Trip to Au Gres, Michigan for Aunt Ginny’s memorial service. Jan’s aunt passed away in April, and the family memorial service is scheduled for July 4th at the Sims family cemetery in Au Gres, Michigan. The great bulk of the living Sims clan is en route to the family’s homestead on the shores of Lake Huron. We’re going to say goodbye to Virginia Ramsay and to reconnect with countless relatives who will be coming to do the same.
Au Gres is not in the middle of nowhere, but it still requires two flights and a bit of a drive to get there. We get up early and are out of the house by 6:15 am. Anya and Liya immediately begin to bicker in the car. This is something of a new routine for them that they’ve been working on perfecting this summer.
The first flight, from Seattle to Chicago, goes smoothly enough. Exploring O’Hare is actually kind of fun, and there’s actually some fun stuff for the kids to see in the airport. We stop at an airport popcorn stand that’s right next to a huge reproduction of a dinosaur skeleton. On the way to our gate, we pass a couple of live bands playing music. The second flight is more of a hassle because none of our seats are together; we have five seats scattered about the plane. It’s really unclear why an airline has trouble keeping a one year-old next to a parent. We camp out around Bree’s seat and try to negotiate with various people, but after five minutes of trying to explain to people where they can sit we finally give up, sit down, and force the other people sit where they can. Liya has to sit in a row by herself, and does better than expected: she gets bored, and eventually just goes to sleep.
Arriving in Saginaw, Michigan, we pile into an oversized rental SUV, whereupon Bree immediately falls asleep. Whew. Per the rental agents instructions, we drive “through ten minutes of corn fields to get to the highway”. We’re amused by the first billboard we see on the highway: “Jerky Outlet”. We miss the turnoff at Standish and end up going too far on 75. We end up cutting east on 55, a nice rolling old highway that passes through farms.
We get to Tawas, the location of our rental cottage, but first we stop for dinner at G’s Pizzeria. It’s one of the only non fast-food restaurants in town. This fact is confirmed when we run into Jan’s sister Skye and her husband Jared, who have just finished eating at G’s Pizzeria for the very same reason. We all have ice cream next door at Marion’s. Jared, Skye, and Jan agree that the best flavor of ice cream is “Moose Tracks”.
We check into our guest house at the East Tawas Junction Bed & Breakfast, the same place we stayed when we last came to the area for Skye and Jared’s wedding five years ago. It’s a nice little cottage around the corner from the main B&B, and it’s nice to have a place to ourselves so the kids can run around. The owner, Leigh, had known we were arriving late, and kindly left us some food for breakfast. Our only disappointment is that she forgot to set out the crib she’d promised. Jan ends up assembling a serviceable crib out of furniture turned on its side and various bits of bedding scrounged from around the cottage.
Just before we go to sleep, the “East Tawas Junction B&B” earns its name as a long freight train passes close by. We’re all so tired it makes no difference.
Au Gres Day 2. Miraculously, everyone sleeps in until 10:00 am. That’s about the normal 7:00 am Pacific time for everyone to wake up, but somehow the time zone difference never seems to work in our favor; the kids always wake up early regardless of how many time zones we’ve crossed. We eat the breakfast Leigh left out for us, then walk across Route 23 to the Different Blend coffee house. The place, which sits next to Lake Huron, was brand new the last time we came here, but it’s grown into a popular local watering hole. By the time we leave, there’s far too much traffic on Route 23 to be able to walk back across it. Angela decides to take the girls to the beachside park, and Jan walks all the way into town to get to the one traffic light so he can cross with the light.
We drive down to White Stone Point, where Skye, Jared, Chris, and Lyn are sharing a cabin. There’s a nice beach there, so we hang out on the sand for the afternoon. Chris helps Anya and Liya map out a small city in the sand. They designate specific “buildings” with sticks, acorns, shells, feathers, and so on. They put a leaf on one lump of sand and claim that it’s a vegetarian restaurant—“So you can eat there, Grandma!” Anya and Jared dig a hole maybe 3 feet deep in the beach down to the water level. Jared gets in and we fill it back in with sand and take some pictures of Anya standing about even with him.
Angela drives Bree back to Tawas to try and put her down for a nap, but we’ve missed the nap window, so Bree ends up skipping her daily nap. We all drive down to Au Gres, and converge on the Ramsay cottages at the old Coffin family compound. The Ramsay cottages are two of the last of a long sequence of Sims family summer cottages that dotted this part of Saginaw Bay. Over the years, most Sims descendants ended up selling their stake, and the shoreline is now a nearly unbroken stretch of beach homes.
