August has had it's share of celebrations.  First there was my husband's birthday which we celebrated with the Passing of the Cane (see earlier post).  Then there was my daughter Emily's birthday.  18 months ago her husband bought a rusted out hulk of a car that my daughter randomly pointed out at a friend's junk yard and said... "wow, there's a cool car".  It was her favorite car of all time, a 1968 Chevelle.  What she didn't know is that hours after she pointed it out her husband went back and bought the rusted hulk that didn't run and needed massive body work.  His intention was that it would be restored and completed for her 30th birthday.  Well that birthday came and went without a present.  The entire family knew of this car and we worked the entire 18 months to keep it a secret.  Her husband made numerous trips to Oklahoma to work on the car (he and his buddies up there were doing the work themselves).  He told her that he was going to his parents to help them out etc etc and she would gripe a bit but since he wasn't asking her to go she didn't complain (long story, they have a good relationship but visits are better when the parents come here rather than the kids go there, they aren't really set up for grandkids).  Finally the car was to the point where he could get it down here.  One night their friends showed up and delivered the car to our house where we hid it in our garage.  The next day Emily came over for an impromptu celebration for MY birthday.  At least she thought it was.  She's the ONLY person who thought it was for me.  lol  And this is what she got:

It's a really pretty car and like most muscle cars, sounds mean.  lol

My birthday came and went without fanfare.  Fine with me.    My husband did get me season tickets to TUTS (Theater Under the Stars) which does musicals.  Very excited about that.

What August would not be complete without the start of school.  This year we have three in school.  Cadence started school at Trinity Lutheran School and is loving kindergarten.

Otto and Wren are being taught at home by mom.  Otto is 1st grade and Wren is doing a pre-K/4 yr old program.  She's ready to do her share of learning and keeping up with big brother. 

Daria started kindergarten and is also learning at home with mom.  Even though it's homeschool I just couldn't resist making her a big white bow for her hair.  In Russia it is an old tradition that little girls wear big white bows for their first day of school.  I have always loved the pictures of the little girls in their huge bows.  I discovered that making those bows is a lot harder than I thought but it turned out pretty well all things considered.  And Daria loved being "Russian".

And today is AmeliaJake's birthday. 

This lady has no idea how she brightens my life, makes me smile, picks me up and makes me think deeper on some questions in life more than I might normally.  My hope for her is for great joy and happiness.  She might kill me for this but here goes.....

Happy Birthday!

I'm a year older today.  What do I have to show for my year?

Not sure of the entire year but this past week I became an officially certified Scuba diver.  I am now dangerous both on land and under the sea!

Happy birthday to my husband who received the "Cane of Maturity".  We have a family tradition where a cane is passed around the family and if your age is a multiple of 5 you receive the cane.  You are not considered mature enough to receive it until you are 30 years old.  Emily received it from Chris last August and she passed it on to her dad who will keep it until January when our son-in-law turns 40.  Emily did an outstanding job with her presentation. Unfortunately I missed the first sentence of her song... so you come in mid-thought.  Oops.

Anyone need a realistic paper mache rock? I now have one in my livingroom.  Available immediately!

I took my grandson Otto to the Museum of Natural History today.  They opened a new paleontology hall and he is a dinosaur expert so it seemed like the perfect place for a grandma/grandson date.  I didn't tell him where he was going until he was in the car on the way to the museum.  He was excited.

We got to the museum and immediately went into the dinosaur exhibit.  It's really quite huge.  Literally huge. 

Giant dinosaurs tower over you from the moment you enter.  After looked at about a thousand and two trilobites we moved on to the really good stuff.  T-rex and saber toothed tigers!  I got quite the education about Mr. T-rex.  We spent about 90 minutes in the museum and checked out the African savannah animal exhibit, the TX animals (we found all the ones we'd seen in my yard, which unfortunately included a couple of snakes), and walked through the extensive malacology hall. 

On the way home Otto talked about how God had created the dinosaurs and then out of the blue he said, "God has been there from the beginning."  Which then morphed into Jesus having a birthday and then in his sweet six year old mind he said, "so Mary has been there from the beginning too because she's God's wife." ahhhh......

I wimped out and decided his parents could explain the immaculate conception to him.  Besides, driving down I-45 at 70 mph is not the place to have that type of theological discussion which could WAY too easily turn into a birds and bees talk.  Nope, not my department.

This is our season of birthdays and celebrations.

July 21 - my daughter Cora turned 29

July 23 - my granddaughter Cadence turned 5

July 30 - my mom would have been 85.  Now I have to admit that this is a hard one for me.  After 31 years without her I can't even picture her being 85.  She is forever in her 50s.  And then I look at the fact that I'm now the age I remember her at and it's really strange... 31 years and I still miss her.

July 30 - my brother-in-law turned 49

August 5 - my husband turns 55

August 13 - my daughter Emily turns 31

August 21 - I turn 53

August 23 - my daughter Emily and her husband Art celebrate 9 years of marriage

Sept. 6 - my son Aaron and his wife Jill celebrate 9 years of marriage

Sept. 9 - my son-in-law Vladimir turns 37

Sept 13 - my grandson Walter turns 3

Sept. 25 - my daughter Cora and her husband Vladimir celebrate 8 years of marriage

Oct. 10 - my granddaughter Daria turns 5

I think there is a great possibility that I will gain weight from all the family dinners, celebrations, and cake!

