- First, Lake Tahoe. My grandparents live there during the summers, and my family all got together there for a couple weeks. I mean, we all came and went at various times, but I think there was one point where everyone-- except my dad-- was there. We spent the week waterskiing, tubing, and eating fattening food. I gained 7 pounds in the 6 days I was there. Daniel still had to work on his summer school classes, so we spent a few hours a day learning about protists and analyzing characters from novels. Woohoo. On the day before we left, Kevin, Daniel, and I went tubing, and during one of my spectacular falls, I wrenched my shoulder something awful. I really thought I'd ripped it somewhere, as I couldn't move it at all without major pain. But then in a couple days, it was well on the mend. I'm very happy about that!
- After Tahoe, we flew up to Washington state to visit Kevin's family. We had a lot of downtime, and I did a lot of quilting. I had to buy needles and thread there, and the lady at the quilting store was a friend from church. It's nice to know people and take advantage of their expertise.
- We went to Sequim (not pronounced Seck-wimm or See-quee-imm, but Squimm. Who knew?!) and visited the drive-through animal park. You pay your admission and then drive amongst all these exotic animals and feed them bread. I got nuzzled by a yak, who stuck his head in our car to ask us for bread. Did you know that yaks have rectangular pupils? And Penny pushed on his nose and got a hand covered in goo. That was a surprise! (For her...) The bears were behind an electric fence, but Penny waved and said hi to them, and they waved back! We drove by just as the lion roared a bit. That was loud! The buffalo and elk were interested in us, but if we tried to rub their snouts, they were suddenly uninterested. Hmmm.
- We visited Olympic National Park. We drove up there through rain and mist and clouds (think Twilight), but when we got to the visitor's center at the top, we had passed the clouds and saw a beautiful view! The mountains still had snow, and down in the valley right below us the clouds were churning and wafting. The weather was just perfect, we had just eaten lunch, and I thought it was marvelous!
- We did not go to Forks. I really enjoyed reading the Twilight books. What a fun read! But they did not merit a pilgrimage. :)
- In Seattle we met up with another Foreign Service family whose blog I follow. They just finished their first post in Houston (not technically a foreign post, depending on who you ask), and they're in the process of moving to their next one. It was great to talk to them about moving! Some things we'd already thought of and worried about, and others we didn't yet know we should be worrying about. It was also fun to chat with them about their upcoming post in China (!!!).
- Kevin's high school reunion was this past weekend. The first night was just an informal "hey, let's meet at Tides Tavern on Friday night" sort of thing. Unfortunately, the planners forgot to realize that everyone else in town already hosts "hey, let's meet at Tides Tavern on Friday night" nights every week. It was packed! We met up with one friend and then went to Thai food. Saturday night was the actual event. I met some of Kevin's old buds, had some great food, and chatted with some fine, friendly folks. We would have stayed and mingled more, but the hostesses had cranked up the tunes so we could all dance to "Bye Bye Bye" and "Hit Me Baby, One More Time." Now don't get me wrong, those are COOL songs, but we wanted to mingle, not dance. So we went over to Tides Tavern after all. :)
So after a nap and a night's sleep, we're back at home in New Mexico. I'm still working with my University and the middle school where I want to do student teaching. School starts tomorrow, and it's still not set up. I've been the squeakiest of squeaky wheels, but I'm still not getting any grease. Wish me luck!
5 comments:
Sounds like a fun vacation! I'm sorry about the woman on the plane. What has happened to understanding and compassion? It'd be nice of her to offer a little sympathy rather than add to the stress.
This man in front of us on the plane on the way to Utah shook his head every time Eldon spoke a little too loudly.
Here's my soapbox, but I've gotten myself all worked up about it--probably because I care too much what other people think--but people don't want children to be children. They want them to act like perfect little adults and developmentally that's not what they are! They are NOT developmentally capable of some of the behavior we expect of them, like sitting for such long periods of time.
I always ask myself who is exhibiting the bad behavior when people act like that and really, it's the woman, because she is developmentally capable of making a choice to extend help and compassion or just not add to the mix. It sounds like she was acting like a child. Penny on the hand was exhausted, didn't really understand how to fix her predicament, and was dealing with the constraints in her toddler-esque way.
I'm not saying there isn't a wide spectrum of child behavior and that you can't push them and that you can't encourage and train them to revert to the "good" side, but some things we expect of active little children are not feasible and if we attempt those activities with them (when they're not drugged), I think the kids needs a little understanding when the fall short.
Ok, there's my rant! Ugh. Sorry! People like that just really get my goat and I think "they must have not had any children. How can they not understand and act so caddy?"
Pictures please!
Wow! What great adventures you've had! Good luck on your student teaching, I hope it all works out in time for you to get it done!
Oh man, those flights are ROUGH! It's easy when the baby is a baby (and non-mobile)-- you just hold them and cuddle and they sleep. But trying to wrestle a mover and shaker to sit in your lap for HOURS is much harder! Sorry about the lady that kept glaring. We had one especially awful flight (on our overnight flight to Slovenia) when Benson pulled an all-nighter and screamed and screamed. We thought they were going to eject us from the plane, and we'd have to make our way home from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It gets better though.
And I love how at the HS reunion they played Bye Bye Bye and Oops I Did it Again and stuff. Funny. (Too bad it was too loud though!)
Bad plane rides suck. I feel for my boy who is confused, tired and crying, I feel for myself who is haggard, stressed, and quite literally unable to stop him from crying, and I even feel for the cranky people next to us, because who wants to listen to my baby cry for hours?! Not me, and not them either!
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