My dad heard at work that due to some maintenance on the dam above Summer Falls, there was a lot of water coming over the falls (usually there is only a little bit of water if any at all).

So after he got off work, we piled into my parents rig and drove out to see for ourselves. Sure enough there was a bunch of water coming over the falls – it was actually quite impressive. Summer Falls is at the northwest end of Long Lake (Billy Clapp lake for you dems). Usually when we ski on the lake we don’t really make it up to this end of the lake at all (there is a boat launch on the south end of the lake), but there’s actually a pretty nice park at this end of the lake – all grassy, even with bathrooms and picnic tables. Tobin was impressed that something like that existed basically in the middle of nowhere. :) (It’s fun showing Tobin the local stuff he hasn’t seen before.) :)

Evangeline had a blast hanging out with my parents and running in the grass (fortunately we didn’t see any snakes in the grass though we did see TONS of fish – mostly carp – jumping in the lake). My mom had shown her earlier how you could blow on a dandelion gone to seed and they were ALL over the place so she kept picking dandelions and blowing them. It was a lot of fun. :)

When we came home, we drove a slightly different way – through a canyon, and that was an area that I hadn’t even seen before – we had to stop for some rock chucks that decided to cross the road RIGHT in front of us. Evangeline got a kick out of that too. Good times.

View all the pictures here.

Here’s a video of the falls that my dad shot:

I hit 38 weeks (full term) on Monday, and found out I was dilated to 1cm. Tobin thinks that the baby is going to show up at any minute, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was right. That said, I’m not getting my hopes up as I was sure I was going to (there goes another contraction) have Evangeline at 38 weeks and then I went and had her at 41 weeks. So with my luck, this baby could hold out another 3 weeks. We’ll see ’bout that.

Anyways, I think that hearing I was actually starting to dilate has really made me think about getting ready for this baby and it dawned on me that I wanted a hospital gown, with a matching nursing cover if possible. I was too impatient to wait for fabric to get here in the mail, so on Sunday we made sure we hit Jo-Anns on our Wenatchee trip (otherwise known as our last pre-baby Costco stock-up). There was lots of fabric to choose from but ultimately I opted for a relatively safe black and white floral pattern (I figured some of the other ones I looked at wouldn’t age well in pics). I bought 4 yards, but there was and extra 16 inches on the bolt that I picked up at 50% off. It was a good thing too, as I ended up sewing more off the fabric than I was anticipating, and I couldn’t have done it without those extra 16″!

I found a free hospital gown at Lazy Girl Designs, but then decided that if I was going to actually take the time to sew something cute, I wanted to wear it as an actual dress – or at least around the house. No thanks to ties up the back! I looked high and low on the rest of the interwebs with no luck on a pattern I was leaning toward – a peasant topped a-line dress. Ultimately, I went through my mom’s patterns, found a pattern that was similar to what I was looking for, and then I drew a pattern based on that (top) pattern. I ended up using around 3 yards on that – with a packet of double bias tape, 1/4″ elastic, and then some rolled elastic that my mom had (for the sleeves, they were too tight with the 1/4″ elastic that I started with). I serged pretty much everything, and then went back and sewed the seams again with my mom’s sewing machine. The dress turned out pretty cute and I will be able to nurse in it. Not sure if I’ll actually wear it around (my mom wants me to wear it to church if the baby hasn’t come by Sunday, jury’s still out on that – don’t need to draw MORE attention to the fact that I’m SUPER pregnant).

I finished the dress and decided I NEEDED to make a matching dress for Evangeline and a nursing cover. I didn’t have quite enough fabric to make both so I figured I’d just piece the nursing cover. First though, I drafted up a pattern for Evangeline’s pillowcase dress based on these directions from Prudent Baby. I couldn’t make the dress quite as long as I wanted to if I also wanted to make myself a nursing cover, so I cut it a little short figuring I should be able to find some solid black cotton in my mother’s fabric stash. It wasn’t easy, but I did find some solid black that I *think* is 100% cotton (neither my mom or I could tell for sure, guess I’ll know when I wash the dress – everything was preshrunk though so we should be good). :)

I used some more of the black double bias tape on the arm holes of Evangeline’s dress and I thought that looked really cute. The dress itself didn’t take very long to sew – it took me longer to make the pattern and find the black cotton (well and watching a toddler in a non-baby-safe environment also slowed things down some).

