Simpsons in Seattle

This working and schooling from home thing is hard! It is nice that it means where we work/learn is flexible but it's also bad in that the kids don't stick to a dedicated place to get online for school. Nora, especially, can't seem to find the right spot for doing work. She is VERY SQUIRMY and needs someone to be on her to pay attention to the teacher and to do her work in between zoom calls. She's been doing a round robin of which taskmaster gets to sit with her each day to keep her on track! At the beginning of the year, both kids took over the office. Evie eventually moved up to her room, and Nora wanted to follow. One afternoon I came into the hall and saw this. She pulled all of this there herself. Lately, she's been wanting to sit with me so here she is on the side chair in her room. Sometimes, she doesn't sit on the chair....  Since that set up wasn't great, I moved back down with her into the office.  Here's my office buddy today.  

On our trip to Mt Rainier last August we dipped our toes into the muddy hot springs at Ohanapecosh. It was fun, but not the real-deal soaking experience. So when I was searching for nearby biking expeditions for Edmond and me to go on, 'Goldmeyer hot springs' stood out as a fun option and only an hour drive to the trail-head (sort of).  During COVID they have been limiting visitors to two small groups per day (so no chance of bumping into weird nudists) -- and as you can probably guess the demand is sky-high right now for outdoorsy family activities. Luckily, I called at midnight on opening day for fall reservations and was surprised to hear a few days later that mid-week slots were the only options left... but I took it! After a week of steady rain and wind-storms, the forest road to get to the trailhead was virtually washed out. Halfway along the 5-mile bumpy drive we ditched the car and road the rest on our mountain bikes. All in all, it was about 17-miles round trip on a fa

We've been slowly making our way through Star Wars, which Scott is over the moon about because he gets to watch tv with the girls. He loves that they like to snuggle with him to watch because sometimes the movie is a little scary. So far, the girls are really digging the series and we just finished episodes 1-6 and are on Episode 7 now. It's fun to watch them get into these classic movies.