Summer Visiting Vacation 2012 - Part 3

July 9 2012

We went to Peach Crest Farm in Stratford, Oklahoma to pick up some peaches with Poppy. I was totally excited and we got ready pretty early for our U-pick trip. I love peaches and Daniel has been telling me about how good peaches can be here. I've never seen a peach tree before and I was hoping for some big towering trees that could provide me with some shades from the scorching hot sun. When we arrived at the farm, my eyes started to twitch when I saw the real deal. Oh no! These trees were super tiny and the temperature on the dashboard said 92 degrees and there was hardly any shade! For a split second, the idea of staying inside the car with the A/C on seemed far more tempting. But seriously, although I felt that the weather gods were feeling a little too frisky for my liking, I did get myself out of the car to start my peach picking adventure. I was glad I did. Despite being a little bit on the small side, some of the peaches were pretty good.

Since Peach Crest is a USDA certified organic farm, no pesticides are used here. We saw hundreds, could even be thousands of giant grasshopper everywhere in the farm, jumping and hopping, happily eating the peaches until there's nothing left except the pits.

40 minutes later, and we were done with peach picking!

 We drove by Stratford little town. There was nothing much to see or do here.

Sarah : "Move along folks!"

We took a different route to go home and it was great to be able to see other towns along the way. This is the city of Ada.

 Somewhere along the way home, we stopped at an Amish store to buy some fudge.

There are some pretty good fudge here and many choices to choose from.

One of the many beautiful landscapes of Oklahoma on the way back.

A sudden, welcome, rain shower cooled down the temperature from extremely hot to pleasant.

Chilling out at Poppy's place. In case you're wondering why the boys were only wearing swimming shorts, they were waiting to have water balloon fights. The sweet lady wearing an apron, that's GB, Poppy's wife. 

Beautiful and cozy house!

Water balloon fight, especially after the rain is FUN! 

Despite the hot weather, the backyard is unbelievably green and so pretty.

Thriving vegetable garden

Serious grilling is going on here

Producing this yummy dinner

Sarah with the ever cheerful Aunt B.

Cleaning up after dinner.

Hanging out with Poppy in the backyard.

Last activity of the day - the Diet Coke and Mentos geyser. 

Oh Hi!

***This was actually a post from a few weeks ago. I didn't get to finish it until today. A lot has been going on lately, keeping me pretty busy and I haven't posted in awhile. My sister was pestering me to update the blog so here I am! Sometimes I just need someone to give me a good hard push to do something that I know I need to do. So do feel free to drop by to remind me :-). 

May 12 2012

Sarah is 14 weeks old now. She has been sleeping through the night since a couple weeks ago! She sucks her right thumb to sooth herself to sleep most of the time. And she's pretty consistent about her daily schedule. I think she's about to flip over soon since she's been rolling from her back to her side. Tonight I tried to play "peek-a-boo" with her. It startled her a little bit at first, her eyes were so wide opened and she paused for a few seconds that I thought she was going to cry. But then she started to laugh that I kept doing it for a few more times. FUN!

We have a stretch of pleasant, dry weather this week with mostly sunny skies in the low 70s. It sure is nice to be able to enjoy some spring weather as opposed to jumping straight into summer-like weather. Daniel had to work today so I took the kids out to this tiny town called Port Gamble, which is around 20 minutes drive from our house. It's a touristy kind of place which used to be a bustling logging town back in the 1850s. It has these well preserved original New England Victorian style houses which I love. 

These are views of the backyard of some of the buildings here, which is a huge field with a playground at the side of it. Some of these buildings which used to be houses have been turned into shops and a restaurant. 

I was actually craving for some scones (which I can just buy instead of making them myself as I normally do) and there is a little tea room place here that serves delicious scones and some other stuff that are pretty good too. But once we arrived there the boys wanted to play some soccer in that big field instead of heading straight to the tea room so Sarah and I hanged out on the side of the field near this wooden playground area. The boys made some new friends and they played kick ball for a little while before I got hungry and decided that it was time to indulge myself with some sweet stuff. 

