Visiting Victoria

Tom and I got to take a little vacation without the kiddos to Victoria (where we went on our Honeymoon). It turns out that when we don't have kids around we take pictures of strange things. For example, why did we take a picture at the back side of parliament?

And what was Sully doing on Government street? I suppose we would have taken this one with our without kids.

In  the end we mostly just took pictures of flowers and bugs.

We also took a few pictures on the Clipper to and from Seattle. On the way up to Victoria it was raining on and off the whole time, but the way back down was sunny and clear.

Can't you tell we had fun?

Visiting Washington

Our big summer trip was a three-week trip to the Northwest which included Washington, Victoria, B.C., and Oregon.  Our first stop was the Stock house in Washington.  The cousins all spent some quality time just hanging out at parks, in the backyard, roasting marshmallows, and playing together.  

The girls shared a room with their cousin, Jack.  It was a pretty hilarious situation which we got to watch on one of the Stocks' security cameras we moved into their bedroom to use as a video monitor.  (As a side note, I've since purchased one for the girls here at home and it's awesome.  I can check my phone before going to bed to make sure Sabrina hasn't fallen out of her bed, etc. without having to go in and wake them up.)  But overall, they tired themselves out pretty good during the day, so they did pretty well together at night.  

Tom brought the photo studio with us on vacation to try to capture pictures of the cousins.  As you can tell, it was more of a comedy act than a success, but cute in its own way.

We went to the beach at the Puget Sound and found a million tiny sand dollars and played in the water.

We also got to spend some quality time at the Stock family cabin allowing our kids to enjoy the same things Tom and his siblings got to enjoy as youngsters.  The kids had a great time exploring the various boat options and just swimming around playing in the water.  

We were also in town for the Rogge family reunion.  It was a lovely home in rural Washington with a hammock, a large yard, and raspberries.  It made it a super eventful and exciting event for the children involved and it was fun being with all the extended cousins as well.  

And, we got to enjoy plenty of fabulous Pacific Northwest views from the Stocks' backyard.  It was beautiful.  

Super Sunny Summer

This is becoming an annual tradition: the September run-down of the events of our busy summer. We started the summer with a 100-mile biking chart hung up in our hallway.  So far, we've made it 76 miles and we better get back out there before it gets too cold to ride the last 24.  The girls love bike rides.

We also went to a summer party put on by Alaska Public Media.  There were bubbles, popcorn, hot dogs (with Sabrina demonstrating her own unique ways of eating them), and music and dancing.  The girls quickly grabbed some new friends from the crowd and started dancing.

The girls participated in the summer reading program.  They both finished and got dinosaur chompers and a new book.  Here they are proudly posing in front of the library fountain (picture taken at their request).

We had a record breaking summer this year.  It was GORGEOUS.  The record was for the longest streak of days over 70 degrees.  But this was by far the most fabulous, perfect summer ever.  The girls did water balloons and ran through the sprinklers pretty much daily.  

Oh.  And so did we.  Sometimes.

The girls got so used to wearing their swimsuits they just hung around the house in them at times.

These last two were from May, before the sun really came out. Sabrina looks chic-punk as usual in her bright colors, and Celia's sporting the old maid librarian look, which seems to be one of her favorites.

And now that we've done the overall summer recap and we're starting to shut ourselves in for fall, we'll catch up on the specific events of the summer. Coming soon to a blog near you...

As _____ As Possible!

Celia has been using the phrase "As ____ as possible" lately.  Sometimes, it can be quite nice, like when she says "this dinner is as yummy as possible!" about the pizza Tom made us for dinner last night.  Other times, it isn't as nice, like when she said: "Mommy, your bum is huge.  It's a big as possible!"

Sabrina and Celia also have gotten into telling jokes.  The structure of the joke is always the same (not sure where they got it), but it's kind of like Mad-Libs seeing which nouns they'll fit in this time:
"Why would a (noun) fit in a (noun)?  Because it likes to eat (noun)!"  Never particularly a funny format, but they have a good time fitting things into it.  Sabrina just fills in the blank: "Why would a couch fit in a bowl?  Because it like to eat windows!"  Celia tries to have it make a little bit of sense, "Why would a horse fit in a drawer?  Because it likes to eat the stuff at the bottom of the drawer!"