At the Ramsay cottage, all of Ginny’s descendants are there, plus the Guertins and the Gages. There are relatives on the Ramsay side that even Jan has never met before. The Ramsays set out a pizza dinner out on the deck, which we eat while the kids play down on the beach. There’s a small cloth hammock at the top of the dune that Anya and Liya love playing in. Wrapped up in the cloth, they look like peas in a pod. This gives rise to a song they sing over and over: “Peas in a pod, nice and fresh!
After dinner we walk up the beach to the Gammie cottage, where the other half of the Sims clan is hanging out. The girls finally grow tired off the endless chatter among the adults (“Can we please go?”), and we take them home to the guest house.
Au Gres Day 3. The Memorial Service. We roust the girls out of bed at 8:30 and drive down to the Sims family cemetery for the memorial service at 10:00. It’s a perfect summer morning, sunny with a stiff breeze off the lake. As we park and walk down the gravel road into the middle of the cemetery, the rest of the clan is arriving. We all talk for a few minutes then take seats in a circle of folding chairs surrounding the new stone for Ginny. Someone said it had been placed the previous day, and indeed the moss around it has been disturbed, revealing the sandy ground beneath. The moss grows right up to the next stone, the one for her husband Bud, who predeceased her by about twenty years. Both stones sit near that for their daughter Susan, and not far from Ginny’s parents (and Jan’s grandparents) Richard and Susan.
Katherine Gammie (Jan’s first cousin, once removed… er, in law) leads the service. Lyn reads her poem, “The Music Box”, which she had composed for her parents’ memorial service years earlier, and a new sonnet she’s written for her sister Ginny. Aunt Barbara, Chris, and Ginny’s granddaughters share some memories, and Stephen Gammie reads a nice short piece Ginny liked. Katherine ends the service with a benediction.
People mill around the family cemetery afterwards asking older relatives who’s who, and puzzling out the relationships to other people. Aunt Barbara tells a story about clan patriarch E.W. Sims, a man who built his reputation as the U.S. District Attorney who brought down the Standard Oil monopoly, and eventually purchased the large chunk of Lake Huron lakeshore that formed the Sims Township where we’re all standing. The gigantic boulder that reads “SIMS” in the middle of the cemetery is testament to his fixation on his legacy, but Aunt B. adds more to the story. Apparently E.W. was so concerned about perpetuating the Sims name that he paid a $100 bounty to any descendant who gave a new child the middle name “Sims”. And sure enough, the cemetery stones reveal a family tree packed with people with the “Sims” middle name.
Everyone drives back to the Ramsay compound for lunch. Anya’s not big on sandwiches, but Jan plays on her new-found love of mustard, and Anya quickly devours two sandwiches—slathering each with yellow mustard. We spend the afternoon alternating between the cottage patio and surrounding lawn, where we reconnect with relatives we haven’t seen for a long time, and the beach, where Anya and Liya happily play in the sand. Everyone makes a stop by a family tree Kathy Ramsay has printed out, and takes a moment to update the tree with corrections and new members of the family.
Chris gets the girls started on a project digging in the sand to form little islands at the water’s edge. At one point Chris and Jan decide to build a canal that tunnels under the dock. It takes a while but they finally manage it. They form a connection to Jacob, their second cousin (once removed). Jacob manages to find and catch a beach toad hiding in the long grass. They play with it for a while before Jacob’s father Michael tells Jacob it’s time to let the toad go. Jacob complies—and then he and our girls follow behind the toad as it hops across the sand to the edge of the dunes. Jacob then traps it again. When Michael comes up to tell Jacob to let it go again, Jacob pipes up, “Look! I caught another one!”
Jacob, Anya, Liya, and assorted other youngsters and teens busy themselves collecting driftwood for a bonfire tonight. The younger kids are a bit unclear on the concept, and pile on a bunch of living green plants still attached to clumps of sand. Jan takes Anya and Liya for swim, and they have fun jumping the waves. With the onshore breeze, the waves are a bit larger than normal. Liya gets caught off-guard by a set of waves, but recovers quickly and gets back to having fun. We all tippy-toe out to the ladder at the end of the dock, then repeat. Michael asks Jan if he wants to give the girls a ride on the family’s jet ski. Anya’s game, so Jan takes Anya out on a short ride. The jet ski produces a lot of spray from all the waves, so the two get soaked. Anya’s having fun, but gets chilled by the wind to the point of shivering uncontrollably, and they have to head back after just a few minutes on the water. Back on land, there’s a lot more playing in the hammock with all three girls. Angela discovers that Bree likes dropping little rocks off the dock, which she happily does for a long time.
