The Great Outdoors

The Great Outdoors happens to be one of my favorite movies, it should have come as no surprise then when our weekend away began to mimic parts of the movie. Josh and I escaped to Tahoe this weekend for some much needed quality time. While we expected to visit with Gary and Janice and see my cousins, there were other parts that were not so expected.

Dinner with the family at Sunnyside.

A surprise greeting at the cabin...hmmm what could have done that?

and that?

and this?


my what big paws you have...
It seems that one of the resident bears wanted to pay yet another visit to the cabin. Fortunately he didn't get in this time but that did mean that Josh and I got to visit with a deputy from the El Dorado while he took an incident report and some DNA from the scene...bear DNA who knew?

Saturday morning Josh lent some of his extrordinary lung capacity to the innertube saving Hillary and Erin having to inflate the whole thing themselves.

There was also a lot of this going on.

mmmm....hula pie, a Sunnyside must have and a little piece of our honeymoon. They serve this delicious dessert in Hawaii too. And yes, we ate at Sunnyside two nights in a row.

Josh and I at Sunnyside.

While there were some unexpected moments from the trip, we had a great time. When we got home, we picked up Lola from our friend Chris' house. Lola and Chris' 9 month old retriever mix Katie played the entire weekend. So, this is how Lola spent the entire afternoon.

Just call her loafin' Lola.

Baby Room Progress

There were major strides in the baby room this weekend. This was due to the efforts of Brieanne and Brandon with a little help from my parents. The inspiration behind the room is the book The Little Prince, a childhood favorite of mine. Brieanne took this inspiration and created a whole room to go behind it. While there are still some finishing touches to add, you can see how the room is coming together.

Many thanks to the design team for their efforts and working through the heat this weekend. Here are a couple pictures of the room but for a better look at how things are coming together, check out Brieanne's blog. You can also see this video of how the design team worked together or this video.

Hallelujah

So, we finally got rid of the last of the furniture - thank you Craigslist. Now the room is free and clear (well, mostly) for the nursery design team to come in and work their magic. The design team consists of my lovely and talented sister and brother in law.

In other news, the countdown is on for Josh's marathon. He and Nik have faced some setbacks in the last month but I'm confident they will finish well. They start at 6:05 a.m. on August 3rd, you can be praying for their health and safety.

In pregnancy news, today is 28 weeks and the advent of the 3rd trimester. This means that I started fetal kick counts (the amount of time it takes her to get to 10 kicks). This took all of two minutes. Birth class was not overwhelming this week. Of course who can complain about a half hour of breathing exercises paired with massage - as long as you're on the receiving end of the massage. Don't feel too bad for Josh, he got to participate in the relaxation exercise at the end of class.

Lola got a haircut this week - well she got stripped to be more accurate. With all the heat she seems to be enjoying one less layer of fur. (I'll include pictures in the next post once we have finished stripping her).

Projects and funkiness...

This week has been funky. The week kicked off with Josh smashing his thumb in a rusty barbwire fence, getting a tetnus shot and being sent home from work for the day to recover. He's discovered what a useful tool a thumb is and how challenging it is not to really have use of one's thumb. That night we attended our first birthing class. The class was incredibly informative. We both really liked the instructor but were unprepared (naive) for jumping right into labor and delivery lectures complete with birthing video. We walked out of there feeling a little shell shocked - I mean this is an inevitable reality but it burst our bubble of denial. Monday night my dreams (if you can call them that) were labor filled (lovely).

With aproximately three months left we've started the list (well many lists). This weekend was phase I of room preparation: sell unneeded furniture, etc. on craigslist, paint the room, pick up room items from Ikea. We accomplished two of the three tasks for the weekend unfortunately that room is still filled with the unsold stuff...boo. I did get to also pick up the baby lounger from my sister and thereby keep her cats from making the lounger a cat lounger.

Ahh...the Lake

Need I say more?