After I finished Evangeline’s dress, I started on the nursing cover. I liked the look of the black border on Eva’s dress so much I decided to just do that at the top and bottom of the cover – to bring it up to size.  I’m glad I did too, because I LOVE the result! I’ve made a bunch of nursing covers (and only know where one or two are, sad), and in the past (there goes another contraction) I’ve used this pattern from Blisstree. But I decided to search around, and ended up mostly basing this cover on this tutorial from Sew Much Ado. I did end up sewing my boning differently (her directions didn’t make sense to me), and I HATE D-RINGS on nursing covers – nothing is worse than having the cover slip, and that has happened to me before, so I just went with a straps that tie behind the neck. Then, just to make things more complex, I decided to copy the pocket design from Hooter Hiders, and sewed a rounded pocket on the right side of the cover. I basically cut a half circle, serged the rounded edges, sewed those under, sewed bias tape across the top, then ran some more 1/4″ elastic across the top. My mom helped me pin the pocket on the cover while I was wearing it (hard to see around my bump), and then I sewed it on. I’m really happy with the result – this is by far the cutest nursing cover I’ve sewn to date. :)

The pocket turned out so well, if I’m feeling really motivated, I might go back and sew a few on my dress. We’ll see. Would be nice to have a place to stash my cell phone. :)

I think I’ll sew one more thing to pack into the hospital bag – a matching fabric hair band for Evangeline. I’ve already cut the fabric, I just need to sew it. I’m going to sew a fabric cover based on this tutorial from Calico. Then I’m going to sew a flower based on this tutorial from Gone to Earth (though all my petals will be the same length). That is if the baby doesn’t show up before I get around to it! (There are a lot of things on my to-do list today as final prep for baby – mostly involving work and that Fine Arts Festival).

If you’re interested, I keep track of things I want to make on Pinterest. If you aren’t already a member, and you want an invite let me know.

View all the pics of my sewing projects here.

p.s. It was 2 years ago today that Evangeline was due. She showed up on the 20th.

Evangeline woke up WAY early on Easter Sunday morning, so we decided to reward her by actually going to the sunrise service (we’d written it off as too early beforehand). It was FRIGID but a very cool time to celebrate Jesus rising with other believers – on the future building site of Ephrata First Baptist Church! :) So our family can say we attended the first service at the new property. :)

Church was held at the High School and included a continental breakfast. It was fun – we just walked over. Worship and the service was good and after church we decided we had to get out and go for a hike. My parents agreed to go to Sun Lakes with us (OK, actually they drove), and we did a hike they’d told us about in the past. I forget the name of the trail, but its trailhead is between the entrance to the camping area on the East side of the park, and the road into Deep Lake. We got out of the car and grabbed all our gear and I realized I’d brought my camera and left my memory card at home. After some searching, I found my extra backup memory card in Evangeline’s backpacker – and a spare battery too. :) I decided all was not lost (thanks to these pregnancy hormones, everything seems like a much bigger deal than it really is), and we started our hike. About 20 pictures in (so just a few steps), my camera informed me that my memory card had died. Now I know that memory cards die – but this was the first time it’s happened to me where I haven’t had a spare. Cool. Great timing BACKUP card (I have since replaced it with a 4GB card from Amazon for about $16). So I ended up having to take pictures with my cell phone that wasn’t nearly as fun as using my SLR, and to top things off because of our location, the gps program on my phone couldn’t log our hike. Dumb. Thanks a lot technology. THEN as we were hiking for the first time ever the camera application on my phone crashed. Not a big deal, just had to restart it, but man my technology refused to play nice.

The hike itself was pretty fun. I’ve been to the Sun Lakes/Deep Lake area a bunch, but I’d never actually hiked in the area we hiked (though I’ve driven down both sides of where we hiked). It was neat getting a different view of the area. There was only one pretty steep part which was a tad dicey for super-pregnant-me, and we did have to use stepping stones to cross a little stream, but other than that the trail was pretty easy and it was fun to get outside.

View my cellphone pictures here.

Last weekend’s hike into Ancient Lakes was so much fun that we decided we’d better check out Dusty Lake this weekend. Unfortunately, Daddy had to work but we called up Margie Lou and Kevin and they were game.

