Thanksgiving 2007

We had a great Thanksgiving with two turkeys, tons of food, and a houseful of people. This included Grandma Dot, Grandma Bev, Uncle Jack and Aunt Shirl, George and Anne Kordwig (neighbors down the street), Uschi and Louis and their two children, Beatrice and Pedro, Franklin and Joy Lobb, and their two children, Gabriella and Graceson (the youngest attending at only 6 months), also the Ostlings and Wade. Coming to a total of 30! Things went very smoothly for that many people!

The mix of folks was unique...George was born in Germany and Uschi and Louis are from Brazil, but most recently from Germany . The other interesting find was that Anne and Uncle Jack were born in relatively close proximity in Scotland, but ten years apart!

We are thankful for our friends and family and really enjoyed hosting this year.

Just to remind Jack...that at the end of the evening we did play the board game Therapy with Uschi, Louis, Kyna, and Shannon.

And just to remind Gail...Jack would have won if she hadn't given Uschi the peg reward for successful group therapy instead of him! Maybe next time he will not suggest that she is what she eats.

Here is a turkey that Emma (8) drew this year, using her hand of course for a template:

Art by Emma

Freewinds pull-out voyage

Okay, so a cruise from Everett to Seattle in November may not have been the calmest adventure our family has ever been on, but the boat was in desperate need of deck repairs and today was the day to take her in! Here is a GoogleMap of the adventure.

After a couple of nice, mild days we woke up to some fairly stiff winds at the house. Undaunted, we forged ahead. The marina was fairly calm, and at least it wasn’t raining! Well, it wasn’t the smoothest ride we had. In fact, with 20 mph winds in our face (and gusts up to 30 at times! Hmmm…just below small craft warnings.) and a changing tide, we had plenty of chop and slop with an occasional roll from the Straits. Since we didn’t plan on tacking much we didn’t even put the sails up. Still the boat did great.

The other adventure was navigating through the multitude of gill netters (who else would be out on a choppy/windy day like today?). More than once we had a panicked fisherman come full throttle towards us as we were merrily bouncing along, oblivious that the white caps ahead of us were really net floats. Caleb, who was the undisputed net finder, took the helm for most of this excitement so Dad could stand on deck and make reassuring gestures to the irate fisher folk. Let’s see…that was about when the littles decided to upchuck. But the winds were declining.

As we were coming to Shilshole, the huge mega-yacht Laurel crossed our bow and tied up. We were pretty impressed! Come to find out the Laurel is listed as the 8th largest American-owned yacht and was built right here in the Northwest.

The trip started going pretty fast after that point. The BNSF bridge was up so we scooted right past – good thing – the bridge clearance is 43’ at hightide and our mast is around 50’. Then we were ushered right into the large locks with only a barge and tug and one other small powerboat with us. Pretty good for the first time through the locks in our boat. Exit the locks, veer starboard, and back right into CSR’s travellift.

Freewinds pull-out 11.9.07