Bree can now climb up into the backyard treehouse! Last summer she was still quite nervous about the rope ladder, but yesterday she scampered right up the ladder into the treehouse. Today She and Jan celebrate with some afternoon reading and snack time up in the tree.
Fourth of July. We let Anya and Liya stay up until 10:00 pm, when the tennis club down the street starts its fireworks show. Jan walks the girls down the street so they can watch the show from close up.
Owen and Nicole Snyder, friends from New Jersey, arrive for a week-long visit.
We take Owen and Nicole on a ferry ride across the Sound to Bainbridge Island. We stop in the town of Winslow for a nice lunch on the patio at Cafe Nola.
We stop at Bainbridge Island’s Blakely Harbor Park, where the girls happily poke around at crabs and shells. We’re all fascinated with a patch of seaweed-covered ground near the water at low tide — occasionally a jet of water will squirt up from the ground. We eventually find a small, clam-like shell. Jan tries to pick it up, but it’s dug in deep. He digs down deeper, and deeper, until he’s got his fingers around something the size of a baseball. When he tries to pull it out, there’s considerable resistance — and then finally a big chunk of sand around the shell lifts up. “Whoa!” we all scream. The sand is atop a huge dinner plate-sized rubber disc, which begins contracting into the shell.
At home we look it up: it’s a moon snail.
Following our adventure on Bainbridge Island, Anya creates a teeny tiny book about moon snails.
Sabriya turns five! Her party isn’t for another week, so we celebrate with a simple dinner at home (her choice: pasta). Here she holds up one of the Momiji dolls she received from her Chen relations in Los Angeles.
We tour the Theo Chocolate factory in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. The tour starts with a tasting. We all generally find the super-dark chocolate too bitter, and most of us like the dark orange chocolate. The chai milk chocolate is surprisingly tasty. The cacao nibs are nasty.
After the tasting, we walk through the sweltering factory floor. Hands down the favorite stop is the confectionery, where we get to try some fantastic chocolate ganache.
We stop by the Hiram Chittenden Locks on the Lake Washington Ship Canal. As luck would have it, we’re visiting during the sockeye salmon run, and the underground viewing room of the fish ladder shows tons of salmon taking a rest from their fight upstream. At the far end of the room, we can see fish struggling to enter a small hole where, evidently, water is streaming into the fish chamber. Every once in a while, a fish does it just right, and disappears into the hole; everyone watching cheers.
Liya starts writing and binding tiny little books in order to provide Timmy, her new little raccoon, with a library. The bound books go in a bookshelf over the mantel of a small fireplace Liya made from paper.
Anya joins in as well. Some of their books are quite elaborate; Anya’s include tiny pictures printed off the Internet.
Each book includes a complete (but short) story. The book entitled, “The Story”, reads in its entirety as follows:
THE STORY
One day Timmy decided
to write a book. He didn’t know
what to write about so he
asked Pete. Pete said it
should be about how he could
not find the Jello but Timmy decided
it should be about
how he got a nice
bike with gears and handbrakes. The END
Nicole teaches the girls the lyrics to the school lunchroom and summer camp favorite, “Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts”. [The girls happily sing this for many days.]
Seaplane ride up to Victoria. The ride is a first for Sabriya, Nicole, and Owen. Owen smiles gamely through the experience; we learn later he was partial to the idea of going on the high-speed ferry, and it was Nicole who was keen to go by seaplane.
We’re staying at The Fairmont Empress.
High Tea at the Empress Tea Room.
Liya and Bree love the bathrobes.
This Plasterman guy gave Nicole a start. He’d been standing so still, she didn’t realize he wasn’t a statue — until he reached out and tapped her on the shoulder.
We spend most of the day at Butchart Gardens. The weather’s perfect, and the garden looks amazing as always. We have a nice lunch at The Dining Room restaurant, looking out at an immaculate lawn and the adjacent rose garden.
This week, Liya’s been bringing Timmy, the small round raccoon, everywhere she goes. Timmy often gets to enjoy Liya’s careful narration of everything they’re looking at.
