Last Day of Vacation and Vacation Funnies

I know, I know...not another vacation post!

I can hardly bear the thought myself. We enjoyed the vacation immensely, but it's been sloooow going getting it all posted here...and still the perfectionist in me just has to have everything on the official 'record'.

It's almost over, I promise!

On a couple of occasions during our vacation, my brother came by to visit and to play Scrabble.

He also introduced us to Speed Scrabble. Very fast-paced and fun. It involves flipping over two sets of scrabble tiles (different colors for easy sorting later) onto a table top face-down and mixing them well.

Each person draws seven starting tiles.

At "Go" you flip your letters over and begin to form a crossword game of sorts in front of you in which you try and use up all the letters you draw by forming legitimate "Scrabble" words.

When you are done, you call out "go" and you and others must draw two more tiles. With bigger groups, this gets really tricky, as you hear "go" a lot and end up with lots of tiles. The first person to use up all their tiles (without any further tiles to draw from on the table) goes through their 'board' and reads aloud all of their words to be sure they meet with the approval of the other players as acceptable words and spellings, and if so are the winner.

I thought I had a chance, but should have known better.

As children in our TV-less home, we were all avid readers and pretty good spellers. According to the experts, that alone should have set us well ahead of our 'competition' in Scrabble, increasing our vocabulary and all that.

However, I usually spent my time reading fiction novels, how-to-draw-and-paint type books, or books explaining how to make your own face masque from items in the kitchen. Meanwhile, my brother Tim read through encyclopedias and dictionaries... for fun!

Needless to say, I didn't have a snowball's chance in Hades of winning against him, lol.

One evening after my brother left for home, Judah said, "I wuv Unco Tim. He's my best fwend."



I thoroughly enjoyed hanging with my nieces for the few days we had them with us while their mom was recuperating.

Being the mother of two boys, it's a special treat to get to french-braid hair every now and again.

So many things about Niece E remind me of her mommy at that age.



The last full day of our vacation was jam-packed with activities.

We started off by attending my class picnic, which was held at a park that hadn't even existed back when I lived in the area.

We got there early on, and chatted with those that were there for a bit. My friend Dawn who I'd not heard a thing from since graduation was there, and it was good to catch up with her. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures and lost the paper where she'd written down her address for me. (Hate when that happens!)

We ended up cutting out early as we had a few things we needed to do before getting ready for the big Reunion that evening.

The first being lunch with my dad and brother.

Here is a picture of my dad and the boys at the restaurant.



Things went a bit longer than I had planned on, and we had to rush to get back to my brothers place to pick up my heirloom organ so that we could pack it into the truck that afternoon (along with all the rest of our luggage) so that all would be ready to leave early the following morning.

Now my brother's place is actually my sisters. He is house sitting for her family who are stationed overseas right now.

Jericho was totally bummed to go to their house without his cousins being there. He said, "It feels like a ghost town, mom." All their old haunts and forts, deserted. Nothing held quite the same appeal without them all traipsing through the woods together.

While there, my brother asked if we could give him a hand cleaning some gutters that were on the slope side of the house. It involved having someone hold the ladder secure while he climbed up two stories and scraped them out.

I was beginning to worry that I wouldn't have enough time to get ready for my reunion if we didn't hurry.

Finally, I got back to my moms, we got ready in a jiffy and left.

The reunion was held at a really fancy restaurant/event center, and the foods served to us were incredible. Way more than I would ever dream of spending normally, but we'd splurged and weren't disappointed in the least.

We sat at the same table as my friends Lissa and Heather and their dates. It was a really fun evening of catching up and reminiscing about the old days, and the guys all got along well.



We all made our rounds, catching up with other old friends.

I would have recognized most of the girls, all of which still looked mostly the same save for hair color, lol.

The guys, few of which I'd ever seen with facial hair in high school, were sporting beards and goatees which changed their looks completely. A couple of the guys who had been kind of on the skinny-scrawny side in high school grew taller than I remembered and had filled out. So much that I wouldn't have recognized them had someone not pointed them out to me.

