Here’s what our family was up to during the rest of August:

Beginning to look like Jonathan at work!

A visit from Grammy and Papa

Air hugs!

At Rattlesnake Lake

With Georgia

Swim lessons

Phoebe and Leo walking during swimming

Story time with Grammy

A little fence repair

At Claire’s

Someone decided to play hairdresser and give herself a trim!

Sort of the 80’s rocker look

Kieron loves his Raddish boxes

Pizza pockets!

Puzzlers

Making pom pom monsters from the Kiwi Crate

Someone outgrew me!

Pupacino from Starbucks for Phoebe

At Claire’s 5th birthday party

Doing an egg toss!

Dessert in the back yard

Making pancakes

She wanted to see our wedding album on our anniversary.

Phoebe trying to make friends

Hot dog knows how to cool off!

At Grammy and Papa’s – Maui & Whidbey

Lat time at Pier 1 – the end of an era

We watched Marshawn while the Lotts were out of town. Actually, he laid eggs so it’s Marsha now.

Layla loved this tent Grammy gave her.

We did a little kitchen update – changed out the knobs for drawer pulls.

Before

The boys built this at the woods one afternoon

A girl and her dog

We had quite a bit of bad luck this August – so much that I thought it warranted it’s own post. It all started one Friday when I did laundry. I threw in the first load then transferred it to the dryer and put in a second. I had a little time to kill before I had to pick up Kieron from swimming, so I hopped on my computer to take care of a few things. About a half hour or so later I came out to get my keys and go pick up Kieron. That’s when I saw standing water all over the hallway in the middle of the main floor. I ran to Jonathan’s office and hollered at him, “come out here now!” He was in a meeting, which he signaled to me. I shouted, “we have a flood!” He excused himself and came out to see what I was so frantic about. I felt lucky that I had to leave right away. Poor Jonathan identified the culprit – the washing machine had come unhooked from the wall. He spent the next hour our so vacuuming up water, which made it into Silas’ room, the hall closet, and almost up to the hall bathroom.

That weekend was our anniversary and we had a nearly perfect day at Roche Harbor. The ride home was a bit rough with four tired kids in the back seats but eventually they settled down. Then when we were passing through Issaquah (at 10:30 PM) we got a flat tire on our trailer. We pulled over and assessed the damage. Jonathan thought we could limp to a parking lot somewhere. Fortunately for us there was a tire shop about a half mile away, so we left the boat there for the night and called in the morning to have it fixed.

The tire shop called Jonathan after they fixed the trailer and when he got off work he went to pick it up. What good fortune that ended up being, we thought! Shortly after I got a text from Jonathan. There were some bad words in it. The gist of the story is that the boat and trailer rolled into my new car! Apparently the parking lot at Big O Tires was on an ever-so-slight incline, so the trailer did not roll when we left it there, but once it had a full tire under it, it rolled. So the man who serviced the trailer used the new spare they provided us to jam it. Unfortunately he was on the phone when Jonathan arrived, so no one told him this detail. Jonathan went to the trailer, threw the spare tire in the back of my car and got in to back closer to the trailer. Then he heard a crash. The boat busted the window and the trailer scratched my car! We were both SO upset! Sadly, Big O Tires did not feel the need to do anything about this situation so we were on our own to fix it.

Then on Monday the water damage people arrived to air out our floors. Four days of intense white noise in the house made us all a little cranky. It was like a wind tunnel!

Some before pics of the floors & bannister. The silver lining is that we get to pick the new colors!

One more unfortunate event. Our touchless trashcan broke so we decided to try just putting a waste basket under the sink. That worked great until it attracted mice! Here’s the cats standing watch. They killed one, trapped another under Phoebe’s food bowl, and Jonathan killed at least five more and sealed off all points of entry. I hate mice as much as Jonathan hates snakes, so I was getting afraid to go into the kitchen. That experiment failed. We have a new touchless can.

Towards the end of August Jonathan through-hiked the Enchantments with a couple of friends. Here are some pics from their journey.  It looks beautiful!

We made our 17th anniversary a memorable one by taking the kids on a 70 mile boat ride through the San Juans. We went to Roche Harbor, on San Juan Island, for lunch and to tour the area. I used to sail there with my family as a teenager, and Jonathan and I took a ferry there on a number of occasions during college and when we were newly married, but I think it must have been about 15 years since we were last there.  Then on our way back we stopped at Sucia to collect driftwood and explore before heading back to Bellingham Bay. The weather and water couldn’t have been more perfect and we had an amazing time!

Here’s our family posing at the Mausoleum. When we walked up to it we said, “Oh look, there are six seats!” Then as we were reading the names we realized the father’s name was John and they also had three sons and a daughter, each of whom’s name was engraved at their seat where their ashes were. So we took our places around the seats and snapped a picture. Avery told us he was certain we were cursed, and once you hear about the rest of our weekend, maybe you’ll wonder if perhaps we were!

Leaving Bellingham

We had the necessities on board.

At the Hotel De Haro restaurant, seated in nearly the same spot we sat at twenty years earlier.

The Mausoleum. I love this spot and all the thought that was put into it.

Checking out Teddy Roosevelt’s signature in the hotel guestbook. He was good friends with John S. McMillan, of the Mausoleum.

Then and now

Avery, in front of  Our Lady of Good Voyage Chapel

Headed back

A brief stop at Sucia

17th anniversary gift is supposed to be furniture. Perhaps this driftwood can serve as a bench in the yard?

Hello Bellingham!

A stop at Mallard Ice Cream was in order

We had so much fun that day that we pushed getting home as far out as we could. We left Bellingham around 9 PM. When we reached Issaquah at close to 11 PM our boat trailer got a flat tire! Fortunately we were able to limp off the freeway to a tire store less than a mile away. We left the boat there for the night and called in the morning to have it repaired. More about that later! We were all home and in bed by midnight, completely tuckered out!

I thought we had more pictures from the boys adventure to Sucia. Turns out their trip was the last weekend in July/first weekend  of August so I found more photos in the August folder. Here they are:



 

Layla and I went to some parks and visited friends while the boys were away