Family Times is Fun Times

Dear Internet,

We owe you an apology for not keeping up with our bloggily duties. But life here in the Emerald City just whizzes (pleasantly) by.

We rejoin our befuddled wanderers as they putter around Bellingham, Washington, a cute little seaside town near the Canadian border. The days pass peacefully, whiled away in bookstores and donut shops - there's also a certain amount of blackberry picking going on, since blackberries grow wild around here and are delicious.

Then we camped on Lopez Island in Puget Sound. The campsite was, like, amazing! They had hammocks,


and sheep,


and everything! Abbie bonded with the sheep, particularly the one in the front there. Now she's bonded with both bison and sheep. I'm thinking pretty much any large vegetarian mammal that's willing to get close to her is a contender. Maybe doesn't even have to be a mammal. We'll keep you posted.

She also bonded with the sea lions that live on (or near) the island, even though they didn't come right up to us or anything. We just watched them lying around in the sun, until we eventually realized they were setting a pretty good example, which we then followed. (If you click on this picture, you'll have a better chance of making them out.)





Although we loved our Lopez Island campsite, with its many amenities (including hot showers, and a fireplace in the picnic area), we eventually succumbed to Seattle's siren song. We filled a sack with giant island cinnamon rolls and hopped the ferry.

We received a royal welcome from Abbie's aunt Bobbie and cousins Anna and Emilie. We only planned to stay a few nights, but for the past week (is it really a week?), we have basically just lived it up, farmers'-market-style, and long-late-dinner-with-deep-conversation-style. Also we watched Ratatouille one night and some amazing family home videos (Abbie forbids me to describe the home videos here - ask me later).

Here's some of that conversation - apparently I am saying something at first amusing and then rather shocking. (Thanks to Bobbie for these photos.)



We got to see a lot of Steve and even a fair amount of his delightful sons, Michael and Nick. Here's one of all of us (except Emilie) from Anna's world championship tournament.


One night was Nick's birthday, and I made my mom's chocolate sheet cake. Bobbie was nice about what I did to her kitchen.


We did a pretty good job with that sheet cake.


Bobbie's porch has a hammock, too, so we hardly missed our campsite at all.


Here's the day that we decided to go be lazy at the park instead of being lazy at the house.


Ruby got a lot of swimming done while we ate a picnic and played frisbee.


Just yesterday, my favorite mother-in-law arrived. She had been in Portland and took the train up. I have no photos to prove it, but she did take this photo (I promise).


We are so grateful to Bobbie for letting us pretty much run her ragged with a lot of late-night carousing. It has been so lovely here. We are sad to go.

But the road awaits - we're heading west to the Olympic peninsula, and then we'll mosey down the coast, looking forward to reuniting with Gloria (and, we hope, Eddie) either on the coast or back in Portland. If all goes according to plan, we'll probably be in L. A. in a month.

We love you, and we miss you. Keep in touch.