Though I did enjoy the evening a lot, it simply wasn't what it could have been if a few other good friends had been able to make it.

We actually ended up cutting out a bit early, as we had to leave early in the morning for our return trip home.

In the morning, my mom made some of her amazing zucchini-kefir waffles, and we were on our way.

We were all worn out and just wanted to get home to our own beds again.

Amazingly, these were the only photos I took of the return trip.

In the mountain pass just before Redding, California was this roadside facility where all the trucks that keep the passes free of ice in the winter time were kept. I love how they painted them in all these fun colors.





:: :: :: ::

Vacation Funnies

When we first arrived at my moms place, Jeff asked if my mom had any jobs that needed to be done around the house while she and I got caught up.

She politely brushed it off, but when he persisted in asking, she mentioned that she'd been trying to get a heavy (for her) kind of project in her garden done but hadn't had the time or energy.

Jeff and the boys set out to clear her garden of weeds and to sift some rocks out of the raised beds.

While doing this job, Jeff saw Judah at the edge of the garden petting bumble bees.

Yes, you read that right. Petting them. While they were inside of flowers.

For some reason, all the boys in my family have, at one time or another, been drawn to petting bees. Not me, I was always too scared of getting stung.

So Judah is observing and petting the bees for a good half hour before things went south.

"YEOWCH!" he yells suddenly, shaking his hand around.

"What happened?" Jeff asked, realizing he'd probably gotten stung.

"Da hairy fwy bited me!"

:: :: :: ::

We went to church with my mom and sister the first Sunday we were in town.

In front of us sat this young family with a darling, chubby little boy baby with big eyes and fuzzy baby-bird hair who kept staring at Judah.

Now usually in cases like these, when I look to Judah, he'll be smiling and will say, "He's so -kee-ute" or "dat baby wikes me!".

This time, however, Judah is frowning and sitting in goofy pose on the pew, flinging invisible 'webs' at him, his hands in the shape Spidermans are always in when he does the same.

Which must have looked reeeally strange to anyone who might have been watching, lol.

:: :: :: ::

We live in the desert and every so often will notice dogs that are skulking along roadways looking very guilty, and it's apparent that they are well-taken-care-of dogs that know they shouldn't be out of their yards.

Knowing this, we have always said, "Go home, doggie...go home where you'll be safe" or some such thing. Judah, watching ever so observantly from his carseat has always noticed this, and sometimes even says it himself if he spots a dog while we're out driving around town.

So on our drive to Washington, we passed several dead coyotes on the side of the highway.

Judah said, "He did-ent go home wheow it was safe."

:: :: :: ::

My stepdad loves parrots and other 'talking' birds. A couple of years ago, he raised an African Grey as well as some Lovebirds from eggs.

He sold most of them and has only a lovebird and the African Grey left. The latter is a really good mimic, and can imitate every sound he hears on a regular basis...mostly chirps of my stepdad's cell or house phones, both of which he hears often as his cage is near the home office from which he runs his business.

In fact, while my stepdad was walking around with that bird on his shoulder a while back, it flew off into the woods behind his house.

He was gone most of the day, and no amount of calling for him would bring him back. In fact, they couldn't even see or hear him in the woods, and were about ready to give up hope when they thought of a brilliant plan: the sound that finally wooed that parrot back home was the familiar chirping sound of his cell-phone ringtone.

Now my stepdad really enjoys these birds and has them very well trained. They can whistle songs and do a number of cool tricks on cue.

Jeff, Jericho and Judah were all downstairs in his office and the African Grey was out on a perch while my stepdad demonstrated some of these tricks.

Judah thought it was so hilarious that before anyone could say anything, he set a parrot toy back up on the perch so the bird would do it's trick again...only to get bit hard by that parrot.