The stepping stones in the Japanese Garden are always a hit.
On the seaplane ride back to Seattle, Liya gets to sit up in the copilot’s seat. She makes sure Timmy (and his larger friend, Pengy) have a good view as well.
Liya, Sabriya, and Jan take Nicole for a walk through the Japanese Garden near our house.
Our nanny, Siri, sews an absolutely gorgeous princess dress for Bree’s birthday. It’s an amazing piece of work.
Anya takes advantage of a rare (for Seattle) summer thunderstorm to design and field-test a raingear outfit she makes from plastic bags.
Owen and Nicole head back home to New Jersey. We’ve had a fantastic week with them. In the morning before Jan takes them to the airport, Owen reads a story to the girls. He reads the story of “The Three Spinners” from a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales which he and Nicole have given to the girls.
Bree’s Hawaiian-themed birthday party. She invites her friends Jack, Serena, Lillian, Audrey, Kaitlyn, Miriam, and Natasha. They spend the sunny morning splashing in the kiddie pool, doing tropical-themed art crafts, playing a “Musical Beach Towel” game modeled after Musical Chairs, and enjoying a tasty mango cake. Bree’s Aunt Skye and Uncle Jared drive up from Salem, OR, to help celebrate the occasion.
Anya heads off for two weeks at the YMCA’s Camp Colman on the Kitsap Penninsula. Last year, she and Liya did three nights along with some of their school friends. Anya and her good friend Jane (in light blue, on the right in the picture) decided they want to go for two weeks this year. Liya will join them a week from today, and stay for one week.
Liya and Jan head up to Lopez Island in the San Juans for a two-night father-daughter camping trip at Spencer Spit State Park.
On the ferry ride, we do some “watercolor” iPad sketches. It’s a beautiful day to be out on Puget Sound.
Spencer Spit, a long gravely triangle that sticks out from Lopez Island’s east shore into Puget Sound, is covered with driftwood logs. Park visitors have arranged these logs into sculptures and shelters of all shapes and sizes. Since the driftwood is light, even the bigger logs can be moved about fairly easily. We spend a long time at the beach adding to one of the existing driftwood shelters.
We wade all the way out to the end of the spit. Even at the height of summer, the water in Puget Sound is freezing.
We walk down to the beach in the morning for some more driftwood building.
We drive into the small Lopez Village for lunch at Holly B’s Bakery. Liya’s bringing her little raccoons, Raccoony and Timmy, everywhere on this trip.
We rent a double kayak for a paddle around Frost Island and Flower Island.
This little guy spent a long time visiting our campsite, hopping in and out of the bushes in his search for food.
We paddle by this mother seal and her pup sunning themselves on Flower Island.
Liya builds a fire. After watching Jan build a campfire the first night, Liya builds our fire for the second night herself. It catches quickly, and burns down to a nice fire for toasting marshmallows. Timmy the Raccoon gets to try his hand at toasting marshmallows as well.
We receive a letter Anya sent to us from camp. It sounds like she’s having a good time doing standard summer camp things at Camp Colman. She specifically calls out, “Don’t let Liya get my stuff.” This is probably also pretty standard for letters from summer camp.
Liya heads off to Camp Colman as well, for one week of sleep-away camp.
Bree’s having fun doing a week of camp at her upcoming pre-K school. She’s doing a lot of art projects, including a drawing of our cat, Nutmeg.
Anya and Liya return from Camp Colman. We’re very happy to have them back (although we did enjoy the peace and quiet this last week). On the ride home, they share their camp experiences, along with a number of songs that start, “This is a ‘Repeat after me’ song…”
Anya asks whether we’d found the secret code buried in her letter home from camp. (We’d missed it!) A chip off the old block, indeed.
In the late afternoon, we head down to Seattle’s waterfront for our first ride on the big, new ferris wheel on one of the piers. It’s a perfect sunny day for a ride, and the wait’s not too bad. We all enjoy the view as we go around several times. By the time our car stops to let us off, the girls are bouncing around the inside and we’re ready to get off. We top off the ride with dinner at a touristy waterfront restaurant.