Fallen Leaf Lake, California, to Seattle. After a final breakfast in the main camp lodge, we hastily pack and say goodbye to Sierra Camp for the year. We’ll almost certainly be back again next year.
Since our flight out of Reno isn’t until the late afternoon, we stop and have a picnic lunch on the beach at Zephyr Cove, on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. The water’s a bit cold, so no one wants to swim, but we spend a couple of nice hours sitting in the sun and playing in the sand.
Liya moves into her own room. Ever since Sabriya was born, Anya and Liya have shared the (slightly) larger kids’ bedroom upstairs. We’d always told them that, if one of them ever wanted a room on their own, and were able to conquer their fear of monsters in the basement, that one could move into the small basement office/bedroom we remodeled a few years ago. This summer, Liya decided she wanted to have a room of her own. We all recently decided to make a big push to make this happen before the start of the school year.
We spend a day moving a bunch of Angela’s books and other office stuff into the guest room (which will eventually become an office plus guest room). We spend full day today taking apart Anya and Liya’s bunk beds and reconstructing one of the beds downstairs, then moving all of Liya’s stuff in as well.
Whew! Liya’s very happy to have her own room. Jan and Angela are guessing that we’ll soon discover that Liya’s a very neat person, and that the lion’s share of the objects covering the floor of Anya and Liya’s old shared room were due to Anya.
Back to school: Anya begins 5th grade today, and Liya begins 4th grade. They’re both now in the school’s 4-5 building.
Jan starts a consulting gig working with some old friends from his Microsoft days. Many years ago, the group of friends left Microsoft to form a video game studio, which was acquired last year by Sony. Jan’s never been that interested in designing video games per se, but the studio has some needs for a web site that sounds intriguing.
We say farewell to our wonderful nanny, Siri, who has helped us with the girls (and countless other things) for five years. We mark the occasion by taking Siri out for a nice — if somewhat boisterous — dinner.
With Sabriya now about to attend a Pre-K program five days a week, we no longer need the same level of childcare help we used to. For the past year, Siri’s worked part-time for us, and part-time for our friends George and Melanie, who live just a few minutes away. Siri will continue working with them (especially as they gear up for the arrival of their second child early next year), so she’ll still be nearby. We’ve also made plans to have her come back and visit us again soon.
[This photo of Siri with the girls was taken when she joined us for a family photo shoot last year.]
Sabriya is off to her first day of Pre-Kindergarten! She’s attending a one-year Pre-K designed for kids like her that could be ready for kindergarten, but just miss the cut-off date. She attended a few art camps at the school, so she already knows the teachers and some of her classmates and is looking forward to her new school.
If you tickle Sabriya these days, she emits a pure, ear-piercing scream. If Jan forgets and tickles Bree in a confined space like a restaurant, the resulting blast of sound will startle everyone in the room. They will then look at our table.
This month’s craft output from the Miksovsky girl factory: duct tape wallets. Every month or so, the girls pick up a new craft thing, and our floors are covered in origami frogs or friendship bracelets or paper cars or whatever. This month it’s wallets made from duct tape.
We still love the little Zojirushi rice cooker we bought years ago in Japan. Tonight we discovered that, if you inadvertently press the purple “Keep Warm” button instead of the pink “Cook” button, you end up with a bowlful of tepid glue.
Siri finishes the completely amazing Totoro quilt she’s been working on as a birthday gift for Liya. Siri’s mom helped her out, and there’s so much complexity in the quilt’s fabrics, dyeing, construction, etc., that it still must have taken uncountable hours for the two of them to make it. The back of the quilt is covered with little makkuro-kurosuke (dust bunnies) from the Totoro movie.
Weekend in Leavenworth. To fulfill a promise made last Christmas, Jan takes Liya and his mom Lyn for the weekend out to the town of Leavenworth on the eastern side of the Cascades. We’re staying at Sleeping Lady Resort, named for the Sleeping Lady Mountain shown in the photo. Seen from the resort, the mountain does, in fact, look somewhat resembles a woman lying on her back. The resort is pretty nice, made up of a number of small cabins in the pines near Icicle Creek. The hotel accepts dogs, so we’ve brought along Lyn’s dog, Charlie, for the trip. He seems quite happy to have the chance to run along the paths between the trees. The hotel’s restaurant serves a buffet dinner that turns out to be quite good.
The three of us (Jan, Liya, Lyn) take Charlie for a nice walk along Icicle Creek in the morning. Afterwards, we have a relaxing lunch on the patio at O’Gradys, a deli on the hotel property.
The main reason we’ve come out to eastern Washington is to ride horses. We’ve arranged a half-day ride with an outfit called Icicle Outfitters, who run trail rides in Lake Wenatchee State Park. It’s Liya’s first time on a substantial horse ride, and a number of years since Jan or Lyn has been on a horse. Before the weekend, we couldn’t decide whether to stick with the arranged half-day trail ride, or bump up to a full-day ride.
Sticking with the half-day ride turns out to be a very wise decision. The ride is certainly fun enough, and the views of Lake Wenatchee as we climb up Mason Ridge are great. The leaves on this side of the mountain have just started to change color, and every once in a while there’s a brilliant blaze of yellow or orange. Nevertheless, in the third hour of the ride, both Jan’s and Lyn’s legs begin complaining, and we’re very happy when the horses trot back into the corral.
A good soak in a hot tub (and some ibuprofen) go a long way to working out the kinks. After another nice dinner, we all collapse around 8:30 pm.
Before leaving the Leavenworth area, we go for a short hike up the trail towards Icicle Ridge. We don’t have the time (or, to be honest, the energy) to climb all the way up, but it’s a beautiful morning just to be outdoors. Lyn’s dog, Charlie, is happy to trot along in front; whenever we stop (as in the photo), he comes trotting back. Below the mountain peak in the distance, we can see smoke blowing from wildfires raging east of Leavenworth.