In a flash, Judah was flailing his hand around to remove the vice-grip of the birds beak, and the bird ended up landing on the floor no worse for the wear...meanwhile, everyone stood stunned as Judah immediately hauled off and tried to kick it...but missed.

Thankfully, because it was like slow-mo when my stepdad yelled, "Nooooooooooooo"

Amazingly, Judah didn't even cry.

Still, this little scenario pretty much decided for us that birds aren't a good match as pets for our family.

:: :: :: ::

This is more cute than funny, but I had to remember to write it down before I forgot.

The second day of our return drive home, Judah would ask every so often, "Womemmer when we _____ " and would insert something we had done on our vacation, and we would all reminisce with him.

It seemed he wanted to 'womemmer' every.single.thing about the trip.

Finally he said, as though to be clear, "So, are we go-een home to our pink house wif Raisin (our dog)?

Poor kid had been so many places over the previous weeks he just wanted to be sure where he ended up was somewhere familiar, lol.

The Frumps Go To Seattle

Somehow, in all their lives (much of which has been spent in Washington) our nieces had never been on a Washington State Ferry.

We simply had to remedy that situation for them.

Here we are in Bremerton in a parking garage that had this funky blue window (that came out more aqua) that looked like a blue screen. They were making fish faces since it looked like they were underwater.



Because we still had some time to kill before the next ferry, we went to the nearby Naval museum.

This picture of early ship-building in Bremerton showed the rich diversity among the oringinal Rosie the Riveters during the First World War. While the men were off to war, the women handled as many jobs as they could. Several of these women went on to become influential members of Bremerton society up through the 2nd World War.



I loved that they had this hands-on room for the kids to play in. There were helmets and hats and other equipment that were used by the U.S. Navy, which the kids could try on and play in to their hearts content.









Here was a beautiful large-scale model of a boat. As I understood it, these were often built in advance of the full-size boat to show the 'client' what their completed ship would look like. The attention to detail was amazing.



Just around the corner from the museum was this cute little place, Bremerton's Harborside Park.



Loved these fountains. They look like they might be representative of submarines or something, but the water that would explode out of the top every couple of minutes made a really cool Jellyfish shape.



Finally, we headed for the ferry terminal to wait for our departure.



Judah kept asking questions about the ferrys, and the puzzled look on his face told me that he was a little unclear that the ferry was a large boat that you ride in.

I think he may have been thinking that 'catching a ferry' involved these:



Here are the boys and their cousins aboard the ferry at last.



I went to the upper deck to get this picture.



And this of the Seattle skyline on our approach.



The kids with another portion of the skyline in the background.



Would you believe we even saw Spiderman aboard this particular ferry?



When we arrived at the pier, we browsed through Ye Old Curiosity Shop, where they have an odd collection of real mummies, real shrunken heads, a Jackalope and other taxidermal marvels. I get easily grossed out, because the shop smells really musty, and I could hardly bear to think about breathing the same air that passed around those yucky, dusty shrunken heads and such. Eww!

Then I turned around and saw this!

It doesn't look a thing like her, but it was my niece L, scaring a few minute off my life.



Who would have thought that a mere $5 per kid for souvenier money would result in hours spent going in and out of thsoe shops trying to find just the thing to spend their money on?

Here they were outside a candy shop on the waterfront which had a large stuffed bear as mascot.



I loved this cool sign for all the elements of design that went into it.



Here we saw a bum with a rather bizarre gimmick to get money (click to enlarge).



There were a lot of panhandlers in this particular area, many already a few shades to the wind.

Big sister protectively took hold of little sister's hand.



Finally, we headed for the Pike Place Market. Having been unsuccessful in the previous shops, the kids were hoping to find something better to spend their money on there.

Mind you, we had heavy backpacks on filled with bottled waters because it was so hot, so the prospect of the thousands of steps up wasn't exactly thrilling...but it was nice to know that it'd be all downhill on the way back.



Here is the backside of Pike Place Market, which I understand has looked mostly the same for decades.



