Father's Day Carnival

On Sunday we went to the Lummi Stommish, the big canoe races they hold every year. We met up with GG and walked the beach from her house to the Stommish grounds. There they also had a carnival set up, so we bought some tickets and had a great time riding the rides.

First up was the Ferris Wheel.

This was the first time for Conan on the Ferris Wheel. He went to his very first carnival on Memorial day weekend, but wasn't yet ready for the Ferris Wheel at that time. This time though, he was all for it. We had a great time doing "no hands" as it came around over the top.

Just look at that grin.

Up next was the giant slide. This had been Conan's favorite at his first carnival. He's an expert at slides.

The roller coaster had an upper height limit so Conan had to ride it by himself. He chose the front car. He looked a bit worried and shaken by the time the ride ended, but he was really brave.

The final ride of the day was the helicopter, and it was judged to have been the best one of all. Conan turned the steering wheel vigorously throughout the ride, which must have worked because the 'copter did not go off course and landed safely when the ride was over.

After the carnival, we went back over to the main beach and shared a salmon dinner and watched the races for a little while before walking back down the beach to GG's house. It was a great way to spend Father's Day.

Tuesdays for Sanity

I love Tuesdays. On Tuesday nights I play poker with my lady friends. The group has evolved some over the three years our game's been going. Some of us have gotten married, we've been pregnant, we've nursed our babies at the table and passed them around to be held by someone else while mama deals. When our babies are old enough to stay home with their papas we revel in getting out kid-free for a night. We bitch about our jobs, our husbands, politics, the weather, traffic, everything. We swap recipes and child-care tips and ideas for family outings and where the best clearance racks in town are. Our standard is a $5 buy-in, but when money's tight (or the tomatoes are ripe) we'll happily accept a barter item in place of the cash. I love my poker ladies.

As wonderful as Ladies Poker Night is, the BEST part of my Tuesdays now is the part before the game.

You see, once upon a time, poker was on Wednesdays, and it was early. I just had time to leave work, grab some kind of heat-n-eat or take-out dinner, and head over to the game. So that was OK - I got a night out, baby-free, and a game, and the socializing - that's what everyone says a new mom needs. It was hard though. I was too tired to really get into socializing. As a mom and a wife and an employee I had people talking to me and needing things from me all the time, and poker started to feel more like another commitment to be discharged than a respite from the rest of my life.

But then people's schedules changed, as they are wont to do, and with one thing and another we ended up switching the game to Tuesday nights at 7:30. Well, that left me with around 3 hours between work and game time. I could go home, but when I tried that I ended up getting caught up in dinner, bath, etc. etc. and blowing off the game entirely. No good! I needed my night off, away from home!

I started saving up errands. I'd go to the bank, grocery shop, go get some new socks and underwear, maybe get the oil changed in the car. That was better, my time was filled and I was getting my game in, but somehow it still didn't quite feel right. I mean, it's supposed to be my night off! I tried meeting up with friends before the game, but it was hard to fit schedules together consistently. And then one day, I went to the library to return some kiddie books, and decided to grab a book for myself. (I know - crazy, right?) I took it to the park and ate my take-out dinner and read. It was wonderful. It was exactly what I needed.

Now, the part of my Tuesday that I look forward to the most is the hours between work and the game. I go to the library, grab something at random from the "new releases" shelf just inside the door. I try not to spend too much time choosing - I'm not looking for the BEST book ever, just something to occupy my mind while I eat. I like to try different cafes, and I get a kick out of mixing and matching the book to the most unlikely type of restaurant. Little-old-lady mystery? Cajun pub. Modern cyber spy thriller? Co-op bakery. Cheesy pre-historic romance? Korean stone pot restaurant. Elizabethan fantasy swashbucking adventure? Shrimp shack. Definitely.

Tonight I've already got a book in mind, a post-apocalyptic vampire novel. I'm thinking tamales.

I order my food, sip my tea, read my book, and no-one asks me to do anything. (Well, except pay. Duh.) Nothing gets done. No errands. No socializing. Just pure "me" time. And then I pack up and head off to Poker recharged, ready to swap gossip and jokes and probably lose $5 - or maybe a basket of tomatoes - to my best friends.

