Week II - Part One: Whidbey Island

After a busy Monday washing clothes and restocking the food supply, we were off again for Whidbey Island. We caught the 9:30 ferry from Mukilteo.

Tuesday we adults settled quickly into a much slower pace.

Reading on the deck,

reading downstairs,

or just doin' nothin'.

The kids, however, were expending energy with abandon. The flotation tubes used for tubing by some of the family served as trampolines for them. We did collect ourselves for a trip across island to Langley for ice cream for all, coffee for some, beer for two, and window shopping.

Corey and Jill had their Driods ever ready, posting on face book and keeping up with "friends".

Irene shared her ice cream with Dog while Isaac made contact with Boy.

The Sounders played a non-league match Tuesday evening, so we flew the flag, but satisfied ourselves with face book up dates. Another victory!

We had fires in the fire pit in the back yard, by the lagoon, and had s'more s'mores.

Wednesday we managed a morning walk on the tide flats while the tide was still out.

Beach comber Irene.

Grandma and Irene are the beach girls. Here we are heading back to the cabin.

Wednesday Afternoon Tom and I took the kids to South Whidbey Community Park, where they have a wonderful play structure.

Isaac got a bit green on the tire swing, and it was hot inland.

But the ice cream truck came just in time! This was a new experience for the kids. They don't have ice cream trucks in Fort Morgan!

That evening the kids and I returned to the beach. They played while I listened to their chatter and watched osprey diving for fish in the bay.

When we were planning the cabin, Tom insisted on including a loft. It isn't used much, but we do have a double bed up there. Isaac and Irene got to sleep up in the loft for the first time. Looks like they slept well!

Thursday morning we drove over to Double Bluff Park, for a beach walk on the other shore of Useless Bay.

The many structures are evidence of serious play having taken place there. It is one of the few public access parks on the shore.

The sandy bluff is fun to climb and then "fly" down.

We did some tide pool "science", as Irene likes to call it.

As we posed for pictures.

Irene took this one for me.

There was time for one last canoe ride in the late afternoon when the lagoon filled up.

Then we cleaned up, packed up, and had dinner at the Clover Patch before heading back to Seattle. But Jill saved some bread to feed to the sea gulls on the ferry ride. Non-stop fun.

We were up early this morning to go to Lake Washington for the Hydroplane time trials and the airshow. But that's another story.

It's a good thing we got some rest and relaxation in on Whidbey. Now we're back to busyness.

Week I - On the Oregon Coast.

We're back home after a very full and fun week in Oregon. We traveled on Monday, stopping to grocery shop along the way, hoping to arrive before Jill, who was meeting the rest of the family at the Portland airport. But they beat us to the cabin at Rockaway Beach, and were getting settled in. John and Andrea joined us for the week and participated in the morning ritual of eating at the Garibaldi Bakery. Chomp! Foggy mornings usually cleared to pleasant afternoons. Jill, the beach fire organizer, found this driftwood shark. We honored him before we burned him.

The kids found fun everywhere.

It was just about here that Isaac went down face first. He came up sputtering and announced "That's it. I'm done." and headed to the cabin for dry clothes. The sea water here is 45 degrees cold.

They spend many hours playing in Salt Air Creek.

The Twin Rocks stand vigil over the beach fun.

I did get down and dirty to help build a sand castle.

On Thursday the Grandpas and Jill and Corey went deep sea fishing with the Siggi G charter company. Here they are returning with their catch. We met them at the docks in Garibaldi. Captain Joe did right by them, and they came back with sea bass, rock fish and ten crabs. We had good eating that night and more on Saturday.

Thursday afternoon Jake arrived. The kids do love to play with their Uncle Jake.

And of course there were more beach fires

and s'mores eating.

Major construction was now taking place in the creek.

There were several trips to Flamingo Jim's for the latest in beach wear and fun toys.

Saturday evening the sun set on our beach time.

Sunday morning it was time to pack up and get the cabin cleaned up for the next family visitors. We took time to take our annual family photo on the cabin steps.

And then by 10:00 we were off to Vernonia, Oregon for a family picnic. My brother and sister-in-law were out from Boston. We were missing one family group and several kids and spouses, but it was quite a crew that gathered in the park. All four of my siblings were there, and most of our kids and grand kids. Mom, Grandma, Great Grandma Violet loves to be in the center of all this hugging and eating and playing and reminiscing. Today we are doing mounds of laundry. We collected the mail and got the bills payed. I made another grocery store run. Jill and Corey went downtown for some fun on the water front and the Market. Isaac and Irene are getting reacquainted with all of their favorite play activities.

Soon we will be repacking to head to Whidbey Island for a couple of days. We'll be back in town for Seafair activities next weekend.

