Rilla's Thanksgiving Art

Here is Rilla's Thanksgiving art. It has a turkey, the moon, and the sun! What more could you want for Thanksgiving! She says that it is, "a beautiful turkey" - just like the one our neighbors gave us this year which they raised.

Rilla (7)

Speed run to Whidbey Island

We made a speed run up to Whidbey Island on Saturday. Gail, Grandma Bev, and all but Cian and Jack, went to a 50th wedding anniversary for Denny and Marci Zylstra in Oak Harbor as well. While the others visited with relatives, Cian and Jack were busy making sea otter and bald eagle sightings. Here is an image of Rilla and Cian on the beach.

Toy Story 3

For Rilla's 7th birthday we suprised her by going to see Toy Story 3 in theater. Even though she didn't know where we were going she brought along her Toy Story 3 barbie doll. The movie was realy great ( especialy because we got to see it in 3-D) and mom even cried. We can't get Dad to go see it in the theater but he did agree to by it as soon as it comes out on DVD (he normaly waits till the price comes down to $12). All-in-all geting to see Toy Story 3 in 3-D was amazing and I can't wait till it comes out on DVD.

-Emma

Red Robin

For Rilla's 7th Birthday we went to Red Robin. I orderd mac -n- cheese because it was all you can eat and strawberry lemonade because it was ( you guessed it ) all you can eat. After we were done eating our dinner some of the waiters sang a birthday song to Rilla and gave her a ice cream sunday. As soon as the waiters left Colin stood up and and announced " I'm going to sit next to Rilla". -Emma

Easter 2010

We hosted an Easter Celebration at our house Sunday afternoon, with the usual feast with family/friends. The highlight is typically watching the kids hunt for Easter eggs in the front yard. Here is a picture of Rilla with her Easter egg bag.

Rilla (6) Easter 2010

The Dinghy

Here is a picture that Rilla drew of our Dinghy - a 2003 Zodiac Yachtline 480 (See the newest Yachtline models here). This was a part of a thank-you note we sent to the gentleman who sold us the boat (it took us a couple of months to get the title transfered and registration finalized). Rilla is in the front holding a stick and the boat's painter line - go figure!

Dinghy by Rilla (6)

Sailing with the Smiths

Took the Brent & Joanne Smith Family out on the boat this afternoon after church. Put up staysail & main for a nice 3 knot sail in Port Gardner bay! Here is an image of Kate and Rilla on the boat.

Kate & Rilla 9.20.09

2007 Evergreen State Fair

We try to make a yearly excursion to the Evergreen State Fair - especially since it is only a few miles from the house. This year we again had a great time. Here is some art work from the kids: Emma (8); Colin (7); Rilla (4)

Memorial Day Weekend

Typically Memorial Day is to honor those in the armed forces that have given their lives for the freedoms we enjoy. It is also the unofficial start of Summer. Here is a taste of what we did this weekend.

On Saturday, the whole family went to put flowers on Grandpa Chuck’s grave at the Floral Hills cemetery. While Chuck wasn’t killed in action…he still served in the Navy from 1948 to 1952, during the Korean War. As a medical corpsman assigned to the 13th Naval District in Seattle for the majority of his service time, he once told Jack that he would often process paperwork from buddies who had died in the war. See an earlier blog about Chuck. Anyway here is a shot of Jack and the kids at his grave.

Jack had called ahead to Floral Hills and had asked where his grandparents were buried since he really couldn’t remember. With the map they provided we found the marker as well. Here is a shot of Gail and the kids (with Colin hiding) at the grave site. Also at Floral Hills there was a live military display which had a lot of artifacts – including a couple of running WWII Jeeps! We also bought cookies at the Vietnam Veterans cookie sale which has become a tradition as well. Pictures have been saved up to our Photobucket site including a funny vblog (a.k.a. video blog) sequence of Cian who had had enough of Memorial Day.

