The Dormer--BEFORE

We live in a small house that is over sixty years old. The basement was converted into an apartment before we bought the house, and we rent it out to help defray our mortgage. However, that leaves us with only one bathroom for the four members of our family, and even though Lochlan has not yet started using the toilet regularly, those days are not too far off. So we decided to put a dormer on our second floor, which will include a new bathroom, a reading room, and a second story deck. Here is what our upstairs looked like before the construction began.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part III--AUGUST

August was the month of Amy the Amazing Organizer. Liam turned four, and Amy planned his entire birthday party (I think I bought ice). She also instigated and planned a block party on our street for the National Night Out, and continued to stay on top of the construction project that is currently underway on the upstairs of our house--but much more on that in future postings.

It is hard to believe that our baby is FOUR! I think most parents understand how quickly children grow up, but before we had kids I didn't really 'get it'. Now I do. Liam had a great time opening his presents in the morning, and in the afternoon we had a birthday party at Woodland Park with all of the usual suspects--Colin, Max, Liam Prestia, and all their siblings and parents. Liam invited several additional friends, but they were all out of town. There was a pinata, cake, a red rocket ship made out of refrigerator box, and much running around through the woods playing monsters and super heroes.

I moved my office out of the house and into a nearby Activspace. I will be there for the duration of the construction, and depending on how it works out, I may stay there. But I also like working from home, so we shall see.

Lochlan really started picking up new words this month. One morning in particular stands out--Liam was still asleep and Lochlan and I were playing in the front room. He picked up a little wooden train, held it up in front of my face, smiled, and said "TRAIN!" He's also continued to say 'ball', 'mama' 'da' and will say 'wup wup wup wup' whenever one of us says 'helicopter.'

We also managed to fit in a visit to the zoo, catch-and-release crab hunting in Padilla Bay, a bit of canoeing around the arboretum, and a hike in the Cascades.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part II--JULY

July was another fun month, packed with camping, visitors, super-duper hot weather (for Seattle, anyway), and Amy and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary.

In the second week of July temperatures in Seattle got up to around 100 degrees, and for a city that just doesn't do air conditioning, that can be pretty uncomfortable. So we headed out to Mora on the Olympic coast, and that was a pleasant 25 degrees cooler than the city. The boys loved hanging out on the beach, looking for giant banana slugs in the old growth, and of course, more smores!

We don't usually give each other big fancy presents when we celebrate 'the big day', but this year I decided to make an exception. I bought Amy a double sea kayak! The best part of all is that she was completely surprised. It was a fair bit of work to keep everything on the down-low, but when I brought her outside and she saw it strapped to the car the expression on her face was completely worth it.

Towards the end of the month my brother Andy and his S.O. Rhea came to visit us for a few days. We had never met Rhea so it was good to get to know her in person. We hung out around Seattle for a few days so she could see the sights, then we all headed up to Fort Ebey State Park on Whidbey Island. We camped with the Moore-Ireland and Mahoney-Schaefer families (yes, we are one of the few non-hyphenated families in our circle of friends), and Liam was of course delighted to cruise through the woods with his buddies Colin and Max. Lochlan was happy to play with their younger siblings, Darby and Lily, but he also still tried to keep up with the bigger boys. I think this is why he started running. We brought the sea kayak along, so on the second day Andy and I paddled around Puget Sound for a bit. That was fun! It brought back a lot of memories of the epic tour we did in Southeast Alaska about 14 years ago. Amy took Liam out the next day, and at first I think he might have felt a little intimidated being in a big body of water in such a small boat, but overall I think he enjoyed it.

We also released the native butterflies we grew in our butterfly tent. It was really fun (especially for Liam) to watch the caterpillars spin their chrysalids, hatch, dry their wings, and start fluttering around the tent. We had eight butterflies in total.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part I--JUNE

It is 58 degrees and raining right now, and IT IS STILL AUGUST! Ugh. I love Seattle, but this is ridiculous. However, it does reinforce the fact that summer is, inexorably, coming to a close (schools are starting, pears are falling off the trees, and--gasp!--are those maples going a bit reddish over there?) and I realized that I have not posted anything to the blog in about two months.

Thankfully, this is because we have been extremely busy doing lots of fun stuff. Liam finished his first year of pre-school, which was celebrated with a school camping trip to Vashon Island. The Kaplans visited towards the beginning of the month, meeting up with us on the island, and then immediately thereafter we made an unexpected, short, and hastily planned trip to Phoenix to visit Amy's grandmother who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was good to see her, but obviously, the circumstances were pretty sad. Fortunately she is still hanging in there and has a few more months left. During our visit, she was pretty lucid, and was able to visit with our boys and the other grand kids and socialize for a couple of hours at a stretch.

We made it up to the mountains for a beautiful hike to Twin Lakes near Snoqualmie Pass--Liam absolutely loved having a snowball fight in summer. At the very end of the month we visited with Ben Heumann, one of my students from McGill, during a stop on his epic bike journey from Portland OR to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory before his PhD started in August. It was great fun catching up with Ben and hearing about his adventures. You can read a lot more about his voyage and check out some cool pictures on his travel blog here .