After dinner we walk up the beach to the Gammie cottage to hang out with that branch of the family. When Jan and Chris were boys, the walk to the cottage was a significant expedition down a long stretch of beach dunes. The location of a former hotel, since swallowed by the sand, had been a good place to explore and look for random bits of hotel hardware. (The obligatory lost treasure story arose that “they never found the hotel safe!”) Now the walk takes five minutes past a series of lawns.
At the Gammies we spend time talking with Aunt Barbara, cousin to Jan’s mother Lyn. We take a photo of Aunt B., who at 83 currently holds the title of oldest living Sims descendant, sitting next to Sabriya, who at 1 holds the title of the youngest. The girls are growing tired, so we head back down the beach. Someone gives the girls some American flags, which even Bree is happy to wave around. We stay long enough to let them watch people up and down the beach set of some small fireworks and sparklers, but need to depart before they get around to setting the bonfire.
As we drive back up to Tawas, at 10:30 we still see crowds of people sitting in beach chairs along the park that lines the bay. When we get to our cottage, Jan takes a sleepy Liya and Sabriya inside while Angela slips away with Anya to watch the fireworks. They’re just in time.
Au Gres Day 4. Bree wakes up at 7:00. She’s the only one who’s managed to get on Eastern time so far! We have breakfast in the cottage, then drive down to White Stone Point to see Chris before he needs to leave. Bree’s gotten to know her uncle a little better this trip, and now says, “Un-ka Teese!” whenever she sees Uncle Chris.
We head head to Au Gres for lunch at the H&H Bakery, the only family restaurant in town. Amazingly, the service is even slower than our low expectations. We run into the Guertins there who, like us, are going to spend the day visiting people up and down the shore. Since the people we want to see are out right now, we stop at White Stone Point again. Angela heads off to drive Bree around and see if she can get her to fall asleep. Jan plays with Anya and Liya on the beach. Today’s project: digging two holes in the sand and then digging toward the other to create a tunnel.
We drive to Aunt Barbara’s and talk with her daughter Laurie for a while. Sabriya enjoys watching their 9 week-old kitten, Malachi, pounce on leaves. Anya and Jan hunt for Petoski stones on the beach, and manage to find two. Anya spends the rest of the time looking for stones, and finds five or so more. Jan and Chris used to engage in similar stone hunts when they were kids. Aunt Barbara shows us some photo albums that includes some very old Sims family photos.
We drive up to the Gammie cottage and hang out on deck with Aunt Katherine and Helen. Jan gets the girls started on playing horseshoes. To even things up, Jan creates handicap lines: one marked “5” for 5 year-old Liya, a line marked “7” for Anya and finally, way back, a line marked “41”.
We have dinner in Tawas at one of the only other non-fast-food restaurants, which turns out to be a Chinese restaurant. Angela tries talking in Mandarin with the wait staff to find out what vegetables are in season. This is her standard operating procedure in Chinese restaurants, but if the staff here is to be believed, the restaurant doesn’t have anything fresh. After dinner we bid goodbye to Skye and Jared, who will drive home early tomorrow.
Last day in Au Gres. While packing up in the morning, Jan overhears the following conversation between Anya and Liya, which both conduct at the top of their lungs.
Anya: Stop YELLING!
Liya: I’m NOT YELLING!
Anya: Yes you ARE!
Liya: No YOU’RE the one who’s YELLING!
Before leaving Tawas, we have lunch at G’s Pizzeria. We order macaroni and cheese for Sabriya—but the waitress brings us a basket that looks like fish & chips instead. We point out to the waitress that we’d ordered macaroni and cheese, and she says, “That is the macaroni and cheese.” It turns out the macaroni has been shaped into lumps and deep fried.
We drive the back way on 55, then south toward Saginaw. There’s a back-up on the highway, so we get off at the Beaver Road exit in the middle of nowhere and trust the GPS to work it out. We end the drive with a pleasant, scenic trip through farm fields.
After the short flight to Chicago, we meet up with Lyn at Chicago O’Hare. She entertains Anya and Liya with stories the whole flight back to Seattle.
Sabriya turned 2 today! We celebrated with chocolate brownies—Sabriya loves chocolate.