Busy Days Are Here Again

Summer 2009 This evening our daughter Jill will be arriving at the airport here in Seattle. This marks the beginning of two busy weeks for us. Sunday Jill will help us pack up the car with all of the gear needed for a family trip to Rockaway Beach on the Oregon Coast. Son Jake will stop by to hang out, and then take Jill with him to pre-match functions in Seattle. A while later Tom and I will be on the train headed to the stadium, all of us to converge on Qwest Field for a Sounders soccer match against Colorado. While Jill lives in Colorado, she is first and foremost a Seattle fan when it comes to soccer and football. Monday morning Jill will drive the van south to Portland, where the rest of the family will be arriving about 10:45. That includes son-in-law Corey, grand kids Isaac and Irene, and Corey's mom and step dad, Andrea and John. From Portland they will head west to Rockaway Beach. We will leave for the beach from Seattle with the Toyota loaded down, make a grocery stop in Seaside, and we'll all meet up at the cabin in the afternoon. Corey looks forward to a cool vacation on the coast after the Colorado summer heat. He's a sheriff's deputy with the county and so his work clothes include a bullet proof vest, hot stuff in 105 degree weather. I don't think there will be any problem finding cool ocean air. John and Andrea haven't been out here for a long time and seldom take vacation trips, so I'm hoping their week is wonderful. They have rented a small motel cottage just about next door to our cabin. The following Saturday John and Andrea will be delivered back to Portland to fly home. The rest of us will attend a family picnic in Vernonia, Oregon on Sunday next, on our way back to Seattle. Our second week will include a trip to Whidbey Island to stay several nights at the cabin there, attending Seafair events here in Seattle, like the hydro races and Blue Angels Air Show, and all of us will go to another Sounders match. Tom and I have had a lazy afternoon, the last such for a while to come. Yes, I will take pictures. There will be postings, perhaps some along the way, and more after the buzyiness is over. I'll try to catch up with all of you as I can. But my priority? Well, spending time with those grand kids, of course!

A Lovely Summer Day....

...but strange things are going on. But we'll begin at the beginning. When I checked my email this morning I found a Blogger newsletter, which among other things, told of a new blogger service called Stats. I was interested, so I saved it until later. Then we were off to our usual Friday morning breakfast with the teacher ladies. We had a good time and two and a half hours flew by. At one point we were talking about laughter and it's value, and I shared the not so romantic card by husband gave me for my birthday. It says: I've got a birthday story that will turn your hair gray. (open the card) Oh, I see you've already heard it. We all got a good laugh out of that, for me a second one. I'm not sure how it got to be 4:30 already, but maybe the fact that we didn't get home from breakfast until after 11:00 may explain part of it. But that was fine, because we have planned for this to be a lazy day. I went on line to see about installing the Stats device on my blog, but I had to click on the Blogger in draft option to get it. OK, fine. Did that. Then I went into my computer picture files to change my header photo. Good. Done. It was beautiful outside so I got Tom to stroll around the garden with me, to see what was blooming. I grabbed my camera for some new material to post. That's why you see this blog decorated with flower photos. Glass flowers with roses.

And fuchsias.

Butterflies, bees and hummingbirds are flitting about these days. I love summer!

We no longer have live cats, just stone ones. But this was a favorite spot for our Callisto when she was with us. Not so much fun for the birds.

We had lunch about 1:00 and sat on the patio and read. I'm reading another Scandinavian mystery, this by Jo Nesbo, called Nemesis. It's very good and I'm trying not to spend all of my time reading it.

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Then I came upstairs to download my photos when to my dismay, all of my photos, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, had been deleted from my computer! I yelled HELP! and Tom came up to see what was wrong. Fortunately we have a back up system, Carbonite, and after some navigating, I found my Photos. I am in the process of restoring some of them back to my hard drive.

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With my new photos finally downloaded, I went to post them on my blog. Well, the image icon no longer directed me to my hard drive????? Blogger in Draft looked foreign and didn't do what I wanted it to. So I spent more time trying to get rid of it and get back to normal. Forget the Stats if it's going to mess up everything else.

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I think I am, normal that is. Well, whatever that is. But I'm definitely confused!

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Oh, and I ran out of photo storage again and this time I went right away to the Picasa Album option and bought 20 GB of storage for $5. That was last Thursday. But it took at least 24 hours to kick in, so I left it and went away for the weekend. When I went to post photos from Whidbey, I got the "used up storage" message. What? I checked my credit card statement online and had been charged, so went searching. Turns out I had to sign in to Google and sign out for the new storage to kick in.

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I think I've got everything all squared away now, finally. I have no idea why my photos were deleted. It's a mystery.

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But with all of that, I'm going to wrap this up and head back outside. It's a beautiful day out there, a perfect summer day.

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I hope you appreciate the effort I've gone through to bring you this blog today. I'm exhausted!

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Maybe I'll set up my mini lap top in the shade on the patio and see what the rest of you have been up to.