Beach Bums and Dirty Dogs...

Going to the beach in Washington is, well... different than your typical beach experience.

Very simply... It's cold!

Sure, maybe if you're lucky you'll be comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt,

But usually you end up looking like this...

Pulling your hoodie tight around your face,

going out of your comfort zone and hugging your sister for warmth,

or huddling over the fire someone left in a piece of driftwood on the beach.

But do we let little things like wind and cold stop us?

NO!

We're hardy people... and if the sun is out (or at least if it's not raining) there is fun to be had.

 Fly a kite.

There's plenty of wind for it!

Become the world's fastest man.

Or if you're really crazy hardy, you can do this...

No, that most definitely was not one of our group.

I mean, we aren't crazy!

Meet Stanley

We finally went and did it.

After nearly 20 years of raising kids, we finally decided to raise a dog too.

Yeah, yeah... I know...

Most people do both at the same time.

But it never seemed to be the right time for us, until now.

Some days, some moments, we think he's the most amazing, wonderful, smart puppy ever.

And other days, other moments, we wonder what on earth we've gotten ourselves into. 

Either way, he's here to stay.

:) 

To Brooke, Leslie and anyone else that might still be out there...

Love you guys!

Here's a fairly wordless peek into a couple of days that we spent along the beaches of Puget Sound.

 Um... ewwwww!

 Not a very clear shot, but I love that this harbor seal was looking right back at me.  

:)

Tiaras are cool...

Julia hates this picture.

But I think it's hysterical.

:D

She's dancing or as she would say... "entertaining the kids"

at our neighbor's fifth birthday party.

(It was a princess party.)

What kills me is how OLD she looks!

Holy cannolli....

Ten on ten... finally

Shhhh.... don't tell anyone, but I sneaked away from school for a moment 

and have 45 minutes to kill before I have to be back.

And.... I FINALLY managed to get ten whole pictures on the tenth day of April,

so if I worked that hard... I ought to post it.

Right?  

:)

(Aren't you happy, Mom?)

Bright and early... 7am

the high school girls are off to school.

8am... the house is quiet 

and I have time for a little tea and toast

By 9am, I'm beginning to wonder where Julia is.

She's busy listening to music and checking out Pinterest.

Sadly, I remind her that there is school work to be done

and then I take her picture.  :)

10 am... rough draft written and edited.  

She's got some fixing to do.

11am... (more like 11:30)  Grant is finally off to school

He had cross country and biology on Tuesday.

Checking the school mailbox for newsletters and returned homework.

Nearly 3pm... I forgot to pickup one of Julia's civics assignments,

so I run back to school.  

On my way out, I remembered that it had been a while since I last took a picture 

and the hill of dandelions caught my eye.

Gotta love a blue sky too!

4pm... the plan for the night was to go to a concert, 

but those things are loud... so I pick up some earplugs.

If it's too loud am I too old??

Yikes...

7pm... Now here's where you might think there'd be a concert picture, right?

But sadly no...

I got all the way to the University to pick up Kevin when I realized that I had left the tickets at home.

We debated the merits of driving an hour or more back in traffic to get them 

or simply consoling ourselves with Chinese food and an Irish coffee crepe.

I was dealing with teenagers... 

Food won.

It didn't  hurt that we also got some shopping in at the coolest vintage clothing store ever!

Wha-huh???

I was thinking about it.... 

(and all that thinking was rather taxing, I tell ya)

and it took me many long moments to remember when I last took a picture.

I thought and I thought and I thunk and I thunk,

then the rational side kicked in and said,

"Duh... it was probably Christmas."

Oh, right... that makes sense.

I'm not entirely sure, but it may be possible that the auto focus on my camera is off a bit.

For a while, I thought it was me.

I thought I suddenly couldn't take a picture.

(That may be true too... the jury is still out.)

But this lack of picture taking is one of the many reasons that I haven't been blogging.

I like pictures and I like to be current.  

It's very hard for me to post something that happened more than a week ago,

much less last summer (which was awesome.)

And... ugh... I hate philosophizing about blogging on my blog too, 

but here I am doing it!!!