Perhaps not, but I will.

For me there is only one lake - Tahoe. Josh, Brandon, Brieanne and I joined some of our extended family at the cabin to celebrate the 4th of July. Althought it took us over five hours (!!) to get there because of holiday traffic, it was well worth the wait.

Josh practicing the Moreira treatment for blistered lips - mammies.

This weekend was one of the laziest for me in recent memory - it was glorious. Sleeping in (hey, 8am is sleeping in for me) afternoons reading on the beach (camped out under an umbrella, hat and with sunscreen of course!). My uncle graded the backyard for a washers court and promptely annhiliated anybody he played, including the washers king, Brandon.

Brieanne and Aunt Karen practicing

Josh's weekend was slightly more adventurous and exciting than mine. He and Brandon kayaked over to bliss point.

We caught up with them in the boat.

Me, Brieanne and Nathan

The cliffs proved to be too much temptation for Josh so with an audience of 3 boats he jumped from 30+ feet into the blue water. (Better he get his sillies out now)

On Saturday he did his 12 mile training run and met up with the rest of the family at the all you can eat pancake breakfast for the Meeks Bay Fire Station.

In baby news, Patootie delighted my sister with tons of movement over the course of the weekend. She also made her Tahoe debut, well sort of. Her new favorite place to kick is my lower right rib. At 26 weeks she's the size of a hot house cucumber or an egglplant and is up to about 1.75lbs. Go Patootie!

Brieanne was like this the WHOLE weekend. She's a very excited aunt.

He's back...Mt. Shasta Man!

Departing on Thursday Josh and fellow BAWT mountaineer Josh headed off for Shasta City to acclimatize before the official program began on Friday evening. For once in his life Josh was known as "little Josh" while his fellow teammate was called "big Josh."

On the way up they passed some of the fires that have plagued California in June.

Their campsite for the first two nights had some friendly visitors. Friday evening the team gathered and spent time getting to know one another and the guides that would take them up the mountain. On Saturday morning after gear check the team departed for a four hour hike up to 9,900 feet to base camp. Once camp was set up the team was put through snow school learning how to self arrest, glasade, use an ice axe and crampons and the different mountaineering steps.

Saturday night was an early night as the wake up call for the summit bid would come at 1:30 a.m.

After a brief breakfast, the team, divided into two rope teams and departed for the summit. The guides determined that the turn around time would be 12:00 p.m. in case the thunderstorms that had been forecast rolled back into the area.

Sunrise on Mt. Shasta

brief snack and rest on the trek up

a look at what lays ahead

At the beginning of the trip it had been determined that the team would take the west face route up Shasta but because of conditions, the guides decided to take everybody up the more difficult eastern face. The snow fields were "punchy" and soft and the scree slick and challenging. Josh's rope team dropped first one, then another climber at rest points on the mountain as some of his teammates were too tired to carry on. The second rope team also had to turn around before they reached the summit. Josh and his guide, JB took a brief moment to scarf down some food for extra energy and charged on ahead. Afte 10 hours of climbing, they reached the summit, 14, 162 feet.

Josh's guide describes the experience of climbing the mountain as spending 10 hours on a stairmaster. Fortunately the trip down only took two hours as they were able to glasade.

Back at base camp, they celebrated with a glass of champagne each, compliments of the BAWT representative. Josh has come home on a high. This has been one of his most memorable life experiences. He has tons of stories that he'd be happy to share including ones about wag bags and tumbling rocks.

A huge thank you to our friends and family who helped make this trip possible. Thank you both for your prayers and support. This has been one of Josh's life dreams and to know that he could do something like this while supporting a cause he is passionate about made the experience all the more fulfilling.

Though he returned home on Monday evening, in some ways he is still on the mountain.

For my part, I'm thrilled that he had a great time and even more happy that he is back safely. Lola as you can see is also thrilled, she has been inseperable from Josh since he returned home.