Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Just trying to get through life without looking stupid, so far it's not going very well.

Family

Warren Dunes

Indiana has better beaches than Washington crazy. Sound crazy? You’ve never seen Warren Dunes! The Lake Michigan shoreline is gorgeous. It has huge sandy beaches and the lake is so big it looks a lot like the ocean (minus the salty water, huge waves and sharks.) You can only see the other side if it’s a VERY clear day and then you can only see the tops of the highest buildings.

One of our favorite shoreline spots is Warren Dunes State Park. The beach is beautiful and there are pretty big dunes that you can climb. The tallest one is 240 feet. Climbing up it in the hot sun on slippery sand is quite a chore, but the view from the top is worth it. As kids we would run as fast as we could down the hill. As gravity pulled you faster and faster, your strides would get enormous until you inevitably started tumbling head over heels. I climbed the big dune with Tyla and Luke but our descent was a little more controlled than it was in my youth.

Elijah and David had fun playing in the sand on the beach and even though it was a very hot day, we got there early enough that we could enjoy ourselves before it got too hot and we left.

We finished up the trip with a stop at Oinks in New Buffalo for some delicious ice cream. Yum!

[UPDATE] Thanks to Ken for pointing out that Warren Dunes is in Michigan, not Indiana. But my statement still holds true. Indiana has some nice beaches/dunes too! Michigan’s coast line definitely wins though. It’s huge!

benmartens July 28, 2016 Family, Travel

Hesston Steam Museum

Tyla, Elkijah and I spent a week in Indiana with my family. We had a fantastic time! The weather was great and, unlike our Christmas trip, Elijah was healthy. We crammed in a ton of activities and spent most afternoons in the pool since it was quite hot. Posts over the next few days will highlight some of our activities.

One of our first stops on the trip was at the Hesston Steam Museum. We bounced along back country roads for about half an hour until all of a sudden we ended up at a field with a bunch of steam trains and equipment. It has been operating for over 60 years. It started with a couple guys who liked steam equipment and has grown like that ever since. The facility is mostly operated by volunteers.

We focused our attention on three of the trains they have in operation. There’s a full size narrow gauge train, a smaller train which was just big enough for us to squeeze into the caboose and a tiny train where you ride on top of the cars. That tiny train was all of our favorites and we rode that one twice.

It’s a pretty impressive place in a pretty unlikely spot, but if you’re ever in the area, it’s worth a visit.

benmartens July 27, 2016 Family, Travel

Spinning

We had a family company picnic at a local park. Elijah had a blast and loved the merry go round on the playground. When he sat in the middle and spun, it reminded me of one of those “choose your character” screens from a video game so I made it into an animated gif and chuckled:

benmartens July 26, 2016 Family

Redmond Derby Days

The city of Redmond puts on a parade/carnival called Derby Days in July every year. Tyla and Elijah have gone in the past but this was my first year. We went there mainly for the parade and Elijah loved it. In true Redmond style, it was full of politicians and special interest groups, but that all went over Elijah’s head and he had fun watching everything go by. His favorite were the fire trucks at the beginning and the street sweeper at the end. A local Mexican restaurant, Ixtapa, had a fantastic showing with lots of dancers, a mariachi band and 20 horses.

After the parade we walked past Ooba’s Mexican restaurant. They have an outdoor restaurant and Elijah said “That looks delicious!” It was almost lunch time and Tyla and I love that place too so we stopped in. Elijah ate more food than I think I’ve ever seen him eat in one sitting. It was great to see because he was very sick for almost a week before that. He’s obviously rebuilding a lot of the mass that he lost.

We headed back to the car after the parade without checking out too much of the carnival, but it was a nice morning and we avoided the rain that came later in the day.

benmartens July 19, 2016 Family

Three Year Old Photos

Tyla had some great ideas for photos of Elijah at three years old. She picked out outfits, bought a prop and corralled Elijah and me for photo time. Here are a couple of the better results. Thanks for all your hard work, Tyla!

benmartens June 30, 2016 Family

Dozer Days

On a very hot day a couple weeks ago, we took Elijah down to the Puyallup fair grounds for Dozer Days. It’s a charity fundraiser event that gives kids the chance to drive and operate big construction equipment. We didn’t really know what to expect when we headed down there, but it was an excellent event! The whole day was very well organized. Each machine had it’s own area to operate in with dirt to dig, etc. In addition to the operator in the machine, there was a helper moving kids between the line and the machine. They organized the lines in such a way that you never had to wait too long for a turn. Everyone working there was a volunteer and they were great with the kids.