Tuesdays for Sanity! Everyone needs a bit of time to themselves. I had heard the advice but I hadn't really understood it. I thought Poker - the socializing, the comraderie, the not-being-home-for-bedtime was what I needed. And it WAS part of what I needed, but just as you can't live on toast alone, I needed something more. Time for yourself sounds pretty simple, but it took me almost two years to figure it out. Blame it on sleep deprivation, I guess.

Pumpkins!

Today we went to the Cloud Mountain Farm Harvest festival. This was Conan's second year attending, and he really had a lot of fun. We met up with Marci, Silas, Cohen, Charlotte and Bellatrix as well as lots of other moms and kids we recognized from around town - it's really an extremely toddler-friendly event. There were several free activities for the kidlets. The first thing Conan did was to decorate a small flower pot and plant a little lavender seedling in it.
He is quite the artist, so it took a long time before he declared his pot finished and ready to plant.

He enjoyed spooning the dirt into his pot, but he was a little suspicious of the lavender seedling I stuck in there. He pulled it out a couple of times before he decided it was OK to have a plant in his dirt. Only time will tell if it will survive, but we can replace it if needed.

We tasted some berries and grapes, sampled some cider, and ate delicious Mallard's Ice Cream. But the biggest hit by far was the giant pumpkin. Besides the big one, there was a large pile of more moderately sized pumpkins, and a wagon-load of squash and gourds to boot. The kids had a lot of fun looking at all the different colors and shapes, and of course many pictures were taken.

I should point out that Conan did not wear his orange fleece as part of any pre-meditated parental photo setup - I'm far too much of a scatterbrain to have planned that far in advance. But it DOES look really nice with the pumpkins.

I really like this one. It's just perfect.

Even baby Trix got into the posing with pumpkins, although she wasn't too sure about that tricky balancing.
Next year I'm sure she'll be more excited about it. :)

You know what's fun?

Running through sprinklers!

Zoo Zoo Zoo

Yesterday we went with the Ericsons to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. It was amazing. It was Conan's first time at a Zoo and he had so much fun.

Some of highlights: Feeding the birds in the Australian bird exhibit, looking for penguins in the underwater viewing portals, seeing the Sloth Bears "wrestling", watching the Orangutan play peek-a-boo, and seeing the Snow Leopard mother & cubs playing out and about in their exhibit. The real tigers were sleeping, but we had brought along our own tiger anyway. The Lions gave us a nice show, stalking about their enclosure and evoking many good loud roars from our little guy.

We also saw Elephants, Giraffes, Brown Bears, Otters, Mountain Goats, Zebras, Meerkats, Kangaroos, Emus, and many snakes, bugs, and other birds and animals. Conan loved seeing the animals, although with the snow leopards and the elephants he was much more interested in the big ball in their enclosure than with the animals themselves.

By the end of the day Conan was super tired, but even so he stayed awake in the car for nearly an hour on the way home, happily babbling and making animal noises and generally telling us all about the fun he had at the zoo. It was a great day.

4th of July

Some pictures from our 4th of July celebration with the Ericsons. Watermelon, smoke bombs, black snakes and pop-up pagodas were are BIG hit with the kids! Tombi's grill-smoked BBQ beef and custard fruit tart were big hits with the grown ups. The weather was cool and drizzly, but we had a great time sitting around the fire and watching the fireworks over the rooftops.

Swing!

Yesterday we put up a swing for Conan. It met with imedediate approval.

It's a big-kid swing, so for the moment little C needs help getting onto the seat and pushes to help him go. But I expect that with a little bit of practice he'll soon be able to get on by himself, and push with his feet.
He's already practicing jumping off of it, because he's such a little daredevil.

Swinging with Mama is pretty fun too, although it's a bit too close to the ground to feel very comfortable for anyone over 3 feet tall. My hope is that he'll soon become skilled enough with the swing that he can play on it by himself.

I remember the first swing my Dad put up for me in our yard. It was a board and a rope, and I loved it. I would pretend I could fly, and just swing for hours in the warm summer sun.

Update: After I wrote this, Conan and I went out to the swing. I pushed him until he was swinging higher than ever, laughing and shreiking with joy. Then he started saying "Moo! Moo!" I asked him if he was going to fly all the way up to the moon, and he replied with what may have been the most enthusiastic "Yes!" I've ever heard.

