Ups and Downs

It began Friday night.  We had another lovely evening for a soccer match.  The Sounders were playing west coast rivals, the Vancouver BC Whitecaps.  Seattle was favored.  The city was beautiful, the sky was dramatic...

We founds friends on the light rail.

 We marched and chanted our way to the stadium.

 The field was colorful and we got to sing Oh Canada!

 The tifo produced by the Emerald city Supporters was grand! 

Then it all went south.  After a tense 90 minutes of play, Seattle lost.  The Whitecaps fans celebrated the winning of the Cascadia Cup while the rest of the 55,000 filed out of the stadium, disappointed.

Saturday morning the weather looked to be good as we traveled south to my brother's house in Chehalis for the annual Norquist Family cider bee. 

We got to work cutting and grinding and pressing apples.

 Samples of freshly squeezed cider were tested.

 More family crew arrived.

 The cider was strained into jugs.

 Cousins had fun. 

  I borrowed some photos taken by my niece Katie from her Facebook post.

I left the apple crew to go shuck the corn for lunch.

 Just before the lunch stop we had some heavy rain move in.

So lunch was moved to the garage.

Tom and I had to leave then to go to Olympia to attend a memorial service for a too young member of his extended family. We drove through rainstorms and rainbows to get to this lovely place.

We heard that the apple squeezers produced 75 gallons of cider, to be divided up around the families. We brought some home too.

Sunday has been another dry day.  We got up late, I did some grocery shopping and then Tom and I went for a walk.  We settled in front of the TV at 1:30 to watch the Seahawks play the Dallas Cowboys in Seattle.  At half time we went to Jill's house to take them some cider and applesause I had made last week and give Isaac a new rain jacket we shopped for at REI Saturday evening after we got home. He goes to outdoor education camp this week and the rain is coming back the the northwest. 

Unfortunately the Seahawks lost too!  Bummer.  

Tom and I think it's time to leave town.  This week will be about getting ready to do that. We fly away on Thursday.  I'll tell you more about that later.