The first time we were here was when Grammy visited us last December. I didn't post any pictures from that time since I lost all the pictures when the hard drive crashed. Since this is actually a house converted into a business place, it doesn't have much space. I'm so glad that we were seated in this room instead of the main room (which was full btw). There was nobody else in this room so it was perfect, especially when it involved a baby with three sweat smelling boys.

There are only two types of scones serve there, cranberry pecan and lemon. I ordered two of each. Unfortunately the scones were pretty dry that day. The tea was great though. Ezzat and I drank almost the whole pot. 

While waiting for me to feed Sarah, the boys went back to the field to play for a little bit more. 

The kids wanted to go to the beach and since we are living in Puget Sound, there's never a shortage of finding one within a short distance. We went to Shine Tidelands State Park which is just a few minutes away from the tea house.

Hood Canal Floating Bridge

Digging for some clams

Diamond Head (Le'ahi) State Monument

We went hiking at this place somewhere in mid Feb (**googled the 2 pics above =)). It was totally a sunny day but for once, I didn't complaint about the weather (when I first got here, all I did was whining about how hot it was although I knew it was in fact summer time), in contrary I think it was perfect! It was breezy all the way and the boys had fun running all the way to the summit. The two older boys reached the top probably 15 minutes earlier than the rest of us. The trail length is about 1.6 miles round trip and it took us less than 2 hours to complete the hike.

A little background information about this place - The name is Le'ahi, an ovoid-shaped crater believed to have been formed about 300,000 years ago during a single, brief eruption. It covers 350 acres with it's width being greater than its height. The trail to the summit of Le'ahi was built in 1908 as part of the U.S Army Coastal Artillery defense system. Diamond Head Fire Control Station was also built at the summit between 1908-1910. The word Le'ahi Hawaiian means fish forehead since the summit resembles the forehead (lae) of the 'ahi' or tuna fish (now that reminds me of fresh poke - yum!) Nowadays Le'ahi is more commonly known as Diamond Head as in the late 1700s, Western explorers and traders who visited Le'ahi mistook the calcite crystals in the rocks on the slope of the crater for diamonds.

Pretty blue sky. See the mountain? That's where we went. The place where we parked our car, the trailhead is located on the crater floor at an elevation of about 200 ft.

One of the pretty views on the way up.

Walking on concrete portion of the trail is much easier. The dirt trail is much steeper but is not difficult since the boys could handle it. Ezzat was slower than his brothers though and was with us all the way up. By this time, Emir and Farhan were no where to be seen since they were so much faster.

The first tunnel - we had to climb steep stairway to get to this point. It's a narrow one, about 225-foot long according to the information leaflet we got.

This is the second stairways - 99 steps! The cross-beams above supported camouflaging as this place was used as a site for coastal defense of O'ahu.

At the top of the stairs is another tunnel which is the entry to the lowest level of Diamond Head Fire Control Station.

There is also a spiral staircase that we had to climb to get to the exit of the crater.

And this is the beautiful view we came upon once we're out! Thank god for that coz I began to feel a bit claustrophobic with the small narrow spaces.

See the space in between the ground and rock/concrete? That's where we exited. The slit is pretty narrow in height and we had to bow really low to get in and out.

Look closely to see the light house.

Going to the uppermost level of the Fire Control Station

View of the crater from the summit.

View of Honolulu from above.

One of the viewing stations



The not so fun part for me

I see light at the end of the tunnel!

Going down the 99 steps was way easier but looking down at the height - yikes!

Some views on the way down. Almost back to the Comfort Station!

Overall it's not a difficult hike, in between easy to moderate, and the kids had fun especially Emir. Here's Ezzat looking a bit tired.

Fun time climbing up a tree. It's the boys' first time!

Emir thinks he looks like Alvin in Alvin and the Chipmunks

I really want to ride that trolley one day just for fun before we leave this island =)