The books had two different options for the hike – hike in from the bottom for a 6-mile roundtrip, or the top at 3-miles. We opted for the 3-mile hike, found the GPS coordinates for the trailhead online (N 47° 8.22′ W 119° 56.34′), mapped it on our cellphones, and then met up with ML & Kevin at the trailhead. We were amazed when we were driving to the Quincy Lakes (or Quincy Potholes) area, you’re basically in the middle of nowhere. We turned onto a gravel dead-end road (the access road into the lakes) and suddenly there was a string of about 5 cars ahead of us. This is a super popular area I guess – or at least it was today! :)

The trail started dropping down to the lake from the get-go, so it was a pretty fast hike down to the water. The books and online guides had stated that it took 1.5 miles to go from the trailhead to the lake, but either their guess at the length was WAY off, or they took another trail. By the time we made it to the lake, our GPS informed us we’d only walked .5 miles! Tobin and I were a bit bummed as we were hoping for a bit more of hike – but we couldn’t complain about the view. It was gorgeous! The cliffs drop to the lake on both sides, so once you get down to the lake there really isn’t anyplace to go – unless you swim I suppose. We did notice a pretty sketchy trail across the talus on the South side of the lake, but we decided against that as Tobin was packing Evangeline, and I’m packing baby boy Springs (I’m nearly 35 weeks now in case you care). We also figured that the shale was probably a great place to run into a snake, and we didn’t feel like we needed that much excitement today.

We took lots of pictures, then started back up the trail. We definitely got a workout on the way back (especially Tobin with Evangeline on his back), but it wasn’t bad. Near the top of the trail, Tobin totally called a beaver lodge, and we were able to see that he was right once we spotted their den (and then the carnage on the trees all around). We had Sasha, ML & Kevin’s dog with us, so we didn’t actually see any beaver – but it was cool nonetheless.

When we got to the top of the trail, we passed the cars, and walked back down the gravel road we’d come in on. We had all seen an egret hanging out in one of the lakes nearby, and thought maybe if it was still there, we’d shoot some pictures of it. We did get a few shots from the distance, but I think Sasha spooked the bird and it flew away. Oh, I forgot to say that on the way in we thought we’d seen a flock of swans, but it was actually a flock of pelicans. For some reason I always find it odd to find pelicans around here – but we do see them frequently.

Back at the cars we snacked on some goodies we’d brought along (Evangeline is apparently a big fan of red licorice), then said our goodbyes and left. The hike was fun but a bit too short – now I really want to hike the 6-mile option in from the bottom. We were glad we didn’t do it today as we could see a bunch of tents on the far shore of the lake. It would be a fun place to camp, I’m sure.

Well that was our hike into Dusty Lake. Beautiful but too short. View my pictures here. You can also view some of ML’s pictures here.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday (today too for that matter), so when Evangeline woke up from her nap at around 1:15 we called up my parents and talked them into another hike. We weren’t sure where we were going to go, and we all were hungry so we started out at DK’s with a few hiking books and decided on Ancient Lakes.  Apparently only Daddy and I had been there before, and Tobin wanted to hike around some water, so it won out.

Ancient Lakes is about a 40 minute drive from Ephrata (other side of Quincy before Crescent Bar), and we hiked in from the lower part – some hikes have you hiking in from above. The hike was listed in both books (The Creaky Knees Guide to WA, and 55 Hikes in Central WA), but they had some disagreement on the actual length of the hike – one had it at 3 miles, the other at 5. All said and done we hiked 4.67 miles. There were multiple trails to take, and though we didn’t do the exact hike either book suggested, I really liked how we hiked – on the way out we could see nearly all the lakes clearly, and then on the way back, we hiked back past another lake that had been hidden on our hike out, and then ended up hiking up a bit of elevation for a totally different feel – the way out was through pasture.

The hike was BEAUTIFUL. The grass was green and the sagebrush was sparse. It’s not that I don’t like sagebrush (I do), but sometimes it’s nice to just see green pasture. :) The weather was perfect – we could have totally done the hike in shorts (though I don’t have any maternity shorts that would be good enough to hike in). It was nice to have it a little warmer after getting down below freezing a few times last week. (I wish Spring would just make up it’s mind and stay awhile!)

There are several trails out and back – we basically hiked the middle trail out, and the South trail back.  So in case you try the same route, take the second trail that goes toward the lakes – it’s a more major trail than the first trail that heads that way, then when you get to the end of the trail, jog over past Ancient Lake, and continue on to the South and West past another lake, and eventually back.

