Yay for a the day off! Yay for sunny days! Yay for happy babies!…well, not quite. But that’s jumping ahead. 

Joel and Abbie invited us to hike on Labor day. Where did we go? Lucia Falls. Yep, you read that right. There’s a waterfall named after our dear daughter right down the road.

What’s that you say? It’s been named for longer than 9 weeks?

Hmmm…

And it’s pronounced Loosha Falls?

Hmm…

Oh well.

Sorry Baby Lu. I’m afraid you’re going to get a lot of “Loosha”s in your lifetime. Good thing all those places pronounced Loosha instead of Loo-see-ah are beautiful! I’d head over to St. Lucia any day. No matter how they pronounce the name.

Back to the hike, Abbie’s Mom snapped this excellent family photo (I may have gone a little crazy with the clarity filter in Lightroom, but it’s what I’m digging right now. Look at the contrast you can get in black and white!):

There’s a one mile loop that follows the water before coming back to the parking lot. It reminded me of my trail running XC days, and made me wish I could take off a do a couple miles.

However, there are several problems with that fantasy, namely I haven’t run further than from my livingroom to the front door (to catch an escaping baby) in more than 5 years…Pretty sure I would have keeled over.

Side note- Abbie and I are going to start training for a 5k. Stay tuned for stories of me keeling over…

Anyway, most of us were carrying a child of considerable weight, so we took it nice and slow. I got to do a second loop (lucky me) cause Lu didn’t quite fallen asleep the first time round.

We waived (and yelled) goodbye to the Roppos and headed back down to the falls to do a little adventuring and picture taking.

Mo did extraordinarily well traversing the rocks and water, so we can officially add “hiker” to the list of Mo descriptors.

Lu stayed asleep, snuggled right up against me. Until…

We found blackberries! Yum! Seriously, a jackpot. Mmm. They smelled so sweet in the afternoon sun. And they weren’t picked through at all. Honestly, a picked-through blackberry bush is just not worth the effort. All the good berries are hidden far in the back, behind jagged layers of thorns and killer bees.

I scrambled back to the car to find any container-like object to hold them. Andy had already sacrificed Mo’s snack and water cup to the picking effort. This may be the first time I was rewarded for never, ever cleaning out our car. I found the little basket that held Mo’s books during our last car trip wedged between the car seats. Excellent!

We made a little nest for Lu. She laid there and admired the bushes.

The other three of us got busy picking.Well, two of us. Here’s what it looks like when a two year old picks blackberries.

And by pick, I mean eat.

Andy and I emerged (mostly) unscathed, with mouths dyed a delicious purple. However, we stayed just about 5 mins too long for the little ones. Both girls had a minor meltdown, but the mood of each was saved by their num-num of choice. Lu’s…well, you can probably guess; Mo’s were the special Elmo snacks Nikki gave us long ago, which I left in the trunk (see above note about never, ever cleaning out the car…I’m starting to think it’s not too bad a philosophy).

We’ve been enjoying the blackberries all week, and today we used up the very last of them to make a crumble. The recipe is super simple and delectable…my favorite type of recipe.

Mo, what do you think?

I’d say it was a success.

Hope you had a fantastic weekend too! And if you live in the PNW, do yourself a favor and find a blackberry bush. It’s well worth the effort.