San Juan Island Vacation

We're all still pretty busy here in the Anderson house. Holiday just got her costume for her dance recital coming up. It's very flashy, black and gold with lots of gold glitter. The photo shoot for her dance class is this weekend. Her after school art club program will be wrapping up soon for the year and the last day of school is June 16th. So she has a couple of field trips, school carnival, class picnic, and field day to look forward to before school's out. May and June are simply busy months for us, especially when birthdays start up in April. I've signed both the kids up for swim lessons this summer at our local community center so that will be a good change for them. We just did a short family vacation over Memorial Day weekend on San Juan island. We stayed in a little cabin that's privately owned so we were basically by ourselves with beach access and everything. The kids slept in built-in bunk beds which was exciting for them. Holiday referred to her bunk as her bedroom. It had a stocked kitchen (except for food of course), towels, linens, books, dvds and games.  We fired up the wood stove the first night, it was pretty cloudy that day. The next day was way nice. We did lots of tidepooling and driving around. We had several meals in the city part of Friday Harbor which were all really good. Naturally we checked out both toy stores in town and the used book store. We saw the lavender farm, the alpaca farm and spent quite a bit of time at the sculpture park. I would be remiss if I did not mention we got ice cream down by the ferry terminal. The kids liked that part a lot. They really enjoyed the ferry ride too. Although the next time we go to the San Juans we getting reservations, because...yikes! That was a long wait to go home. Not a hardship though since there was plenty to do in town. Since we were there on Memorial Day we got to see the local parade which is not much of a parade but more of a ceremony. All the vets were dressed up. The Auxiliary was represented as well as the local boy scout troop. They had a group of 8 eight men (various ages) dressed up as union soldiers. Old guys, young guys and in between. That was pretty cool. Then bringing up the rear was a middle-aged women in black period dress carrying an American flag folded up. I have to guess she was depicting Betsey Ross. There was the usual singing of the Star Spangled Banner, lots of bag pipes, an address from the military rep and the auxiliary rep, reading of names of local vets, fallen and widows, poems, prayers, boy scout troops setting flowers in the harbor, singing of God Bless America, 21 gun salute (that made Holiday jump), taps and a single cannon blast. They had warned us about the cannon blast before things got going. Holiday was really worried about that. David and Johnny had left before it started to stay with the car in case we got on an earlier ferry. In hind sight, that was the best decision because there would have been no way Johnny would have been able to stick that out. But it was an educational experience for Holiday, she asked a lot of questions about what was going on.

So...whew! That was a busy but fun weekend that I'm trying to catch up on while we're gearing up for all the other stuff coming up soon.

Pictures - Science Fair - Johnny's Birthday sooooo busy lately

This is from Holiday's last field trip to the Seattle Asian Art Museum that David got to go chaperoning with.

They get to do all sorts of fun things at her school...even flying.

There's some rainbow action in the background there.

Another near hole-in-one for David.

Here's Holiday's scientific illustration work.

Holiday at a friend's birthday party.  Love the unicorn headband.

The many funny faces of Holiday Rose.

On our back deck.

More funny faces.

They both really like playing in the sand box.

  

Johnny's birthday party at the bowling alley at the HUB at UW.

He had a blast and it was the nicest bowling facility I have ever seen. Hopefully no one becomes a bowling snob after this.  But the bowling shoes practically gleamed. Bowling shoes never gleam they're usually gross.

Dexter and Johnny (with Audrey in the background) waiting for impact.

And there it is (you can tell from my expression as well).

Holiday sportin' some bowling shoes.

Cake close up. Those are jelly bean rocks. Too cool.

I had to make sure Johnny didn't fall into his cake when he blow out the candles.

  

Johnny's proud face when everyone is singing Happy Birthday.

Now Holiday is up...

She was the only kid to get a strike.

Aunt Toni with Johnny and his cousin Ayden (who won the kids round).

Okay, so a lot has happened and all the while David and I have been really busy at work too. I think my ear has recovered from the rupture. At least the drainage stopped after 2 weeks. I can't tell if my hearing is any worse because it was bad in that ear to begin, so I don't think that's going to be a life changer at all. I messed up my back doing some weeding so I was really out of it for 2 weeks. I figured out it the low squat with bending at the waist action that did it. If I wear my dirt clothes and sit my butt on the ground that seems to circumvent it. So basically as low as I can get. I don't have a problem sitting on the ground. I just needed a way to be able to get the job done. Holiday had a science fair at her school which was pretty cool. Maybe next year she can do an individual project.  K-2 do class projects and hers was building castles out of paper towel and toilet paper tubes. They had a lot of other art work to see too. We got to see a little of the older grades as well. Many classrooms have classroom pets/critters. Holiday's had snails in a terrarium. Others had snakes, big beetles and tarantulas. It was pretty exciting. Johnny just turned 3 years old. His party at the bowling alley was a blast. He had a little celebration dance every time he knocked over a pin. We measured him and he's grown a whole inch since we checked at Christmas. He's gaining on Holiday. On Sunday David surprised me with Mother's Day brunch at a fancy hotel. It was pretty good. Although Holiday needs to take it easy on the fondue. She got chocolate everywhere. :) Yesterday was Johnny's check-up which he was fine and perfectly healthy. He just got nervous about it once he learned they were for him. I asked him about it afterwards and he seemed pretty bitter about having to go see the doctor. He kept saying, "Mommy, I'm NOT sick!" 

Things will be busy for us for a while. The Rainier Dance Center is starting to hone in on the recital next month so will have costume fittings, pictures and recital tickets to deal with. Then all the year end stuff at Holiday's school will happen. Holiday's summer camp will relocate for the summer and come back to Adams in the fall when school starts so that will be a big change. My office is permanently relocating to Ballard some time in the next month too. That will be a good change though since I'll be two blocks away from Johnny's daycare. I'll be more of a face at the kids' locations which is a good thing. So busy, busy but the good kind of busy. Looking forward to a summer of swimming lessons.