This is the back view of the infamous Public Market sign.



Here is the fish market where they toss the fish around, finally landing the wrapped fish in the customers hands.

There are usually oddities spread out on the ice here. Last time we were in Seattle, Jericho was startled by a Monkfish whose mouth had been rigged with fishing line and would be pulled open by one of the employees whenever a child got close, much to their surprise.

This time, Judah was fascinated by the 'opticus' (meaning octopus, but never quite getting it right because he also calls a character in the Transformers movie 'Opticus' Prime. In Judah's mind, Octopus + Optimus = Opticus. Who am I to argue with his logic?

Interestingly, the suckers on this specimen looked like white lifesaver candies. Mmmm.



It's a toss-up to me, which says "Seattle" more...the Space Needle, or this particular corner of the market.



Whew! It was hot! We were all dripping with perspiration about this time...the heat radiating up off the sidewalks was a force to be reckoned with.

Here is the brass piggy bank at the entrance to the market.



Here is another piggy. There are several scattered around Seattle.



One of the colorful produce stalls in the market. I love how this corridor is lit. It looks so retro.



Not finding anything for the kids to spend their money on, we headed back for the cool of the waterfront. The kids wanted to go back to the Pirate store and that gross Mummy place again.

We spotted this way-cool rooftop garden atop one of the buildings. Full out trees on that roof. (Click to enlarge)



This is an old-folks home highrise on the way back to the waterfront. I loved that someone had taken the time to put up windowboxes and fill them with flowers. It totally cheered up the whole place.



Oh, we also found this cute spot. Everywhere you go along the waterfront around the Puget Sound, it seems that folks have large displays of petunias in hanging baskets. I love it best when they are mostly the same color.



Yet another pig, with a sign pointing folks to the Market. The kids couldn't resist posing.



Almost back to the waterfront, we passed a big planter with some interesting occupants. Yes, two guys were taking a nap in the ivy.



Then, it was back to the Pirate's Plunder store to try and find a way to spend that cash burning a hole in the kids pockets.



The hat was a bit out of his price range.



The kids finally all found some dumb trinkets or toys and we stopped off for lunch.

That was when we learned what our son had wasted spent his money on. Yippee.



No sooner had the waiter delivered our food, then this guy swooped in.



He was a very patient seagull, but alas he flew away when nobody took pity on him.



We had to race to catch our ferry, but made it.

On board, we saw that a local Yacht club was having some sort of regatta. There were 88 sailboats within sight of the ferry.



Loved that evening lighting.



It was a little tricker to get view shots with the setting sun in the background. Loved that the sailboat was in the golden sun path on the water.



Looking back the other direction, we got another sailboat with the skyline behind it.



And a self portrait of ourselves in that golden hour lighting.



Here we were inside the ferry...and this is my favorite photo of the cousins from the entire trip. Not posed...it just happened. Love that.



Here was a sign I spotted outside, and realized there HAD to be a reason behind why it was there.



And yep...there's one good reason.



This was a beautiful view of Bremerton, Washington on our return.

The camera didn't quite do the brilliant pinks and golds justice...but it was beautiful nonetheless.



Last, but certainly not least, we arrived home that evening utterly and completely spent.

Cousin E immediately flopped onto her bed and fell right to sleep.

Incidentally, that's not blue kryptonite beside her...just some plastic things that you put on your hands to give great back massages.



As I was taking this photo, Fredo the Chihuahua looked up as though to say, "Did you need something?"

Fredo joined my mom's household while we were there...a shivery, rib-baring little stray with long toe nails, which was found in a parking lot far from civilization one day by my youngest sister and was obviously in need of some TLC.

He came to the right place! He was taken to the doggie spa vet, and is now well on the road to recovery.

Though there was much protesting at first, he wormed his way into everyone's hearts in no time, and is now happily ensconced as the reigning prince of the animals in their household, much to the chagrin of their tomcat Stewart.

And that concludes another wonderful day of vacation.