There was an abundance of horse trailers at the trail head when we parked – apparently this is a very popular spot for horses – which I totally understand with all that beautiful pasture! Even with all the people hiking/riding in the area, we only really ran into a handful of people on the trail – the horses took the route we hiked back on, so we weren’t on the same trail at the same time. On our way home, several people on horseback called out to Tobin and said they were moving away from the area we were in as they were concerned about the coyotes they’d seen. Bah, coyotes are more scared of people than we are of them – we never did see them, and we didn’t change our course. I was a bit concerned that we’d pick up some ticks – but our tick checks turned up nothing, so I guess we made it out unscathed. :) (For those of you wondering, yes it is tick season already, my dad picked up a few several weeks ago.)

At one point on the way back, Tobin pulled away from the group and that gave Evangeline the chance to fall asleep. :) She slept for maybe a half hour total, and woke up all happy. She’s about grown out of her backpack, and we always load it with so many things, that the fabric is actually starting to tear around the seams in the bottom. We’ve sure gotten our $15 out of that pack (bought off Craigslist), think it’s time to splurge and get another that can go to a higher weight.

We loved the hike and highly recommend it – especially now while the fields are green! We can’t wait to get back and hike into Dusty Lake (from the trail head we parked at it is about a 6-mile round trip hike, from the upper trail head it’s around 3 miles). We’re also going to have to hike in from the top at some point for a totally different view.

I took LOTS of pictures. You can view them here.

Also, if you want to see the hike mapped out in Google Maps, that’s available here.

Life has been a bit hectic lately (we moved last weekend and have been unpacking for a week), so when our afternoon opened up we thought it would be nice to get out of the house and go for a hike. My parents have been telling us about a hike they enjoyed down off the Old Vantage Highway, and so that’s what we did.

The entire hike ended up being slightly shy of 3 miles and it was good to get out on our first real hike of the year! (And nice to still be able to hike considering I’m in my third trimester now.)

Tobin packed Evangeline out to the sand dunes, but then she decided that the sand looked REALLY fun to play in, so we had to let her down. She had an absolute blast. So did her Daddy. I was watching Evangeline play in the sand, thinking Tobin was close by, and then I realized he’d taken off his shoes and socks and was halfway up this giant sand dune. :) He made it to the top, said it had a great view, then ran all the way down to us.

We hiked for quite a ways on the sand – well it felt like a long ways as it was slow going, and we kept looking at petrified wood thinking that perhaps we’d find an arrowhead (we didn’t, though we did find some very cool looking petrified wood and petrified bog). Evangeline thinks rocks are cool too, so she was right there with us. :) I didn’t really find anything worth actually packing out, but it was fun to look.

When we finally decided to turn around, Evangeline would have none of it (she was super tired by now), and so my parents took turns trying to pack her on their shoulders (they are cool, her parents are just so mean). That worked for a bit, but eventually we wrangled her back into the backpack. By now she was so antsy though that she didn’t last too long in it, and ended up on her Daddy’s shoulders (and I got the backpack).

Unfortunately my battery didn’t make it through the whole hike, so the pictures I have are only from the first part of our hike – but you can get the idea. The sand dunes were VERY cool – we saw all sorts of trails through them including bugs, mice, snakes,  deer, coyotes, a raccoon (or porcupine?) and maybe even a cougar.

Though there were a lot of cars parked near where we left our car, apparently no one hiked the way we did, and we had the trail to ourselves the whole time. This hike was very close to the popular rock climbing area near Vantage, so we saw a lot of activity on the cliffs when we were first starting out. And I guess there are some pretty neat hikes closer to those cliffs – though I’m not sure we will be doing those anytime soon – either with me pregnant or with a newborn. Maybe in a few years we’ll check them out.

View all the pictures from our hike here.

My mom had to make a quick run out to Soap Lake today, so Evangeline and I went along with her. While we were in Soap Lake, we stopped at the West Beach and Evangeline had a blast playing on the toys and chasing the geese. :)

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSMPoLd–Is

She’s so much fun. :)

Yesterday we decided to go on a drive with my parents up to Coulee City (on 17) and then back on Highway 2/Whitehall Road. It was a fun but COLD drive. Our first stop was by blue lake which had frozen over in just the last few days – it was thick enough that Tobin probably could have walked on it (instead he spent some time trying to stomp through it and finally succeeded). :)

The ice on Blue Lake was pretty impressive. When my parents were by a few days ago it was really windy and the water was washing up on the shore and freezing on everything.