If you’ve ever seen Elijah around construction equipment, it’s no surprise to you have that he LOVED it. We let him pick out any of the equipment and he always chose the smaller machines. That was fine with us since those lines were generally shorter. He got quite a few turns and we also spent some time walking around the static displays.

I don’t know that this is something we need to do every year, but I’m sure we’ll go back at some point. Why don’t they have this for adults?!

benmartens June 21, 2016 Family

Birthday Party

Last weekend we had a small birthday party for Elijah. Elijah thought it was extra special that cousin David was in town to come to the party too. His cake was a Dairy Queen ice cream cake with Thomas, Annie and Clarabel trains on top. After cake and presents, our neighbors came over so their kids could help Elijah smash his piñata. Everyone got a turn, but it didn’t take too long for them to break it open to find the candy and toys inside.

The highlight of the day for me was watching Elijah’s face as he heard everyone sing Happy Birthday to him. I can’t describe the pure joy on his face, but I think it’s evident in this picture below.

benmartens June 17, 2016 Family

Happy Birthday Elijah

Little Man is three years old today! When I was thinking back over the last year, I felt like the change from 2 to 3 wasn’t that huge (except for no diapers, yay!) but then I started going back through the old video clips and I realized just how long ago his last birthday was. Enjoy this look back at the last 12 months…

Here are some quick links to previous birthday videos:
One Year
Two Years

benmartens June 15, 2016 Family, Video

Windermere Cup

For Mother’s Day weekend, Tyla suggested that we go to watch the Windermere Cup which is the finale of the UW crew season. She had previously read and enjoyed The Boys in the Boat which tells the story of a UW team that competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Ever since then, she has been itching to see a race and some of the history on campus.

We have never been to a race there and I’ve only been on campus a few times but it all worked out pretty smoothly. We parked on campus just north of the stadium, walked to the east end of the Montlake Cut and then followed the water all the way down to the end of the race course. There is a race every few minutes so it’s not too hard to keep a toddler entertained.

The race goes under the Montlake Bridge. At one point we were standing almost directly under the enormous bridge and Elijah thought it was really neat that the boats got to go under the bridge. Unprompted, he started clapping and yelling as loud as he could: “YAY! YOU DID IT! YOU MADE IT UNDER THE BRIDGE!”

The weather was beautiful and we watched almost all the races (with a slight detour to a bouncy house.) After the race, there is a boat parade so we stayed to watch the marching band float by on three boats and then see the fire boat go by with all it’s pumps turned on.

The area was busy but not nearly as crowded as I was expecting. It was a nice even to watch and I can see us doing it again at some point.

benmartens May 16, 2016 Family

Kite

kiteflying We had a classic sitcom moment in the park this week. A couple months ago, Elijah was given a cheap kite while he was out shopping with Tyla. The weather, the wind, our schedules, and our moods all finally aligned and we headed down to the school football field to try to fly it.

There was about a 1″ square picture showing how the strings were supposed to be tied on and 2/3 of that picture was covered by a UPC sticker. How hard can it be right? I got the strings attached and tried to launch it. For some reason it kept flipping around so the string was coming out the “back” of the kite and wrapping around. It obviously didn’t fly very well and I realized that duh, I tied the strings on wrong.

By then I had already knotted the incredibly tiny string so much that it was impossible to undo so I had to cut it. Thankfully Tyla suggested that I use some of the string that was wound around the handle to get the kite strung up and that worked great.

Fifteen to twenty minutes later, I finally had the kite in the air. Elijah tried it for about 30 seconds and then took his shoes off and went to play in the “sand box” (the long jump pit.)

benmartens May 5, 2016 Family