Studio711.com – Ben Martens

The other weekend I had to spend a couple hours at church putting up some new light fixtures. I took Elijah along with me and he quietly played with the school toys and helped me out for the whole time. He was so good that I decided to reward him with his very first trip to a McDonald’s. I don’t have anything against that place and we aren’t avoiding it intentionally, but it’s not on our regular rotation unless we’re running through an airport or something like that.

I picked out one that had an indoor play place so he got to start with his own Happy Meal and then play on the equipment for as long as he wanted. That turned out to be about 45 minutes and then we finished it off with an ice cream cone. He was a little excited about the whole thing as you can see in the pictures. He said he really liked going to “Donalds”.

Elijah loves trains so we decided to take him down to a big model train show at the Pacific Science Center. It was a good excuse to check out that place too.

The show felt a bit odd. There were a bunch of displays set up all over the museum, and the museum itself is made up of an oddly shaped (modern architecture or something goofy) buildings so it was tricky to know if you’d seen everything or not. He was interested in the trains but he was even more interested in the kid science displays.

We got there right when it opened and then left a little after lunch time when it started to get busy. I don’t know that we’ll be going back there because it’s a pretty expensive day, but Elijah had a lot of fun so I’d say it was worth the trip.

Last May, Elijah was chosen from his swim class to participate in a photo shoot for some marketing material. We agreed to do it and he had a blast spending hours in the pool with Tyla, an instructor and a photographer in scuba gear. They promised to send us one of the photos as a thank you for participating but they ended up sending us a bunch (it just took a very long time.) If you go to the Water Babies website, you can see they even chose one of the photos of Elijah to use on their site. If you’re looking for a swim program for your kids, Tyla and I both recommend this one!

Voila! There is our 2016 Christmas card. This year as I was addressing them, I thought it would be fun to put all of the addresses on a map. I used the mapping feature of Excel to do it in case you’re curious.

Elijah loves music and regularly bursts out in song when you least expect it. If you’re shopping at Safeway at the same time as us, you might hear Jesus Loves Me or Jingle Bells (at any time of the year.)

I thought it would be fun to look back on these songs when he’s older so here’s a list of what I think are his top songs right now. The first three are from the Cars soundtrack.

• Chuck Berry – Route 66
• Rascal Flatts – Life is a Highway
• The Chords – Sh-Boom
• Peter, Paul and Marry – Puff the Magic Dragon
• Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside
• Away in the Manger
• Jingle Bells
• Now Thank We All Our God
• A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
• Little Drummer Boy

I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton more but this is a pretty good start.

Seattle is a very mild climate. The ocean and the sound keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. That being said, every once in a while, cold weather aligns with wet weather and we get snow. It hasn’t happened in a few years, but if we get enough to cover the roads, it usually shuts everything down. I made fun of people for this when I moved here, but quickly learned that it really is hazardous. The roads usually start wet, then freeze, then get covered in snow. There are hills everywhere and oh yeah, there are only a handful of plows to cover the entire area. Thankfully a few years ago they changed the laws to allow the use of salt on the roads.

Anyway, we finally got a good snow the other day and it was perfect timing for Elijah to play in it. He has seen snow a few times before, but never at our house. We headed straight out as soon as we were up and he played in the snow with Tyla from 7:30 until noon with only a short break to warm up and change clothes. We had a couple sleds in the garage and those were a big hit. There were some roads in the neighborhood that were steep enough for sledding. All of the neighbor lawns were quickly covered in snowmen. Elijah had a lot of fun telling me about his big snow day!

Every year since Tyla and I met, we have purchased a new Christmas ornament at some point in the year. (And every year I write a blog post that starts with a sentence like that.) This year we took two vacations and bought an ornament from each one. The first was a trip to Great Wolf Lodge and the second was our weekend in a caboose. The Great Wolf Lodge ornament was pretty easy since they had a gift shop full of choices, but for the caboose I had the idea to go on eBay and buy an HO scale version of the caboose we stayed in. It’s not exactly the same caboose number, but it’s the same generation and I’m not a train nerd so that works for me. I’m sure I enraged some of those train nerds when I drilled a hole through part of the caboose so I could hang it from the tree.

You can see our past ornaments in these posts: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2008-2010

Mom was surfing the internet a few weeks back and found some incredibly cheap plane tickets so she and Dad came out here for Halloween weekend. It was a trip that was too short, but you can’t argue with the price. We spent a lot of the time just hanging out at the house so they could get maximum Elijah-time. It was good to see them again, especially since we aren’t going back to Indiana for Christmas this year.

Elijah chose to be a bumblebee this year. I don’t know where it came from but he made a pretty cute bumblebee (and it was thankfully an easy costume to put together!) He got a lot of use out of his costume. He used it at our church’s Trunk or Treat program, a Microsoft family day, a nursing home program, and of course in the neighborhood on Halloween night. He didn’t care much about the candy he receives but he loved being on both ends of trick-or-treating.

Below are a couple photos of him in his costume. My favorite is one from church: he’s wearing a bee costume, wearing some silly glasses that he “won” playing a game and riding a tricycle.

The pumpkin patch is an annual tradition in our house. We’ve visited quite a few different ones but Bob’s Corn is our favorite. They have lots of activities, good food and, oh yeah, pumpkins. Ever wanted to shoot an apple out of a big air cannon? Bob’s Corn has you covered.

This year we snuck in on a day that looked a bit rainy so the crowds weren’t too big. We made the rounds and spent plenty of time watching Elijah ride a bike with training wheels. He’s really eager to get a “pedal bike” but we’re trying to get him comfortable on the Strider and skip training wheels. One of the tricycles was big enough to squeeze onto so I rode next to Elijah for a while and he got a huge kick out of that.

They also have a giant pile of pumpkins next to their barn which makes a great spot for photos…