Author: Doris

This is it. The vacation recap.

I now know that I could never be a person who travels extensively for work. The jet lag, even coming from just the west coast, just kills me for days. Only Edda has rebounded nicely from the time change. She was extremely pleased with herself at 4 am this morning and indicated this by laughing loudly and repeatedly standing on the floor next to her bed and then sitting on my sleeping head, but the rest of us are forcing ourselves awake an hour earlier every day to meet the 7 am School Is Starting! deadline on Monday morning.

I’m procrastinating by going through the vacation photos.  Somehow the need to clean the house doesn’t inspire getting up from this chair.  Here we go!

First, Vince and Edda flew us to Seattle in a very old Boeing plane.

Took the cars across a body of water on a ferry.  It was windy.  Seattle did live up to it’s cloudy reputation.  I don’t think you see the sun in any of these photos – but cloudy days make the best photos!

We stayed in a number of places with beautiful lodges in the Olympic National Park.  The common areas were quite beautiful.  The rooms that we stayed in were very basic (no TV, no Internet).

Kayaking.

We managed to find BBQ in Forks, WA to have a picnic lunch.  Forks, we learned, is the setting for the Twilight series.

Ruby beach and the Pacific Ocean.

Lake Quinault where my mother found blackberries next to the hiking trail.

All of us at the foot of the world’s largest sitka spruce.

Everything was so green.  Love the green.

Walking near Mt. Rainier.

44th Wedding Anniversary

Yesterday, it was quiet time to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary – had a simple restaurant dinner together, baked, sliced and enjoyed our candles-less anniversary cake (an orange cake) quietly – also, laying the radon pipes for the addition, installing a medicine cabinet for Rena’s bedroom, buying a large bag of pot soils.  And, Rena, as usual, was busy watering, tending and harvesting her veggies.

All these years, luckily with Rena by my side, we just like most families which have had many ups and downs.  But, in general, our lives are pretty normal and typical which is good, I think.

Best of all, we are relatively healthy and that is is a huge blessing.  It is also nice to know that Doris and Donald are on their own.  And to watch Vincent & Edda grow without shouldering any burden of “education” is also very enjoyable.  It short, it is nice to be a healthy grand mom and grand pa.  To be a mom and pa, sometimes, can be very difficult 🙂

Happy Anniversary!

Lake Crescent.

We are back from vacation. We spent most of the time on the Olympic Peninsula outside of Seattle which is a temperate rain forest.  Coming from DC, I found it cool and refreshing.  Coming from SF, Donald found it terribly humid.  It was beautiful and relaxing as you saw in my father’s posts. But no matter how wonderful a vacation is, it is always nice to get back home and fall into the regular routine again. We are back at work. Edda had an open house at her school this morning that we missed because I’ve been failing to check email or phone messages for two weeks. Vince is frantically doing his summer packets due on Monday (which I have been reminding him all summer to do which resulted in the standard number of sighs and eye rolls back at me). We are trying to pull together school supplies, soccer cleats, schedules and paperwork. I took almost a thousand photos on vacation and I’m not sure which ones to post, but I’ll start (and maybe end because life continues on and who wants to look at 2-week-old vacation photos?) with my favorite series of photos on the dock of Lake Crescent. It was cold and I did not plunge in myself, but these two did it over and over again to the dismay of all the sweatshirted tourists on the dock.  Happy end of summer y’all!

All Back Home Again

Yesterday (8/20, Wednesday), everyone left Washougal, WA, except Rena and me.  Sunday, I am going to leave too.  Therefore, Rena will be the only one here.  However, 2 weeks later, I will be back for a short, weekend visit.

The day before yesterday, I saw Vincent hided in our Study alone doing his own things.  When asked, he said that with all these days together, elbow-to-elbow, he had a lot of fun.  But, still, he likes to have some quiet time alone.  How true is it?  Indeed, Rena and I are very glad to see them all coming.  But, also, very glad to see them all leaving.  But, after their departures, we feel a bit lost yet still look forward for the next family re-union.  And, hopefully, our family size will be bigger slightly.

The night before their departures, we held a family meeting.  Vincent was included.  In it, we congratulated ourselves and each other about our re-union and Jeremy was elected unanimously as our “Family Travel Agent” to plan for the next one, next year.

Of course, we had a lot of laundries to do.  Dishes to wash.  Floor to be vacuumed.  Clean-up to do and put everything back to where it belongs, as we prefer.  And, above all, fortunately, we had a chance to do all these. Better to do something like these than not be able to do anything.

