Four Part Harmony

Hi everyone. I wanted to post some pictures from our fun memorial day adventures, but realized that we had a bunch of other photos I haven’t put up yet so I’ll post a bunch of them real quick-like here.

For one thing, we had a really nice Mother’s Day brunch here at our place with a bunch of friends and food. I never did get any pictures of that though, as our camera was (and is) on the fritz. We’ve since borrowed a camera and have been using that as a backup until we get around to sorting out our camera woes, but no pictures of the fun Mother’s Day brunch (if anyone has any good ones feel free to email some over!).

A couple weeks ago, Nicki’s friend Michelle came out and stayed with us, and for part of her trip Nicki took her and the kids out to the coast.

They went to Beverly beach, outside of Newport, OR, and stayed in a yurt. To hear Anna tell it, it sounded like a fun time.

They also went to the aquarium.

It rained torrents the first night they were gone, but then they had some sunshine, and I think they spent some time beachcombing…

…which is starting to be one of Anna’s favorite pastimes.

I had some free time in town, and a day off from work so I started building a fence for our front yard. I did the bulk of the hard work in one long day. Dug all the holes and got all the material. I dd the bulk of the actual cutting of the rails and setting the posts over the course of the next two days. It was a pretty fun project all in all.

It came out looking pretty good too. Everyone really likes the fence. I mean everyone. People stop their cars and yell out “nice fence!”. The UPS man says nice fence. The mail man. The neighbor kids. Random pedestrians. All like the fence. It’s a pretty nice fence. It really ties the yard together.

Anna was pretty happy to have Michelle to hang out with. They spent several sunny afternoons painting in the backyard. Anna would get covered in paint and then run through the sprinkler to wash off.

Milo has been enjoying the nice weather.

We made some popsicles and he and Anna have been enjoying them on these warm late spring afternoons.

This past weekend we went on quite an adventure. I had some more free Mariner’s tickets from work, so we drove up to Seattle for the game. It being Memorial Day weekend we decided to make a full weekend out of it and stop and visit some friends nearby as well. The game was fun. We got out of town late and traffic being what it is on Friday before Memorial Day, we pulled into Seattle with less than an hour before game time. Still the kids did great, made it through to the seventh inning stretch, and then we headed out. The game ended up going to 12 innings, and the M’s pulled it off in the end.

Next morning we headed out early. We had reservations on a 12:00 ferry leaving from the south tip of Whidbey Island across the sound to Port Townsend. We left early with the hopes of finding a nice bakery or something on the island, and having a leisurely morning with plenty of time to catch the ferry. The kids slept while we drove, but woke up as we came into Oak Harbor. We inquired about a local bakery, but were told that there wasn’t really anything in town. The kids were getting restless and the situation was getting tense, so we pulled off the street at random and came across this beautiful little city park. We played and climbed on these big old oak trees for a while and then proceeded on.

Our last hope for sustenance before we hit the ferry terminal was the idyllic town of Coupeville, WA, where we were told there was a nice little place to get fresh bread. When we got there we noticed the locals were all setting up for a parade.

Here’s it is, the “knead and feed” in coupeville. Stop there if you are ever in the neighborhood. We got coffee and scones and a loaf of fresh wheat bread that was really great. We ate quickly. We only had a little bitof time to catch our ferry, and we wanted to catch a little bit of the parade.

The parade! It was really cool. We watched the first few cars go by and then we headed for the car because we were really cutting it close to be in time to catch the ferry. We got the kids into the car and started to head back out of town…except…that…the only road out of town had a huge parade going down the middle of it.

So we were trapped, and on some level we resigned ourselves to missing the ferry. We watched the whole parade which got done just in time for us to almost, but not quite, make the ferry. Oh well.

Thankfully, this particular ferry terminal was in a state park with a pretty nice beach right at the loading area. We killed an hour and a half pretty quickly just laying on the beach goofing off.

Waiting for the ferry.

Milo waiting for the ferry.

Milo climbing on some driftwood while waiting for the ferry. The boy is getting strong and adventurous.

The ferry came and we zipped across the channel in about 20 minutes or so. It was a nice ride, and a beautiful day.

Here’s a view of Port Townsend from the ferry as it pulled in. Our friends Owen and Molly and their new baby Fern live near Port Townsend and we stopped in to see them.

Here’s Anna and Milo meeting Fern.

We spent the rest of our weekend camped out in nearby Fort Flagler state park, hanging out, and checking out the local beaches. Anna really liked these beaches with their coarse sand and tons of shells. As we were walking to the beach, she would generally walk up until the very first hint of any sand or shells, then immediately sit down, take off her hat and shoes and start filling them up with sand. That was as far as she ever made it most of the time.

She did like to venture down to the water occasionally though.

We took one last walk on the beach Monday morning and said our goodbyes to our friends. A great end to a great trip (thanks Owen and Molly!)

It was one of those rare trips that was just so nice on so many levels, and that was made all the more interesting and fun because of the weird unplanned setbacks. I think we could have stayed an extra week or two up there on the peninsula. (And maybe we should have, because then we got stuck in a 10 or 15 mile long back up on 101 heading south which slowed us to a crawl for over an hour with the car running on fumes and nearly overheating…but I’m trying to forget that part of the trip.)

Well, I think that catches you up on our adventures of late. Next weekend we are off to…you guessed it, the beach! This time with Anna’s school. Should be fun. Then we will rest…or work in the garden or something.