The Parent's Visit

Around the beginning of the year, Court and Brad were talking about Brad taking Court's dad fishing for his birthday. Brad invited Brent along and they thought they would invite my dad who-is-a-huge-fisherman-but-got-stuck-with-me-who-crys-when-I-catch-a-fish. Everyone was excited. Unfortunately, Court's dad couldn't come, so it ended up being Brad, Brent and my dad. That was the reason for the visit and my mom tagged along. :)

So, the boys head off to Westport with visions of salmon dancing in their heads. Mom and I just hung out here, going shopping. It was such a beautiful day in the neighborhood, that we decided to head over to Manchester Park and do a little hiking.

Manchester Park is our favorite around here. The Bremerton ferry goes right past it, which is fun to see. You can get a great view of Mt Rainier, as you will see, and even a little bit of Seattle. If only Bainbridge Island wasn't in the way. :)

Here are our pictures. As Washingtonians say, "The mountain was out that day."

This is Mt Rainier, or "the mountain." It's about 60 miles south of us. And, on clear days you can see it. This is a REALLY clear day. Very pretty.

Here are me and my mom. Luckily, you can't see if she has her eyes closed. I'm pretty sure she does though. :)

So, we FINALLY hear from the boys - Brent is very bad at guessing how long things will take - and they had a great time. "How many fish did you get?" Well, Brent caught 3 but couldn't keep any. (I'll explain that in a minute.) Brad caught 6 and could keep 3 and Dad caught 1 and could keep it. Man!! Not the salmon craziness that we were expecting.

Why could they only keep certain ones? Well, Washington - especially Western Washington - is very eco-friendly we'll say. A little tree hugger others might say. Brent and I fit in pretty well here. We are on the low end of "granola-ness". Anyway, I digress. All farmed Pacific Salmon have one of their fins cut off so you can tell that they are farmed. Obviously, the wild ones don't do that to themselves. So, when you catch a salmon, you have to check for that fin. No fin - keep and enjoy. Fin - throw it back and hope it makes a lot more little salmon babies. Or, gets eaten by an orca. Whichever. Brent had the bad luck of finding all this out first hand.

Why did Brad do so good? Well, we have a theory. There were a lot of people on the boat with them, so they split up and found places on the railing. Brad was right next to a guy who was - how shall we say this nicely - wanting to see what he had for breakfast? Get my drift? So, basically this other guy was chumming for salmon. Now we know how to attract them. Anyone feeling queazy? Good, let's go fishin'!

Speaking of queazy, Brent had a great time catching all those fish just to throw them back, but was feeling a bit under the weather. Brent does NOT get motion sick. He has an iron clad stomach that can eat anything. So, we were someone worried about this. The next day he felt great, but...I didn't. Crap. Court and Brad and the kids had just gotten back from Utah where there is a yucky stomach virus going around. So, our guess is that they passed it on to us. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it was a yucky couple of days.

We did cook up part of that one salmon Dad caught. It was super yummy! Good catching Dad!

Needless to say, with the stomach flu hanging around, we didn't get to do a whole bunch. My dad fixed up our bbq which we haven't used since we moved up here. It was his mission. And he did a great job! We really appreciate it! I'm going to fry myself up a hamburger tonight. Thanks Dad!

We sat out on our deck a lot that week. It is so peaceful out there. We love it. I was watering a plant I have back there and noticed a frog. Isn't it cute?

I've seen it a couple of times since then. Maybe it's filling up on our spiders. Go frog!!

We did get to go to Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma on Friday afternoon. It was fun. Just enough stuff to be exciting. Another glorious day in the Northwest. We also got to cross the newly finished Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Well, I guess it's now two bridges. The old one now brings people to the Kitsap Peninsula, the new one takes people away from the peninsula. It's now a toll bridge though. What a pain. Since we are horrible about having cash, we got a transponder that deducts the toll from our account. Works great for us! Back to the zoo.

This is a great little zoo. Court loves it for the kids because it's not too big. They don't get bored before it's over. I like it because it has great enclosures and really different animals. There are caribou and musk ox. We even saw some docents with an armadillo. And, you have the added bonus of an aquarium too. They have been improving the aquarium area in the last few years, so it's getting as nice as the rest of the zoo.

As soon as my mom heard that there were belugas here, she was so excited! She's always loved belugas but has never been able to see them. She can never say that again.

Just as we got to the outside pool for the belugas, there was a show. It was really funny. They just got a new beluga in this year. He came from an indoor aquarium, so he was having a hard time getting used to seagulls and rain and the sun. Sometimes he would just wander off because he couldn't see what the handler was telling him to do.

Here's me and my dad. See where I get the white hair from?

That night we went out to dinner at our favorite fish restaurant, Anthony's. Very yummy! They had gorgeous flower pots out and since Brent REFUSED to be another picture, here are my parents with the flower pots.

Isn't Gig Harbor a pretty place? We sure like it.

On Saturday we thought we'd head on up to Point No Point to fly some kites. It was a cloudy day, but we were hoping it wouldn't rain, since it never seems to rain when my parents are here. No such luck this time. We only got to do a little bit of kite flying and beach combing before we were soaked. Such is life, I guess. It was a fun day though.

We had a great time with my parents. Thanks for being understanding about my tummy! You guys are great!

Catch Up

What a crazy couple of weeks we've had. First, my parents were here in the middle of August for a week. Then, we left on our 9 day trip to Yellowstone and Utah. Then we got home and not a full week later, Brent left for Wisconsin for training. So, here I am, half way through my week without Brent. It's going well. I've been busy with YW stuff, so I don't sit at home and mope. :)

Apparently, I haven't been over to Court's in a while because when I was there yesterday, Kyle looked at his mom and said, "Momma, have Ashie back!" Very cute! I like it when people miss me!

This morning when I woke up, it was 59 degrees in the house. Guess summer is officially over in the Pacific Northwest. I closed all the windows that haven't been closed since June, and baked some banana bread to warm the place up. What a fun day.

Tonight I get to coach the YW in basketball. I am very nervous about this. I don't want to do it, but there really isn't anyone else, so I'm going to try my hardest. We really aren't that great of a team (sorry, but we're not), so we're used to losing. I just don't want it to be my fault. Wish us luck! Go Orchard Heights. We did win our first game. Yeah us!

So, I have a ton of pictures to put up. Stay tuned. :)