As Vincent’s, Rena and I would also like to have some quiet time alone.  Therefore, we are going to celebrate our 44th anniversary on Friday (8/22) alone – a precious, quiet time just for ourselves.

Family Re-union, Pacific Northwest II

Yesterday, we left Mt. Rainier and drove back to Washougal, WA.  Tomorrow, Jeremy, Doris, Vincent, Edda and Donald are leaving for Washington DC and San Francisco.  Time really flies.

Picture 1 is the two cabins that we stayed at Lake Crescent.  Picture 2, Donald helps Edda to walk along the lake shore of Quinault Lake.  Jeremy, Doris and Edda on the Ruby Beach, WA along US route 1 are shown in Picture 3.  Picture 4, Rena enjoys her boat ride in Lake Quinault with her long time boy friend and husband.  Picture 5 is the family boat guide tour in Quinault Lake.  Vincent Posts a picture with Mr. Rainier in Picture 6.  And Donald says hello to everyone is in the last picture.

In short, Jeremy is a good planner and we have had fun together.  And, we are planning for more family re-union gatherings.

Family Re-union, Pacific Northwest

This Tuesday, we started our family reunion tour in Seattle, WA.  First, we visited the Boeing Factory and posted for a reunion picture.  Edda looks like someone asked her to be a test pilot.

After that, we took the ferry and went east toward Olympia National Park.  We have stayed at Crescent Lake, Sol Duc Hot Spot and Quinault Lake. After two nights here, we are heading to Mt. Rainier, Washougal.  We have had good time together. 

Parking cars.

Why are we so busy this weekend?  Well, it’s because we are parking cars at the MoCo fair.  We meaning Jeremy, me and Vince.  (Edda somehow gets a pass on this.)  This isn’t valet parking, it’s directing traffic in a large grassy field – finding empty spaces and getting cars in and out as efficiently as possible.  The scouts run the show.  As they get older, they get more responsibility so by the time they are seniors in high school, they are dispatching crews and ordering adults around.  The scouts themselves are suppose to work at least 35 hours during the fair, but a lot of them want to work way more hours than that because it’s kind of fun for them. They get to hang out with their pals all day and eat fair food and actually tell people what to do.

Grown ups have to put in 40 “family” hours.  They put the grown ups in critical spots – those spots where you have a greater chance of being run over, which is what I felt like I was doing all day – that is, on the verge of being run over.

The scouts have done this for 60 years and it’s because they get paid handsomely for their services.  In turn, we have no dues, no selling crap, no paying for camping fees.  Therefore, I have reframed this experience from “OMG, I can not believe that I’m parking cars in the hot, hot sun.” to “I’m so glad I get to park cars so that I don’t have to sell popcorn to raise funds.”  So much pleasure can be derived from reframing things this way.  I have turned my car flag-waving duties into performance art in which each oncoming car is a brand new audience to win over.  I actually have a little dance routine which culminates into the instruction “turn right”.  I’m usually rewarded about every third car with a thumbs up, or a smile or some funny comment.  All the kiddos in the backseat wave hello.  Time passes quickly.

We also get to catch up with the parents of Vince’s friends.  Here’s David, professional video/photographer – trying to get me to use flash and shoot in RAW and do post-processing.  Sounds like a lot of work.  I acknowledge that I’m only half a photographer – I take the photos and I download them and put them on this blog.  I don’t crop, I don’t edit and I don’t curate.  Am I a real photographer?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Family Re-union Prelude

Just two days before our family re-union in the Pacific Northwest, Rena and I hosted a small college classmates re-union.  We went to Skamania Lodge to have a brunch together.  Rena was the only girl student among all these boys, including these three in the picture.  The one on the far left at the back was a higher-up Ford Executive when retired many years ago.  The lady on the right was a Boeing Fellow before her retirement 6 years ago.  
We had fun and look forward to have our own family re-union.  Can’t wait.

Petsitting.

I’m pet sitting this weekend.  Two dogs, three cats and two rats.  It’s more animal than I’m used to but that’s OK because – OK I can’t think of a reason that it’s OK, but it’s really OK.  We are extremely busy this weekend, so these poor guys are getting the minimalist treatment so I hope they forgive me.  Their parents won’t be gone very long.   I’m thankful that I don’t have to take care of the snake, lizard, frog and fish that they have as well.  Whew!