Liya’s one-week art camp at Thrive art school ended today with a little art show. Liya’s show today follows the one Anya did a few weeks ago. We were both able to see both shows, which was fun for all concerned.
Trip to Whidbey Island. For the Cozi summer vacation, we’ve rented a place on Whidbey Island, just a bit north of Seattle. We really didn’t want to fly anywhere, and Whidbey’s within easy driving distance. The fact you can take a ferry there affords the sense that you’re going somewhere vacation-like and relaxing.
The rental cottage is just outside the small town of Coupeville, about halfway up the island. The house sits right on Penn Cove, an area famous for its mussels. And indeed, in one part of the Cove we can see a bunch of aquaculture rafts for raising the mussels. The scenery is quite nice, and there’s plenty of wildlife. Jan and Bree saw a bald eagle soar right by, and a great blue heron stood for a long time on a nearby piling.
The low point of the day came just before we wanted to leave for dinner when Anya managed to smash some of her fingers in a door. (We’re still not really clear how.) While the injury was clearly painful, Anya also seemed unwilling to let herself calm down. Even the sudden appearance of a sea otter offshore—which Jan was sure would catch Anya’s attention—didn’t do the trick.
Angela finally won Anya over by reading to her for a long time. By the time we made it to our desired restaurant in Coupeville, the restaurant had a long wait. :( Undaunted, Angela led the way down to the waterfront, where we discovered a handsome old pier with a restaurant called Kim’s Cafe at the end of it. It served an eclectic blend of American stuff (Anya noticed that every single item on the kid’s menu ended with “… and fries”) and Thai food. The tom yum goong was surprisingly good.
Whidbey Day 2. Liya and Bree wake Jan up early for a big breakfast of sugary cereal. When Anya comes out, she and Liya head outside to explore the tidal beach. When we arrived yesterday evening, it was high tide, but now the tide is way out, revealing rocks, seaweed, barnacles, and so on.
Anya comes back from their explorations to inform Jan that she and Liya have found a place they call “Musselville”. Jan heads out, and indeed Anya’s found a spot that has a million mussels. Indeed it’s hard to even walk out any further for fear of crushing a bunch of mollusks. We stay for a while watching tiny crabs dart about.
This morning’s destination is Deception Pass. We drive down to the West Beach, and have barely stepped onto the sand before the girls become fascinated with a huge jumble of washed-up logs that line the top of the dune. We finally push on around the northwestern corner of the park so that we can see the long thin bridge spanning the pass. We watch the current rush by, and Bree happily throws rocks into the water for a while. Anya and Liya climb up a rocky area to discover tide pools in various basins, and look for shrimp and anemones.
Lunch is at a reasonably good Korean restaurant on the way back, just south of the Whidbey Naval Air Station. Lunch is decent, but punctuated every five minutes with a roaring whoosh overhead.
While Bree has a little quiet time, Jan takes Anya and Liya on a bike ride south towards the town. The ride’s pleasant enough, although it’s a bit heart-stopping to watch the occasional car speed past the girls as they pedal a somewhat shaky line down the right side of the roadway.
We spend the rest of the afternoon playing around the house. Anya and Liya discover the house has a basement, and that the basement contains a foosball table. Anya plays Jan, who’s given an effective handicap by playing one-handed—the other arm holds Bree, who wants to watch.
Afterwards, Bree enjoys a grape popsicle. Angela wisely removes Bree’s shirt before giving her the posicle, and grape juice drips down Bree’s chin, neck, and belly. Angela observes that Bree’s lucky to have a nice little baby belly that sticks out so much, or else the juice would dribble all the way down her legs too.
Dinner’s at Christopher’s on Whidbey in “downtown” Coupeville. The ambience is nice, but the food’s not much to speak of. The star of the meal is the appetizer of Penn Cove mussels. They were probably pulled out of the ocean earlier in the day, and are so fresh that even Jan (not a big mussel fan) thinks they taste pretty good.
After dinner we show the girls the house’s hitherto covered-up hot tub, and all three girls are delighted to take a dip before bedtime.
Whidbey Day 3. In the middle of the morning we make the very short drive to Fort Ebey State Park. It’s just across the narrow neck of the island from the cove we’re on. We park at the beach, and then hike south towards the WWII gun emplacements.
After a few minutes we come to the first bunker and explore inside. Coming out, we climb up the hill to stand on top of the bunker, which affords a great view down the bluffs and toward Admiralty Inlet. Even though we’re only hiking about a mile, we make two stops for snacks. Bree wants to walk herself, but whenever Jan puts her down, she happily sits down in the middle of the trail to inspect a plant or whatever and doesn’t want to move.
