Bree attends a birthday party for her friend Amari. The group of girls goes to iFly, a place where you can “fly” above a giant fan.
Jan picks Mom up at SeaTac. She’s returning to the U.S. after 3 months in Tbilisi, Georgia. While there, she developed acute pain in her right leg and lower back. She now has trouble sleeping, and very little appetite. Jan brings her to stay with us.
(She eventually stays about 10 days, returning to her apartment once she feels well enough to manage on her own.)
Bree makes her own Starbucks cup.
Bree’s 4th grade class shows off the vehicles and other contraptions they built at class and at home for the school’s annual Engineering Event.
We drive with Lyn down to Cannon Beach, OR, for a family Thanksgiving at a rented house. The route we take leaves I-5 south of Olympia and heads west along smaller highways, so the traffic isn’t too bad, and it’s fun to drive across the incredibly long bridge at the mouth of the Columbia River to Astoria on the Oregon side.
When we get to the house at 6:00, Skye and Jared are already there with their two boys, and Chris has just arrived. Skye and Jared have dinner ready by the time everyone’s worked out what room they’re sleeping in, so we all sit down to eat.
In the late afternoon, we have our big Thanksgiving dinner.
Chris has decided to make an icebox pudding for dessert, even though we usually make that at Christmas. It’s good anytime! He and Liya have enough chocolate wafers and whipped cream that they top the dessert with a pair of wafer-and-cream arches. This is not exactly architecturally sound, but holds together long enough to get the dessert into the fridge, where it firms up.
Cousin Auden is about 8 months old now. He happily sits on the floor for long periods of time. He’s pretty happy generally. Jan says that Auden seems to be happy about 80% of the time, and Jared agrees that’s about right.
The weather forecast calls for a week of rain, but it’s not too bad. In the late morning, the rain stops for a bit, so we walk down to Cannon Beach. Even in the off season, the beach is full of people strolling along snapping pictures of Haystack Rock.
The weather was supposed to be terrible in Cannon Beach all week, but the weather’s not too bad the day after Thanksgiving, so we head back down to the beach again.
Cousins!
We pack up in the morning, then go our separate ways. Traffic’s surprisingly light on the drive back to Seattle, and we while away the time finishing an audiobook version of “The Science Fair”, by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.
When we start audiobooks on trips, we rarely get through the whole thing. Usually Angela finishes the book when she’s driving around town with the girls, so Jan never gets to hear the end of these stories. In this case, we started “The Science Fair” on an earlier road trip, and Angela never finished it. So this may be the first time Jan’s finished a whole audiobook with the family.
Jan is saying goodnight to Bree, and the discussion somehow turns to octopuses. This reminds Bree of a story from 2nd grade. She was supposed to work with one of her parents to come up with a math “word problem”. This, apparently, is the story Jan proposed:
“Mr. Octopus is going on a business trip, and wants to bring his nice pants. 1 pair of pants can fit on 2 of his tentacles, and he needs enough pairs for all his tentacles. He also wants to bring pants for his 2 octopus friends. How many pairs of pants does Mr. Octopus need to bring?”
Bree cannot remember whether she actually used this story, or had to come up with something less ridiculous.