The girls start school again. Sabriya has the same 1st grade teacher her sisters had. Liya starts 6th grade, and so moves up to the middle school division. Anya starts 7th grade.
While preparing breakfast, Anya explains some middle school basics to Liya, like how to jam open the combination lock on a middle school locker so that you don’t need to bother unlocking it each time.
Liya’s high ropes birthday party. A few years ago, the girls got to try a fantastic high ropes course in Laye, France, and ever since then, we’ve been looking for a similar place within driving distance. Jan finally found a place called The Waterhouse Center in Snohomish, and thought it’d be a fun place for Liya to celebrate her 11th birthday with some friends. She invites her schoolmates Anya S., Henrietta, Kira, Radha, and Zelia. (Bree’s too young for the course, so she spends the afternoon with one of her favorite people: our former nanny, Siri.)
The weather cooperates, and we spend a perfect afternoon up in the trees. Here Anya (on left) walks across a high wire as Liya (right) and Liya’s friend Radha (in pink) watch from a cargo net. They’re about 40’ off the ground.
Anya walks across a thin cable, holding onto ropes that dangle at intervals.
The adults get to join in the fun, too.
After the girls have gone through all the many high ropes challenges, the guides suggest a series of alternative challenges. Here Liya traverses a high wire with her eyes closed. This particular challenge turns out to be easier than walking across with yours eyes open.
Angela hangs out with Liya’s friends Zelia (left) and Kira (center).
After the ropes course, we bring all the girls back home for pizza and a movie. We’re all pretty exhausted, and at night sleep very soundly.
Jan and Anya spend a father/daughter weekend with Anya’s good friend, Kaila, and her father, Marc. Earlier this year, Kaila’s family bought a cabin on Obstruction Island in the San Juan Islands. There’s a lot to do there. While Jan paddles around the island in a sea kayak, Marc takes the girls on a boat ride. The water is very clear, but also very, very cold. This does not stop Anya and Kaila from taking a swim. Later in the day there’s a ride on a giant swing, and archery, dinner, and marshmallow toasting. It feels a lot like summer camp.
The father/daughter group makes a short trip for lunch to the town of Eastsound on Orcas Island.
On the way back, Anya and Kaila take turns at driving the motorboat. Anya seems slightly overwhelmed by the number of things she has to pay attention to while driving the boat. Jan uses the opportunity to impress upon Anya what it’s like when he drives the girls, rattling off a long list of phrases commonly heard in the car — “I’m hungry!”, “I don’t like this song!”, “Stop touching me!”, “She’s on my side!”, etc.
We stop at the cabin on Obstruction Island to pick up our things, then head to Cypress Island for a short hike to Eagle Cliff. There’s a stunning 360° view of the islands from the top.
Liya’s 6th grade class goes on a trip to the North Cascades Institute on Diablo Lake for three days and two nights of nature exploration and activities.
After many, many months of waiting, the girls finally realize their dream: we have a hamster. She’s a Djungarian dwarf hamster, and pretty darn cute. The girls instantly begin constructing cardboard hamster houses, carrying cases, mazes, and obstacle courses.
Canoeing trip on Ross Lake. Jan’s brother, Chris, comes up from San Francisco for a weekend of canoeing with Jan in the North Cascades. Their destination is Ross Lake, the same lake where Jan and Liya went canoeing last year. Along the way, Jan and Chris stop at the ranger station to get a backcountry permit and campsite reservations. Since it’s late in the season, they’re able to get reservations for both nights at the island sites they were hoping for. They stop for a quick lunch at the Marblemount Diner, then drive up to the Ross Lake trailhead and hike down with backpacks to the lake.
A boat from the floating Ross Lake Resort comes to pick them up and ferry them across to the resort, where they pick up a rental canoe. The woman who works the desk there reviews their camping plan, and it meets with her approval. Jan and Chris plan to do the biggest stretch of paddling first, all the way up to Tenmile Island. As its name suggests, the island is about ten miles away. The advantage of doing this northbound leg first is that the wind on the lake generally blows hard in the afternoon from the south. By heading north on the first afternoon, they should have a wind at their back. They plan to break up the southbound stages, which might include a headwind, into two file-mile stretches.
Although the weather’s been cloudy and drizzling in the morning, by the time the two paddle away from the resort, the sun’s come out. There is, as expected, a pretty stiff wind out of the south.
“Hoist the Jannaker!” Even with a strong tailwind, a few hours of paddling a canoe is still a workout. At about the 8 mile mark, Jan considers whether a sail might help. As luck would have it, there’s an extra paddle on board the canoe, and Jan digs a large black garbage bag out of a backpack. Jan constructs a sprit sail — the sort of sail Polynesians might have used to cross the Pacific, if only they’d had plastic paddles and large garbage bags for construction materials instead of tree branches and vegetable fibers.