Highland Games

It stopped raining for a day so we headed over to Ferndale for the Scottish Highland Games on Saturday. Conan was pretty excited about all the people and especially the drums and pipes. We got there just in time for the massing of the pipes, which is a pretty impressive spectacle regardless of your age:

Conan got an assist from Papa to see over the crowd and watch as hundreds of bagpipers and drummers marched down the field, playing at deafening volume.

We ate a couple of meat pies and browsed around the merchant booths, watched some of the dancing competition, listened to the always fun Wicked Tinkers, and checked out various exhibits of Scottish stuff. We tried to watch the athletic competitions, but the "fence" to keep spectators back was just a rope strung up a little higher than Conan's head, so he kept trying to run out onto the field. No toddlers allowed in the caber toss! We moved on, to what was probably Conan's favorite part of the day: looking at the turkeys, chickens, ducks and geese that live at Hovander.

It was a lot of fun. Conan was exhausted, and he took a long nap after we got home. That was ideal, as it allowed us to get out and actually mow our entire lawn, for the first time since the beginning of this extra-rainy May. Whew!

Guemes Island Weekend

We spent the weekend at Melissa Whitman's family cabin on Guemes Island. Melissa gave us a weekend stay as a wedding present, and what a wonderful gift it turned out to be! We shared the weekend with my brother Jon, his wife Nadege, her sister Vasilia and her husband Patrice, who were visiting from France. James Wiley and his dog He-Man also joined us Saturday afternoon. He-Man is a 12 year old Golden Retreiver, old and slow on land but he's still a puppy when he gets into the water, it's really cute to watch him rediscover his youth! Patrice and Vasilia had never been to the US before, and really enjoyed seeing the Pacific Northwest and doing island things like going crabbing and digging clams.

We had a wonderful time. The cabin is situated on a small cliff above a cove, there's a trail down to the rocky beach where the rowboats were stored. From the cabin and the deck we had a great view out over Guemes channel towards Anacortes. A surprise bonus was that the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Cheiftan, two beautiful replicas of 18th century tall sailing ships, were in Anacortes, and on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon they came out and staged cannon battles right in front of us! We could not have had a better vantage point from which to watch them, at least not from shore. They are such beautiful ships. You may recognize the Lady Washinton from the Pirates of the Carribean movies, she played the royal navy ship HMS Interceptor. Unfortunately my camera batteries had died by Sunday afternoon, which was beautiful and sunny, so all my pictures of the ships are from rainy saturday instead. Oh well.

We caught 4 "keeper" Red Rock crabs on Saturday, so we had a nice crab dinner. Sunday morning Jon, Vasilia and Patrice got up at 6 am to catch the low tide and drove to the north end of the island and dug clams in the rain. It was a neap tide, so the evening "low" tide was only a little below the high tide, no good for clamming or beachcombing. We didn't catch any more crabs on Sunday (our pots all came up empty!) but we cooked up the clams and had them with a fresh tomato & eggplant sauce over fresh pasta, Yum!

Really, a wonderful weekend. I'm so glad we were able to share it with our French visitors, I can't help but think that it was a real highlight in their visit. We certainly enjoyed hosting them, it's always neat to see familiar surroundings and activities through new eyes. :)

Oregon Country Fair 2008

Good times. Lots of fun. Nice to be home again, though. :)

The most impressive thing I saw this year was a performance by a group called Nanda, whom I can only describe as Ninja Acrobat Juggler Mime Rock Stars. With sound effects. Here's a video clip from their website, the sound quality is not great but you get the idea. I definitely reccomend seeing them, if you ever get the chance.

Bellingham Roller Betties

The second bout of the newly-formed Bellingham Roller Betties provided some seriously fun entertainment last night. I've never been much of a sports fan, but then not very many sporting events feature crazy-tough women in fishnets bashing into each other at high speed as they race around an indoor track on roller skates. Not only is it really exciting to watch, it's all-locally organized (impressively so), with eclectic community sponsors like Planned Parenthood, Harley Davidson, the Co-op and Casa Que Pasa. Aaand there's a beer garden. :)

If you live around here, you should definately check it out. If you don't live around here, you might still be in luck - aparently the sport is growing in popularity and new leagues are forming across the country.