Celia's note

When we got back from dipnetting, we were all pretty gross from camping on the beach and dealing with bloody fish, so we immediately gave the girls a bath. Tom and I were still dirty of course after the girls took a bath, so she wrote this note. Translation: grown-ups dirty-wirty kids clean machine. 

Dipnetting: the perfect year

 

This is Sabrina proudly showing me her "pocket full of sand."  Lovely.

 

 

Every year I talk about dipnetting and how it's my absolute favorite.  Even last year when Tom and I were both totally sick, Tom got the net caught on a rock, and we only came home with 14 salmon, it was still my favorite.  It's just different on the beach.  Everyone is super nice and communal.  This year, our tent neighbors were this lovely couple that kept checking in with the kids (taking pictures of their sand angels), and making sure we were catching enough fish.  Another tent neighbor was this guy that had caught his limit and was just staying the night before packing up.  We loaned him a can opener for his dinner of raw canned soup (a lot of these guys are pretty hard core) and Tom helped him haul his cooler to his truck.  He gave us a jar of his canned salmon.  Just love dipnetting.

Anyway, we took a gamble this year and went on a Monday when the fish counts were still really low (the two previous days were 9,000 and 10,000).  We wanted to get there to fish the low tide (the best bet is about 3 hours before low tide), but we got stuck in construction and didn't get to the beach until about 30 minutes before low tide.  We thought we had missed our opportunity for the day for sure, but as we were setting our stuff down on the beach, a nice guy who was packing up next to us, when I asked him if there were fish, he said: "Emphatically YES.  In fact, don't even set up your stuff.  Get in the water!"  So, we did.  Tom suited up and the girls and I headed down with the cooler.  Our net has 3 lengths of 15 feet and the past two years we've had to put all three on (45 foot pole) to get fish.  Tom just put one on (15 foot pole) and was pulling fish out like crazy.  I could barely bleed them, rinse them, and clip the tails (all dipnet fish have to have the ends of their tails clipped before concealing them to show they can't be sold, etc because dipnet fish are only for "subsistence") before Tom would have another one.  Because the documented fish counts weren't high yet, hardly any one was there (the fish counts for the two days we were there were later posted at 92,724 and 246,396).  Usually people are about 5 feet apart in the water.  This year, we were a good 25 feet from the next person.  In one hour, we caught 15 fish.  And they were all giant.  (The above picture with the girls and Tom.)  Feeling pretty good, we headed back to set up camp and leisurely cook dinner (the picture with Tom stirring our star-shaped ravioli).  During dinner, there was another rush of fish that we missed out on because we were being leisurely.  Tom jumped back in the water at the tail end of it and caught just one that night, but it was the biggest one we came home with, so it wasn't a total loss.  We went to bed, slept fairly well, and at around 7:45, I woke up to people yelling things like "We need another cooler down there!"  "He caught three in one net!"  So, we quickly got back up, Tom suited up and the girls and I got ready to receive.  Tom was just throwing them out as fast as he could get the net in the water.  It was nuts.  We could have easily caught our household limit of 55, but we only had two coolers and we didn't want to get greedy, so after 24 fish, we had to decide what to do.  Tom said he'd get back in and make it an even 25, but just as he got the net in the water, two more fish jumped in, so we called it at 26.  And this was the year of the giant fish.  They were huge.  We usually come home with about half small, have pretty big because we're not picky, but this year, they were all giant (and we even threw back two small ones).  

The girls enjoyed watching Tom gut the fish and seeing which ones had eggs.  And, as you can see by the last picture, the girls came home pretty tuckered out from all the excitement.

It was the perfect year.  The weather was overcast but warm so the girls happily played in the sand, there were hardly any people there, and the fish were so easy to catch (we spent about 2.5 total hours in the water for our 26 fish).

Our final result: 90lbs of total edible meat.  32 fillets in the freezer.  Smallest fillet size: 24 oz.  Largest fillet size: 37 oz.  32lbs sent off to be smoked.  YUM!

My three ladies

Well,  technically,  cousin Hazel is only "mine" three days a week.  But aren't they cute?