Other pictures of the weekend include: Caleb on the tractor; Emma doing chores; Rilla on her trike; and Cian sandwiched in the screen door. Colin is noticeably absent and was probably playing Age of Empires on the computer. Gail blames his Uncle Ridge for this! We finished up the weekend having the cousins down for BBQ'd Buffalo burgers (Jack's idea and they were pretty good) and smores, and in the end we all stayed up late to watch A Night At the Museum. Here’s to the official start of Summer!

Jack and kids 5.26.07

A day in Port Townsend

Recently we spent the day in Port Townsend - primarily for a NW History class that Gail was completing.

We had lunch at the Salal Cafe and visited the Jefferson County Historical Society Museum – except for Rilla (3) and Cian (2) who had had enough ‘history’ for one day and ended up watching a DVD in the van with Dad. We also drove through Fort Warden.

Part of the adventure was riding the Port Townsend/Keystone Ferry Klickitat. Interestingly this past week a crack was discovered on the Klickitat and the ferry had to go in for repairs. See the story here and here.

Of course the highlight was re-visiting Elevated Ice Cream before we left...

Port Townsend 2.24.07

Tractor Pulling

I had a big list yesterday. Haul wood down from the red barn, clean out the chicken coop, prune fruit trees, move sawdust from driveway, etc.... However, plans ground to a halt when I circled the red barn with a bucket-full of firewood and sank axle deep in mud. It wasn't that deep to begin with, but with a good effort, our faithful Kubota tractor was fully entrenched. About an hour later, after digging mud away from the tires, sprinkling offerings of gravel into the mud, and finally laying strips of cedar bark into the ruts (these were just laying where we had split wood - I didn't tear the bark from trees), that we emerged triumphant. Caleb became so concerned, that he called Jack on the phone for advice and then brought the phone to me. No secrets among family members. In the end, it was Rilla who came up to ride the tractor out with me, yelling excitedly, "We did it! Good job, Mommy!"

The Tractor c. 2000

68 Degrees!

Yesterday set a record high temp of 68 degrees – and yet just last week we had eight inches of snow! Here is a picture of a few of the kids at Lake Sammamish State Park enjoying the sunshine yesterday – from Jack’s cell phone camera.

Emma, Rilla, Caleb 3.6.07

Snow Again!

Well, even though a previous blog stated something about the last of the snow for the year, the last day of February brought more of the white stuff. Rilla (3) who has been dropping her s'es calls it "no." Jack made it home from work after an extended commute while Gail and the kids zipped back from the gym; chaining up on 88th to make it up the last mile or so. March 1st awoke to clear skies and over eight inches of the white stuff. Here are some images (or ‘snaps’ as Jack’s colleagues in India say) including a video of Cian.

Snow 3.1.07

Shuffle shuffle

It’s understandable that our iRiver U10 failed after it fell into the toilet – we didn’t even ask Rilla (3) about the details on that one. Colin (6) perhaps was the most upset since he was the undisputed champion of the pre-loaded Flash games. But when the Apple iPod Shuffle (albeit 1st generation) started to fail intermittently and then came up with an unknown 1418 error when connected to iTunes and then totally conked out – we felt cheated.

You see, that shuffle was better than a stick of gum (…okay, admittedly it does look like a pack of gum) especially at events like gymnastics meets and trampoline contests where the kids that weren’t competing needed some entertaining. I confess to even plugging in Rilla, the iRiver deviant, to the shuffle at a church event to quiet her down(!). Anyway, the kids really appreciated the entertainment value – even, not unlike gum, it was good ear candy. So much so that Emma (8) chose an iPod Nano over MyTwinn Doll accessories for a birthday gift (to go with her iDog – another birthday gift). Now even Caleb (10) who rarely asks for anything is looking into an iPod for his birthday. Though instead of wanting an iDog to go with it he is asking for an iFish instead.

So anyway in the meantime we were able to figure out how to resurrect the Shuffle…after hours of internet searches and trying this and that we let the battery die, preformed the “bang-it-on-the-desk” operation and plugged it in. iTunes was able to recognize it and started syncing it up with no unknown errors. Interestingly, my iMac at work was little help for its Shuffle cousin where as the IBM laptop with XP ended up being the Shuffle’s Good Samaritan. At least it looks like we won’t need to resort to gum at all those up-coming meets!