Isn’t the ice beautiful? But yes for the lake to freeze over in two days you can imagine it’s been rather cold. And it was super cold when I took these pictures. My baby bump is finally to the point where my warm jackets just don’t fit so I’m relegated to my fleece jackets that just aren’t warm enough for Eastern WA winters. I did buy a new maternity coat online this weekend, so I’m hoping it arrives quickly and fits.

Another very cool thing about Blue Lake was the sound that rocks made when they were skipped across the ice. I took a video with my phone. It was a very unique sound. I don’t remember it from when I was a kid playing on frozen lakes – but I do remember other sounds (like the Whoomp that ice made occasionally).

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFUTIQLXi8

I think the last time I went ice skating on a frozen lake was when ML was little – because she didn’t know how to ice skate yet, and Daddy drug her around on an upside down 5-gallon bucket. So maybe I was in junior high or maybe just starting HS? So it’s been awhile I think since we’ve had temps like this – of course I’ve been away for awhile, but I don’t think any lakes froze over enough to skate on during that time – though I might be wrong. Even though I love ice skating and the lakes might allow for it this year, I don’t foresee any ice skating in my future until at least next winter. I think my doctor would frown on that. lol

From Blue Lake we drove up to Sun Lakes State Park which is pretty quiet this time of year. Now the “Closed for the Winter” signs made sense – they didn’t make sense on October 1 when we went hiking up there and it was 80°. Well I’m not sure of the temp this time as M&D’s suburban only gives temps in Celsius (Fahrenheit stopped displaying awhile ago I guess), but at one point on our drive it was -18° C which Google tells me is about 0° F. Anyways, as we were driving into the new part of the park we saw a porcupine that looked quite comfortable perched in the top of a tree. Daddy and I took some pictures of it – though Daddy had on a warmer coat than I and got some better shots (I wimped out and ran back to the suburban).

We kept driving back into the new campground and didn’t make it too far before we were stopped by quite a large herd of deer on the road and on both sides of the road. There was a big buck with a 3-point rack, but I couldn’t get very good pictures from the back seat. lol We did tell Evangeline what deer were and pointed them out to her. She was afraid of them at first, but then decided they were pretty cool and she kept pointing at them and yelling “Deer!” :) She thought it was really cool when we drove by a deer really close to the car that was sitting next to the road – but it eventually decided that the yelling was a bit much and walked away.

From Sun Lakes State Park we drove up to Coulee City to gas up the suburban so we could come home another (longer) route for Tobin’s sake. Of course then Tobin – who partied early into the morning with the boys basketball team the night before, and then was up for an 8am practice – fell asleep. I kept having to wake him up to point out the beautiful scenery. It really was beautiful – the sun was setting, and there was A LOT of snow. Everything was white. Just beautiful – and cold. I would have gotten more pictures, but the inside of my window kept icing up. lol

We took Highway 2 as far as Whitehall Road. By this time the sun was setting, the sky was all brilliant contrails, and we could see the mountains in the distance. It really was gorgeous. Daddy says in the summer they pass a lot of cars on Whitehall that drive up to the highest point just to take pictures of the sunset – it really is quite beautiful. We didn’t stop at the highest point, but we did stop at one point when the colors in the sky just got so beautiful we just had to stop.

Isn’t that just gorgeous?

Poor little Evangeline had by now missed her second nap and her Mommy and Grandpa kept taking pictures, but she was a (relatively) good sport and posed for a final picture.

It was a fun drive (well for most of us)! Thanks to my parents for letting us tag along! :) You can view all the pictures here.

We found out today that we’re having a baby boy on 5/23. Pretty exciting. Tobin is praying he comes a week late – after the Fine Arts Festival at the HS. We’ll see about that.

The baby’s head is in the bottom right – he’s got his hands to his face which is why we couldn’t get a very clear profile. That’s his feet at the top.

We’re listening to worship music downstairs while I finish up my day at work – Tobin is dancing with Evangeline on his feet, and we have a little boy to look forward to. God is good. :)

Pictures here.