We eventually make it to the gun battery. The big guns are long gone, but circular platforms they occupied remain, as does the small underground complex of rooms that supplied them. We venture through the complex, which is made more challenging by the fact that there are no lights and we don’t have flashlights. It’s fun to explore a bit, and then we emerge back into the daylight. There’s a nice meadow below the gun battery, and Anya and Liya enjoy running down the hill through the meadow.
It’s getting close to lunchtime, and on the way back Liya’s energy begins to flag. Since Jan’s carrying Bree, Liya asks if Angela will carry her. The conversation proceeds like this:
Liya: Can you carry me?
Angela: I’m already carrying the backpack.
Liya: How about I put on the backpack, and then you carry me?
Angela: Then I’d have to carry both you and the backpack.
Liya: Can Anya carry the backpack?
Angela: The backpack’s too heavy for Anya.
Liya: How about I carry the backpack, and then you carry Anya?
Angela: Um… Aren’t you the one that’s tired?
Liya: Oh.
Anya: I’m tired! Carry me!
Angela eventually says that, while she won’t carry Liya, she will “carry” Liya’s hand—by holding it. Anya wants to have her hand carried too. In this way we make it back to the car.
We have lunch at The Bayleaf in Coupeville, a very nice deli. They don’t make sandwiches, but they do make an antipasto plate for us that we eat at a little table in a garden in front of the store.
Back at the house, Bree naps, Angela reads, the older girls watch a DVD, and Jan naps outside on the covered portion of the deck. It’s actually relaxing.
We cook a pasta dinner at the house, then build a fire in the brazier on the deck and toast marshmallows for s’mores. Bree’s delighted to get all the chocolate she wants. Afterwards we take a dip in the hot tub before getting ready for bedtime.
Whidbey Day 4. Jan’s enjoying this whole slow-start-to-the-day thing. Anya and Liya still get up at 7:00 am, but spend the first two hours of the morning playing with their Playmobil toys. (They construct an encampment of little paper tents for all their little Playmobil people, and set this all up inside the cabinet of the home’s entertainment center. Seeing as how they haven’t broken anything yet, we’re okay with this.)
In the late morning we set out to explore the town of Langley, but when we realize it’s half an hour away, we instead decide to explore the main street of Coupeville, which is only two minutes away. We peek into the expected variety of trinket shops, art galleries, antique shops, and so on. We come across a nice-looking bakery called Knead & Feed, and have lunch there in a cozy timber-framed room looking out over Penn Cove.
After lunch, Angela drops Jan and Bree off at the house so Bree can take a nap, then she continues on with Anya and Liya to the town of Oak Harbor to visit their community pool. Anya and Liya can spend hours in a pool, and they only leave when the family “open swim” time ends in the middle of the afternoon.
We do another low-tide exploration in front of the house. Anya is learning to excel at using old clam shells to scoop up tiny crabs. Liya manages to catch some crabs too, although she’s a bit spooked by them, and tends to drop them when they twitch. Once again we’re amazed to watch how quickly the tide flows back in over the nearly-flat ground in front of the house.
For dinner we fall back on an online recommendation for a barbecue restaurant in Oak Harbor called BBQ Joint. The barbecue ribs are as good as advertised—great, really. The “Southern Sweet Tea” is a cloyingly sweet, though, and by the time the meal’s over, Jan and Angela are feeling a bit ill from all the sugar. Jan regrets topping off the meal with a berry dessert that turned out to be a few berries floating on top of a heap of sugary pudding.
Whidbey Day 5. Another morning, another low-tide walk for the girls. Angela can watch them from the comfort of the dining room. Anya, in her bright lime and hot pink outfit, stands out like a tropical flower in the field of green seaweed and black mussels.
Some time after 10:00 we head out in the car for a short ride to visit Winston, a classmate of Liya’s, and Winston’s dad Ford. We meet them on a property they own on the western face of the island. It’s a fairly large piece of land, and Ford takes us all on a nice tour of the property. They own a set of John Deere “Gators”, sort of like golf carts, if golf carts had 4x4 drive and knobby tires. There’s a big Gator with six wheels, a smaller one with four, and a child-sized one that Winston drives. He lets Anya and Liya ride, and eventually Anya takes a turn driving.
