit Half Dome in the background.Of course we ate our fill of s’mores!

I love this one of Will reading to all the kiddos.

Here is the slideshow:

We got to enjoy some relaxing time in Palm Desert this past weekend! It was the perfect little getaway for us since it is a close drive, beautiful weather and a freeeee place to stay. We drove out Friday and arrived in time to have a “happy hour” dinner. On Saturday we bought pool passes at one of the big hotels and had a great time playing in the pools, jacuzzis, and got in some fantastic people watching. I was a little nervous about leaving my camera around the pool deck with so many people, so no fun pool pics. Here are a couple of us hanging out on the golf course.

Here’s the small bummer of the trip – I got my hair done on Friday and there are no pictures to document how cute I looked! I guess now that I am the self proclaimed photographer in the family I am the one with the camera – which is great, but the hair was worth documenting. I haven’t been able to do my hair in nearly 6 weeks since I had my shoulder surgery – oh well.

Sunday we went to the Children’s Discovery Museum in Rancho Mirage and the girls LOVED that place. So much fun exploring, playing and creating.

Painting a VW bug was rad.

The girls really enjoyed the pretend grocery store – they could have stayed there all day. Shopping, scanning, and bagging the groceries was loads of fun for my little shoppers.

Do you notice how in the first picture Charlotte just turns around and strikes a pose, well we have the same look here on the rock wall. Too funny.

And I know this was a ton of photos – but they are all so fun it’s hard to edit down. As I mentioned last week this blog is going to go back to the family adventures and my photography will be featured here. That being said I am taking the pressure off to only put up photos with good composition, lighting, etc here. If it is a picture that documents the family well I may still include it (or maybe just assume Greg took it – ha!)

I leave you with Dr. Pfeiffer – Veternarian.

Andrea over at Four Flights of Fancy has me dreaming of vacations… although I would LOVE to escape to Kauai and rent a house on the beach the sputtering economy has us turning to more budget friendly getaways. We are going to Yosemite on a camping trip in May, will spend a weekend or two in the desert and will take a long road trip trek to Northern Idaho this summer. What are your plans?

Here are some pictures of our last trip to ID, 3 years ago. Greg’s Grandmother has a lovely house on Lake Ponderay in Hope – population of the town is 87! We will do some hiking, deer feeding, water adventures and possibly some day trips to Montana. On the road we hope to see some sights as well. A trip to the Grand Tetons is at the top of the list. Any other recommendations? We plan to head through Utah on the way up.

Me prego with P. Lou – hopefully some relaxation will get in the mix this trip!

The view at night:

I feel like I should be writing a post for the tourism board, because that is how much raving I have to do about our weekend trip to Santa Barbara wine country. The trip was to celebrate Greg’s birthday this week and it was the kind of picturesque weekend that only comes right after a rain: fresh, clear blue skies, green rolling hills and the company two of our favorite couples made for a perfect get away. Or maybe it was the wine and the fact that my children were happy with their grandparents! We all piled into our recently acquired extra large vehicle and drove up the coast early Saturday morning. We were tasting by 11:30, and ended up hitting 4 wineries, 2 wine bars, The Hitching Post for dinner and even some post dinner dancing! Yes I was feeling it the next morning, but as I kept saying “we don’t get out much”, so we had to live it up.

My recommendations:

Picnic from Los Olivos Grocery we picked up food and took it to Demetria, good wines, but not my favorite, but it was the PERFECT place to picnic!

Enjoy cupcakes and very hip wine bar located at House with wines from Saarloos and Sons. We arrived late in the afternoon and the cupcakes were nearly sold out, which of course resulted in Darin saying we’ll take all of them. Arrive earlier and you can do a cupcake and wine pairing which sounds divine! We bought a bottle of the Solo Syrah which was delicious, not to mention the delicious model on the label. As most of you know I love good design, wine and tasty treats – this place had 3 of my favorite things and will certainly be on the list for all of our future trips.

As many of you remember from Sideways the Hitching Post is a very tasty restaurant. From Quail, Lobster to Steak you can re-fuel and will not be disappointed with the wine either.

As for wineries we went to Dierberg where we liked the steel barrel Chardonnay best, Demetria mentioned above for its’ picnic appeal, the wines had some interesting spice flavors/ notes (I’m not up on my wine-speak). Foxen, we preferred the old little shack to the new location and then Tres Hermanas which was our vote for best overall flight. Obviously choosing wines comes down to personal taste and I don’t claim to have a refined palate by any means!

Now in terms of lodging we say go cheap – we were barely in our room and you can find plenty of low cost motels in Solvang that are clean and handled the late night prank calls with grace (gotta love Kouz!).

Nap time at Doheney State Beach

Originally uploaded by gstratford

Girls snoozing in the car… Parents listening to the surf.

Thanks,
Greg