CORE GIS--maps for Sightline and the Washington Trails Association

A couple of months ago I did some analysis and cartography for the Sightline Institute. They've been working on the actual and potential impacts of Measure 37 in Oregon, which effectively exempts many parcels from the celebrated land use restrictions that have been in place in Oregon since the 1970s.

The maps have just been published in their new book Cascadia Scorecard 2007, and they've also posted the maps to their website here, here, and my favorite, here.

I also made a map showing temperature changes in the Northwest between 1950 and 2003. I did not do the analysis on this one--the data came from the U.S. Historical Climate Network and were processed by Phil Mote, the Washington State Climatologist.

For another recently completed project, I created a series of maps for the Washington Trails Association documenting the extensive damage to trails and roads as a result of an exceptionally powerful storm that hit western Washington last November. Those maps were printed in their monthly magazine, and my buddy Josh Livni made a very cool web-map with the same base data that WTA will use to update the trails and roads conditions as they are repaired over the summer.

Twin Falls

A couple of weeks ago we hiked Twin Falls, starting from Olallie State Park. This is a great hike for kids, in that it is not too long, there is not too much elevation gain, and the exposure is pretty minimal, except for the viewing platform above the falls at the very end. The platform is of very sturdy construction and has great guardrails, but still, the drop is substantial. We also encountered the profile of an Ent during our hike, which was rather startling.

Lochlan is One!

Last month Lochlan had his first birthday. It is hard to believe that Micro Man is a year old, walking, and starting to talk. We had a party at our house, invited our friends and neighbors over for a pot luck, played in the backyard after the rain cleared, and ate chocolate cake! As far as I can tell, a good time was had by all--especially the guest of honor, who despite seeming a bit confused about why so many people were paying so much attention to him, retained his characteristic equanimity.

We did not go overboard on presents, mostly because there are so many age-appropriate toys in the house already from Liam (plus, well, he's ONLY ONE). However, Lochlan will turn just about any object into a drumstick and start beating out a rhythm on any available surface. Every time we go to the Zoomazium, he makes a beeline for the African drums in the toddler section and just goes to town. I usually have to pull him off the djembe when it's time to go. So we got him some drums, and they were, er, a hit.

Cascade Land Conservancy Conservation Awards Breakfast

On Tuesday morning I attended the Cascade Land Conservancy's annual Conservation Awards Breakfast. This is the third time I've attended in five years, and I have to say it is truly astonishing how quickly (and how much) this event has grown. This year, they had to move the venue from the Westin to the Convention Center--because there were over 1,800 people there!!

The featured speaker was Governor Christine Gregoire, and she gave an inspiring speech about the progress the (Democratically controlled) Legislature was able to make on conservation and environmental issues this past year. Then--a complete surprise to me--she had a signing ceremony for a bill that passed this session enabling a regional transfer of development rights program to begin within the three metro counties of Greater Seattle. This is a landmark piece of legislation, in that it will create a truly effective market for development rights and has the potential to take most if not all of the development pressure off of the forests and farms near the growing cities of Puget Sound.

I sat at Charlie Raines' table with folks from The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, Conservation Northwest, and a few other organizations. I've worked with Charlie for about five years on a wide variety of projects, and he's truly an environmental hero. I'm sure one of these days he'll be up on stage receiving an award from CLC, but not this year. The lifetime achievement award was given to Paul and Debbi Brainerd (they started the Brainerd Foundation, which has done a TON of stuff in the NW). Debbi gave a short speech, and she ended with a fantastic quote from George Bernard Shaw:

This is the true joy in life: the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. --George Bernard Shaw

I'm thinking of sticking that one on the bathroom mirror.

Boats, Part II--Seattle Maritime Festival

Yesterday was day two of the Seattle Maritime Festival, which featured tugboat races, wooden boat building, and best of all--a Coast Guard helicopter rescue demonstration. The Coast Guard flew out one of their Jayhawk helicopters up to Seattle from the air base in Astoria Oregon (our local air base has the smaller Dolphin helicopters), dropped a dummy in the water, then had one of their rescue swimmers jump out of the helicopter, 'rescue' the dummy, and hoisted the swimmer and dummy back into the helicopter. This all happened in Elliott Bay, a few hundred yards away from the dock where we watched. It was awesome, very similar to some of the scenes in the movie 'The Guardian' (which I highly recommend).

Afterwards, Liam met the Coast Guard officer who provided explanations and commentary during the demonstration, and we grabbed a quick shot of him and his daughter with our little guy.

It was a great day--tugboat races, helicopters, and people dressed like orcas. What more could you ask for?

Boats, Part I--Opening Day

Opening Day is a long-standing Seattle tradition (close to 100 years) that takes place on the first Saturday in May. This year, Amy was attending an all-day oil spill response training on Lopez Island, so I loaded the boys into the bike trailer and we headed for the Montlake Cut. It turned out to be a beautiful day, and we made it there just a few minutes before the 12:00 opening cannon shot was fired. We lounged on the grass and watched the boats pass by. On the way home, Liam fell asleep and completely squished his astonishingly tolerant little brother into the side of the trailer.

Liam Dances

Here is Liam demonstrating his mad dance moves.

Lochlan Walks

OK, I finally got it! Here is a short, silent, grainy movie taken with our digicam.