The impromptu sail — which Chris dubs, “The Jannaker” — works surprisingly well for its small size. The wind is blowing straight for Tenmile Island, so for the last miles of the downwind run, Jan has only to trim the sail while Chris steers from the back.
On Tenmile Island, Jan and Chris scout out the island’s three campsites. Since apparently no one else is staying there tonight, they pick the site most sheltered from the wind. Some trees around the site are just starting to change color.
After dinner, as they’re sitting around a campfire, they hear a rustling sound. They eventually discover a pair of field mice have jumped up into the open food storage box. Each campsite on the lake has a large metal box for keeping food safe from hungry animals. The brothers haven’t yet closed up the box for the night, and so the mice have slipped in to check out what’s on offer. Jan makes sure they’ve chased out all the mice, then closes up the box.
A short while later, they hear a metal banging sound. Chris shines a flashlight at the food storage box, and the light illuminates a tiny mouse. It’s standing up on its hind legs, and pressing with its forepaws on the box’s door. It looks guilty in the spotlight of the flashlight, like a criminal who’s been caught in the act by police and is now up against a wall. The mouse’s tiny arms are just strong enough to move the door a bit: bang–bang–bang–bang. Jan jams a wooden stick into the door so they don’t have to listen to the sound all night.
Jan and Chris leave Tenmile Island and paddle south. They stop at an inlet called Devil’s Creek — the woman at Ross Lake Resort had said it was the most interesting place on the lake. She’s not kidding. It’s a very narrow gorge whose bottom was flooded when the lake was dammed, so it’s doesn’t have the feel of a regular river. It feels more like a Disney “Jungle Cruise” set piece. It’s also fairly dark, cold, and still, giving it a mysterious air. The brothers paddle to the waterfall at the head of the gorge, then back out to have lunch on a hillside overlooking the lake.
There’s very little wind in the afternoon, so they make good time to Spencer’s, another island campsite. The afternoon sun is warm, somewhere in the high 70s, making a short swim in the cold lake worth doing. It doesn’t look like there’s any chance of rain this evening, so they skip setting up tents and just sleep under the stars. There’s no moon, and there are no lights for miles around, so it’s a perfect night for stargazing.
The brothers leave Spencer’s in the middle of the morning and paddle back south to Ross Lake Resort. They have lunch on a deck between the main semicircle of floating cabins. They get a lift back to the east side of the lake and hike back up the steep hill to the car for the drive home.
Back in Seattle, the girls are delighted to show Chris the homes they’re constructing for our new hamster. Chris’ flight back to San Francisco is delayed, giving us time to have dinner with him at Taste of India in the University District.
About a month ago, Anya announced her intention to try eating vegetarian. She’s stuck with it so far, necessitating some shifts in our meal planning.
At school, she’s also started working with some classmates to protest the construction of a copper mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Clearly, eating vegetables leads to activism.
Our new hamster scoots through cardboard obstacle courses so quickly — the girls have already made several — the girls declare she’s a parkour hamster. Accordingly, the girls decide to name her, “Kouri”.
This morning, Anya gets braces. She’s had some hardware in her mouth before, then for a while there was nothing, and now she’s finally got the full deal.
If the main reason that you shouldn’t blow bubbles in milk in a restaurant is that it will make a big noisy mess, then surely it’s okay at home to put a tall glass of milk in a big bowl and blow like crazy. Anya is the first to have this thought. Liya thinks it’s a pretty good idea, too.
Anya decides that she should do the right thing and actually drink all the milk that ends up in the bowl. This turns out to be a huge amount of milk. She feels a bit queasy afterwards.
Bree loses the second of her baby teeth. She puts it under her pillow at bedtime. Apparently, she’s so excited about the tooth fairy’s imminent visit that she wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep for a long time. Fortunately, the tooth fairy still manages to come.
Bree’s determined to do well on 1st grade class storybook reading and speaking assignment. Her teacher has assigned the class the task of selecting a book and rehearsing reading aloud from of it; the students will eventually take turns reading their prepared book to the whole class. On pages that include pictures, the students will need to show the audience the pictures.
Early this morning, Jan hears Bree talking in her room. She’s up early as usual, despite her fitful sleep in anticipation of the tooth fairy. Entering her room, Jan finds her reading a Berenstain Bears book to an assembled audience of stuffed animals. As she reads, she carefully shows the animals the pictures.