Tulips & Grandparents

My parents came to visit this past weekend and we headed to the Skagit Valley Tulip festival. The town has fields of tulips decked out in stunning stripes of colored tulips backdropped by mountains. It was beautiful! We've gone once before but this time we went to Roozengaarde which has the tulip fields but also gardens full of interesting tulip mixtures, varieties, textures, and arrangements. Those were so fun to wander around in and happen upon. The mixtures and heights and textures of each section were lovely and they had it arranged so you  just wove in and out of them.

 

 Roslyn was mostly gentle with the tulips but she did manage to pick a few when we weren't paying attention. She seemed intrigued by them and liked holding onto them but in the end the walkway of rocks did hold her interest more.

We had a picnic in the grass among the tulips, ate some kettle corn, played ball with another little boy, and had such a darn good time!

Hoh Rainforest

photo by Daniel Nelson

Headed out to the peninsula over to the Hoh Rainforest with some friends this weekend. The weather really outdid itself and gave us big sunshine that makes your skin warm and cozy and even let's you maybe believe that it's worth it to dip yourself in the glacier water running near you. We did a nice little forest hike and hung out on a rocky beach for awhile. Roslyn napped most of the hiking times to save her energy for the beach. She crawled around on rocks, couldn't keep her hands out of the wet sand, and had the gumption to walk around in the water. 

Her boldness and curiosity are really shining through her lately.  She'll wander off away from us to examine something and explore a new area. She'll pick something up and bring it back to me to share and sit in my lap playing with it. She'll crawl over large logs and walk along them with no fear. Her bravery and muchness are so beautiful to watch. 

 The Hoh has lots of lovely mosses and running water. We stopped to examine mushrooms, ferns, moss variations and bark. These little moments of exploration and slowness is what I love about hanging out with these friends. Roslyn is teaching us this as well but I think we were better prepared to find joy in the slowness and discovery from the way the way we've gotten to experience nature with them. They always notice something we'd have overlooked.

Every time we go outside now she get's totally dirty. I love it!

We played back at camp for awhile while eating lots of good food, another thing we are never short of when hanging out with these friends. Roslyn found most of her time lost to picking the heads off all the flowers and pointing at the birds as they flew overhead.

We put her to sleep in her own sleeping sack bag thing for the first time and she was so tuckered out from the day she went right to sleep. With her asleep in Walter we snuck out to hang out by the fire with our friends and eat brownies. She didn't make it the whole night in her "bed" alone but we were pretty excited that it worked even for a bit. We'll keep trying.

She napped most of the drive home and we got ice cream while waiting for the ferry to take us back to Seattle. Great weekend, great time spent with friends and ferns.