Visit to Ms. Kelly's

Despite the fact that our good friends and former neighbors, the Payne's, are only 2 1/4 hours away, we seem to rarely see them.  We are busy, but Mike and Kelly and the boys are REALLY busy.  Still, busy-ness shouldn't be an excuse so I made sure that we got in a trip to their house before the end of summer.

Since Stevie was on call, the four of us (plus the dog) headed up for a day of fun and visiting.  Kelly and Mike have a great new house in La Conner, Washington which is a really cute little town deep in the heart of Skagit County.  This part of Washington is particularly picturesque because of the agricultural fields and barns all framed by the Cascade mountains in the background.  It was begging for a photo safari, but since I only brought my point and shoot camera and since I had three impatient kids in the car, you won't get any great photos on this blog post...

We went into La Conner to look around at the stores.  Of course in order to accomplish this, we had to bribe the kids with ice cream.

Kelly

London is excited about him shaved ice!

Enjoying our ice cream

After looking around for a while, we headed back to Kelly's to prepare to go to the lake for a boat ride!  The kids and I were really looking forward to this and we enjoyed a beautiful evening on the lake with Kelly's boys wake boarding and my guys tubing. 

Emmy and London hanging out in the cutty.

Dave and I

Dave wake boarding

London

 Even Emmy gave tubing a go for the first time.  This was a huge step as last summer she wouldn't even go on a boat if it was going more than 2 miles per hour.  She gave strict instructions to Mike, though, not to go any faster than London went!

By the end she didn't want to get out, but alas the sun had dropped behind the mountains and the temperature was dropping so we had to go (bare in mind it was only 72 degrees to start with - and that's air temperature!)

Thanks Mike, Kelly, Dave and Matt for a great visit!

Fun day with friends

One of the things on the kids' summer to-do list was go to the zoo and since our family pass runs out in two days, we squeezed in one more trip before the end of summer.  We also invited our friends, the Baileys, to join us.  They just moved back from Okinawa and now just live 40 minutes from us.

The weather was looking iffy, but we decided to risk it and drove over to the zoo.  It turned out to be glorious, for about two hours, and then the rain set in.  But two hours was enough to see half the zoo, the animal show and have a merry-go-round ride so that was great for the kiddos!

After we left the zoo, we headed over to Legendary Donuts for the "End of Summer Donut Blow-Out"!  Yes, this was the promised hamburger donut that I had arranged for Emmy and London.  They worked hard all summer on reading and math worksheets so this was their reward.

That's all donut.

Yes, folks, that's a real piece of bacon on there.

Hangin' Out

This was the scene on our back railing after Emmy and London had bathed their stuffed animals.  They hung them out to dry!  London said they looked more like a bunch of sea sick animals hanging over the railing...

Back to school clean out

I decided the other day that it might be a good idea to take a day with each child to thoroughly go through their room before the start of a new school year.  My idea was met with great enthusiasm and each child was clambering to be the first to go.  Who knew?  After much debate, the line up went as follows:  first London, next day Emmy, next day Cannon.

Now London is my neat freak.  It's not unusual for him to randomly reorganize his room just for fun; consequently, I have not cleaned out his room since we moved here.  Because of his neatness I thought he'd be the quickest room to go through, but I was wrong!  His little room took hours but we emerged unscathed with a laundry basket of things for Goodwill and a full trash bag of garbage.

After

The next day was Emmy - my messiest child.  About once a month I have to come into her room and complete re-organized what was once beautifully organized.  She has quite the talent for destroying organization!  I planned to spend HOURS in Emmy's room, but hers actually turned out to be the quickest.  I think I keep her room pretty culled of stuff so it wasn't quite as bad.

Before

Before

I quickly decided the best way to approach Emmy's room was to make a huge pile of all the "bits" in the middle of the room and then we went through put things in their right box (animal box, Lego box, car box, dinosaur box, "girlie things" box, etc.)

Before we knew it, we were done and had a pile along the hall of all the stuff to go to Goodwill.  The best find in Emmy's room?  All the hair bows and hair clips that had gone missing - I accumulated quite the pile.  They are all over her room not from being in her hair, but because they are used as collars, harnesses, etc. for her stuffed animals!

After - it won't ever be this clean again!

Cannon was next and I discovered he doesn't have much stuff.  And, in fact, if you took away his Legos and books then he'd have practically nothing!  Still, it was dusting those @$#%$ Legos that took most of the time!

The reward at the end was lunch out with Mommy.  London and Emmy chose Panera where they got their favorite - a bread bowl with soup.

Haven't I tought them good table manners???

Reuniting with old friends.

The summertime is what is known in military terms as "PCS Season".  To PCS is simply what we would call "move" in civilian lingo.  But summer brings a lot of rotation from one duty station to another in the military and this summer we found that most everyone we knew who was still in Okinawa, left Okinawa.  In fact I think after only one year since our move, we now know only one family still living in Okinawa.

Fortunately for us, the military charter flight bringing a lot of these folks back to the US lands in Seattle so we've been able to see some old friends.

In May, the Ceren's passed through, although we missed seeing them by some bad timing.  Then in June I had a message from former neighbors who had twin boys who were friends with London that they were in town.  We spent a funfilled afternoon with Faris and Aidan at Chuck-E-Cheese.

Then in July the McDaniel family left the island and stayed with us for their first week back stateside.  We had a lot of fun catching up with Joe, Wendy, Courtney and Joey.

I think the boys' favorite part was when Joe took them four-wheeling with a club he used to belong to (they used to be stationed in Washington).  They came home dirty but with huge smiles on their faces.

Finally, the Bailey's who were also our neighbors in Okinawa moved to Bremerton just 40 minutes north of us in August.  Emmy and their son, Ben, were best friends in Okinawa and have very much enjoyed being reunited.

Jess and I (she brought me the Okinawan apron)

Beautiful Washington

I realized I haven't done a post recently on the beauty of the area so here are a few recent shots...

Full moon over Mt. Rainier

Full moon rising.

Misty morning

 

Pink sunset

Gold Creek Pond

Sunday was a beautiful day and I had planned to get the family out of the house for a hike in nature.  At first, we thought about going to Mt. Rainier since the wildflowers are in bloom, but we talked ourselves out of it because of the drive and the potential crowds.

Instead we opted to take Grammie to the place where we go sledding in the winter.  Steve and I really wanted to see what the place looked like with no snow on the ground and we knew we could take the dog and potentially have a good hike.

What we found was the huge difference it makes having snow on the ground versus grass!  We barely recognized the area and were really surprised at how small the actual hills were that we were sledding down.  They were no more than a small embankment with no snow, but add three feet of snow and they were quite fun!

Driving into the mountains - no snow left!

Last December...

We decided to drive just a little past where we usually park to go sledding to find a trail that I had read about online.  The trail, called Gold Creek Pond, was supposed to be only a mile long but circle a picturesque pond.  Well, I would say that the trail was not just picturesque, but picture perfect.  It was soooo beautiful.  We kept saying it looked like something in a calendar and I'm quite sure it's because I've seen it in a nature calendar.  It was just STUNNING!

Believe it or not, in the 1970s and 80s this spot was actually a big gravel pit where they mined the rock to make Interstate 90.  They have since reclaimed the land and made it a truly beautiful location.  The "pond" is the filled in pit and the waters are cold, deep and clear.