Ford shows us the forestry work they’re doing to restore the state of the woods on the property, which involves a fair amount of tree thinning and replanting. We make a stop at a small orchard they’ve just started this year, and snack on some new cherries that are coming in.
We end the tour on a grassy plateau looking out over Puget Sound towards Port Townsend. There’s a large fire pit, and we barbecue hamburgers and hot dogs. Anya’s content so long as there’s plenty of mustard and pickles.
We’re introduced to Roger, the property caretaker, who’s overseeing some contractors working on a part of the property. Roger’s leveling some dirt, and Winston starts to join in, followed by Liya and Anya. Roger patiently lets them help (or “help”).
It’s already 2:30 by the time we get back to the house—after Bree’s normal naptime—but thankfully she takes a long nap anyway. Angela rests under the covered patio, and Anya and Liya watch “Kiki’s Delivery Service” for the nth time. Jan reads a book a paragraph a time, interrupted about once a minute by one of the girls.
For our last dinner on Whidbey, we walk down the road to the Captain Whidbey Inn. We can see the old wooden inn from the house we’re in, so we’ve been interested in trying it out. The inn’s a little over 100 years old, and is full of interesting little corners and knickknacks. Liya and Angela discover a back staircase that takes them upstairs, where they can see some of the quaint little rooms. Anya and Jan check out a very old wall telephone with its separate earpiece on a cord, a type of phone Anya recognizes from a scene in “Totoro”.
Dinner’s pretty good, followed by dessert. Bree eats half a chocolate pot de creme, and somehow manages to end up with chocolate on her forehead. After dinner, we have a pleasant stroll back home, and take turns picking out rabbits that are hopping about at dusk. Yet another dip in the tub (which Bree insists she be involved in), and then bedtime.
Last day on Whidbey. A final low-tide walk, a final dip for Anya and Liya in the hot dub, and a bunch of packing in the morning. Amazingly, we actually leave at the 11:00 am departure time we’d shot for.
Driving south down the island, we make a stop at Langley for lunch. We’re just in time to catch the end of a long race that runs through the town, so it’s slightly more crowded than usual. We manage to find a table at a Greek restaurant. Afterwards we walk across the street to a viewpoint overlooking Saratoga Passage. There’s a statue there of a boy looking out to see, and the girls enjoy climbing all over the statue. On the way back to the car, we browse some shops, including a fun place selling kids’ books and puppets.
We manage to catch the ferry back to Mukilteo at a good time, and are back home a bit after 3:00. We unpack, and since it’s so hot, Jan runs down the street to the market for something cool to eat. Although we’ve just gotten home, we’re anticipating the arrival tonight of our friends Satoru, Hiroko, and their son Towa. They’re moving from Vancouver to Seattle, and tonight will be their first night in their new city. They’re going to stay with us for a bit until they can find an apartment.
We’re not sure if they’ll be at our home in time for dinner, but just in case Jan buys a bunch of food. This proves to be a good thing: Satoru and Hiroko arrive, and it turns out they’ve been driving down from Vancouver by some of their friends. We invite their friends to join us for dinner, and everyone enjoys an impromptu summer meal out on the deck. Towa, in particular, seems pretty happy to be surrounded by the older girls. He’s also fascinated by our cat Nutmeg after she finally makes an appearance.
For some reason, Sabriya’s favorite book in the world is “Roscoe Riley Rules #1: Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs”. Granted, it is a good book. But the thing is, she doesn’t want to read it—it has very few pictures in it, and it’s quite long, so she won’t sit still for more than the first page or so. She carries the book around everywhere regardless. When she first sees it each day, she says, “Roscoe Riley book! Roscoe Riley book!”
Photos from our trip to Whidbey Island: http://www.flickr.com/photos/67958827@N00/sets/72157621846654316/
Jan has an afternoon offsite meeting, and afterwards Cozi colleague Bill takes the group out on Lake Washington. The weather has been hot all week, and is unbelievably hot today, so a dip in the lake is refreshing. A bunch of people try wakesurfing behind the boat. After numerous attempts, Jan finally gets up, stays up, drops the rope, and surfs for a short while in the boat’s considerable wake.
We’re hosting friends from Japan who are moving to Seattle. Their two year-old, Towa, is getting along well with Sabriya, who’s just a few months younger than him.
Before bedtime tonight Towa expressed interest in the globe in Jan’s office. Jan brought it down and showed Towa where Seattle is, where Vancouver (his last home) is, and where his grandparents in Japan are. Towa looked carefully at the globe, then asked: “Where’s Sabriya?”