Darn it.

But I miss my blogging self, and I miss being here, 

and I'm finally finding more time to sit in front of the computer, so here I am.

And now that I've written a bunch of words that mean pretty much nothing,

I'm going to go dig through the archives and slap some random photos in between all those words.

Because I can.

And because I like pictures.

As it turns out... they're all Christmas pics.

(Which is not current... but whatever...)

And yes... my son did get a doorknob and my daughter did get bubble wrap.

That's just the way we roll.

Light is good

We've been enjoying an unusual amount of sunshine for the month of December.

And around here, any amount of sunshine in the winter is a really good thing.

But sometimes the sun has to work really, really hard to make it's appearance.

(Yep... that round thing in the middle of the pic is the sun, not the moon.)

The fog was particularly thick and despite it's best efforts, I didn't think the sun was going to win out.

(And despite appearances, this is NOT a black and white photo, that's just the way it was!)

But the sun DID win...

and for a short time that day we had beautiful blue skies,
which turned into a beautiful pink sunset and moon rise.

I was driving home from a trip to Target and as I came up over a hill,
I saw the moon rising up over the mountains.
I didn't have my real camera with me, so my not so great camera phone was put to a test.

It turned out okay, but ooooooohhhhhh what I would have done to have my other camera on hand.

Still... I love this picture because it reminds me of one of the many reasons why I LOVE where I live.
I love the mountains.
I love the lake.
(I also love my friends and neighbors, but they're not in this picture.)

:)
Life is good.

Winter has settled in

Western Towns and Wacky kids...

So anyway...  

Apparently, the world's largest buffalo wasn't enough of a tourist draw, so they built an entire tiny western town on the same property.  

Cool.

Having arrived first in this tourist mecca, the kids and I wandered through the local mercantile while we waited for Jess to arrive.

Meeting a blog friend for the first time is just plain weird... so many thoughts flit through your head.  

What will they be like?  What will they think of me? 

What if we don't like each other?  What what what... 

And you find yourself trying to imagine how the initial meeting will go,
but there's no way to actually plan it is there?

So I was wandering the mercantile and out the window I saw some tiny familiar faces.  

They were the main cast of characters over at Jess' blog.  And with them was Jess, of course.  

I opened the creaky screen door and timidly asked, "Jess?" 

I don't exactly remember what happened next, it's all a bit of a blur of introductions

and wandering around the over-sized bison 

and maybe some griping about taking pictures in the harsh light of noontime in the summer.

And I remember that my ginormous children were also in a bit of a mood,
not a bad one, just silly.  

They were playing on playground equipment clearly marked "for small children only." 

(Seriously... where's their parent?  Oh... taking pictures of their bad behavior? Hmmm.)

They made themselves comfortable in the saloon (a bit too comfortable maybe) 

and settled down for a game of cut-throat poker. 

(How do they even know how to play that?) 

Which resulted in a few people getting put in jail.  

And while all this was going on, Jess and I got to know each other, to find out who we were and if we like each other as well in "real life" as we did on line.  

This may have been just a bit more important as we had planned to spend the entire day together at her house eating REAL food and not doing laundry. 

(I had recently decided to do laundry during a quick stop in South Dakota.)  

We watched our children play (or rather my children act like crazies while her children looked on warily)

and bonded over the mutually mystifying concept of some guy's use of a pop-up flash with a very expensive and very long lens. 

"Doesn't he know that he'll get a shadow??" 

(I believe this may still give Jess a twitch from time to time.)
  :) 

And then... after a lunch of curly fries and chicken nuggets, we packed the children up and Jess bravely allowed us to follow her back to her home.

Or were we the ones being brave??
 

After driving and driving and driving down a dusty road 

and then turning down yet another dusty road in the middle of farmland

with nothing but corn, sunflowers and sky as far as the eye can see, 

Julia pipes up and asks,

"Hey mom?  Shouldn't one of the rules be 'Never follow a stranger into the middle of nowhere?'" 

Yes, Julia.... that's a good rule, a very good rule... ;)