Sandpiper

After a very full weekend of playing, shopping, hiking, and packing, we finally left Monday morning for my family's trip to the beach. I spent most of Monday morning busily checking off a list of all the food: bread, hot dogs, ketchup, mustard, avacados, orange juice, chicken, rice vinegar, etc.

My sister's family met us at my mom's house and we loaded ourselves into our cars for the trip. It's a pretty nice drive, especially the road from Olympia to Aberdeen. We stopped at McDonald's for lunch, grabbed our Aberdeen groceries, and drove on out to the coast.

It was raining when we got there, so we worked quickly to unload the cars. After unpacking our clothes, books, towels, and beach stuff, I went into the kitchen to put away all the food. Then I headed down to the beach - we all did. My niece was happily playing in the sand (her favorite part of the beach). I had to walk down far enough to go wading. Brrrr! It was so much colder than Hawaii. :)

Back up in our unit, I put the lasagne in the oven and watched as my sister put together a fantastic salad. Then I heard Dan's voice from the other room, followed by my niece's voice. When I peeked around the corner, this is what I saw.


In fact, I think the kid really decided she liked Dan this week. Possibly the cutest thing I saw was when Dan was shoveling up sand to build the big sand castle and my niece shoveled right along with him. When he moved to the other side of the pile of sand she called out "Uncle Dan? Where are you?" and then walked around the pile and found him. She promptly started shoveling with him again. So here's some pictures of all of us at the beach.


Aren't the beach hats adorable? I can't believe my sister made hers - it turned out so cute!

Here are some of the fun things we saw this year: the bug in the sand, the birds running away from a dog, the hummingbird trapped in the gift shop (possibly the same one that flew into Jenny & Nick's room), and the spot where we sank deep into the sand with every step.


We had a birthday party, a beach bonfire, and a lot of time with the beautiful sunny beach.

Finished!

I started this over seven years ago. Mom stored it for me under her couch (broken into fourths) for years until I reclaimed it this summer. 3000 pieces. 47" x 31". Thank you to Annie for helping me with all the purple.

Now I'm thinking about this one.

Eyeballs

For some reason I am fascinated by close up eyeball pictures.

Jen and Seafair

With the temperatures finally dropping (from our record highs of 103-106), my friend Jen drove up from Tacoma to spend the weekend with me.

We started out our weekend by watching North and South (the Elizabeth Gaskell version, not the story based on the American Civil War). Then Saturday morning we headed over to a park in Seattle near to where Seafair takes place. We sat on our beach towels playing Phase 10 for a while - she won. Then we moved our stuff down to the steps leading into the water and we got ready to watch the Seafair air show.

Here we are having fun and cooling off with our feet in the lake.


Then the show started and we watched as a cute little plane did acrobatics. Then a really big plane came and also did acrobatics, which seemed even more amazing because it looked like it should be just a whale trying to fly. But it was really quite graceful.

And then came the Blue Angels!!! Yes, some of them are upside-down in the lower right corner picture.


Growing up, we used to hear the Blue Angels every summer while they practiced for the Seafair air show. We would hear them screaming by and it would send us running outside to look for them. Sometimes we caught a glimpse of a second or third Blue Angel following the one we heard, or sometimes they would turn around in a formation and come screaming past on their way back to the lake area (where the air show officially takes place). So it was awesome to go see their show.

After that Jen and I went shopping. We finally found the movie she wanted (the same North and South that we started watching the night before) at the third Costco we went to. Yes, there are three Costco's within a reasonable distance of my house. Four actually. We celebrated our shopping success with Costco ice cream, and then we went on to another store where Jen found some really cute shirts. Another of our college roommates called while we were there, which was a great coincidence! Perfect timing, Amy! Then we picked up a Trader Joe's salad for dinner and had a musical evening around the piano. It was really cool to have someone in the house who could actually hit those high notes.

Sunday was more relaxing - we went to church and then we came home and finished North and South. Dan's brother and family came over too, and we played a few rounds of Ziggity. We had orange chicken for dinner and then Jen had to head home. I am so glad she could come up and visit!