Happy Birthday Cora!

Ah how I remember this day.    One of the best days of my life!

Cora has reached her first 29th birthday.  You know how a lot of people say, "oh it's my 13th anniversary of my 29th birthday."  Not me.  I'm 52 and proud of every moment of it.  Okay, maybe not proud of every moment but I'll claim each and every one.  I'm not ashamed of my age, I figure I lived it, I might as well accept it.  When did this change from honoring age and thinking that it was a sign of wisdom and maturity become a sign of weakness and lack of value?  It used to be grey hair was a something that caused respect, now it seems to draw anything but respect.  Oh wait, I color my hair... have been since my 30s.  See I was willing to go grey, just not at 30... That was too young for grey hair.  I've actually had grey hair since I was 18.  By 30 I had quite a bit and it made me look a LOT older than I really was.  Now I just keep coloring because my hair is so thin when it's grey you just see pink scalp shining at you through the silver.  Not something that I really like the look of.  So Lady Clairol (or her cheaper cousin) is my best friend.

But back to Cora.  We got up and took her and her family to breakfast this morning.  I said it was only fitting since she was my "born at breakfast" baby.  Rumor has it that Cora looks like I did when I was 18.... I think there might be a tad bit of resemblance to the 52 year old me too!  What do you think?

We left Campbell River and headed back to Victoria.  We spent the day in Victoria at Butchart Gardens.  Amazing gardens!  The history behind them was interesting and to this day the same family owns and maintains the gardens.  They continually add to them and increase the number of plants and varieties they have planted there.  The Victoria area has a unique climate and due to the way the family has developed the gardens they are quite protected from any harsh weather and bloom 12 months out of the year.  We explored the entire site on our own.  Yes, we ran off and wandered the gardens alone.  We ran into the other group a couple of times but I have to admit strolling with my husband and taking our time seems a lot nicer than trooping along in a line one behind another.  My husband's favorite garden was the sunken garden which was made in an old quarry (if the website has pictures check out the transformation that took place back in the early 1900s!  This woman had VISION!).  My favorite was the rose garden.  Even though all the roses (over 5000) weren't in bloom it still was beautiful and so fragrant.  And I just love roses so it kind of stands to reason that it was my favorite.  We both agreed the quietest and most peaceful garden was the Japanese garden.  It truly did remind us of the gardens we saw in Japan.  We sat in the quiet and just enjoyed the rain for quite a while in the Japanese Garden.

Oh yes, it rained the ENTIRE time we were there.  They are prepared though as the garden has thousands of umbrellas that they have out, just grab one and go.

Enjoy the pictures!

The see-through umbrellas were the ones provided by the gardens.  Very convenient as you could see the flowers through them and never get wet!

Don't step on the Begonias!  That phrase kept going through my mind the entire day.  I have no idea where it came from but I think it's some kids program, Adventures in Odyssey or something like that....

This is a view of the Sunken gardens from the top.  It was truly beautiful to walk up to the edge and look over and see this.  And to think it was all a rock quarry for a cement plant!

The rose garden looks like jumbled mass in this picture but it was actually very neat and organized.  I guess roses don't lend themselves to beautiful photography except on an individual basis.  They must be photography divas not wanting to do group photos.

Does anyone know what plant this is?  The feathery bloom was quite unique.

Heading down into the Japanese garden everything became very quiet.  And very very green.

I had never seen a blue poppy before this.

It was a very nice day.  I made one purchase at the Garden bookstore.  How to Deerproof your Gardens.  I need that!  The deer are eating everything of mine and they are smart about it.  I have ornamental sweet potato vines and they eat them down and then let them grow back until they are bushy then show up and eat them back again.  The deer are also eating my roses!  Grrrr.... I think it should be hunting season.

After the gardens we got on a small ferry that was more like a kodiak boat with a metal hull and bounced and jounced across the ocean for four hours to get to Vancouver.  When we arrived it was still raining and we had to walk in the rain for a few blocks to find a taxi.  Several of us were game to just walk the entire way to our hotel and pull our luggage (it was soaking wet already so why not) but there were some in the group that found the first shelter they could and asked us to send a cab back for them....  That night we stayed at the Wedgewood Hotel in Vancouver and ate dinner at Cin Cin, a very nice place that put us up in a private dining area in the wine room.  It was really good. 

Everyone else was spending the next day in Vancouver to go shopping but Ken and I got up early and got to the train station by 5 am where we caught an Amtrack train back to Seattle.  I had no desire to shop and I was about at the end of my "I can be social and not bite anyone's head off" state.   The extent of my purchases for this trip was the Deerproofing Book and a spoon for my daughter from the state of Washington.  And paying to ship the fish I caught to me.    We read and relaxed and caught up on email since the train had wi-fi.  The train was really nice, definitely nicer than being crowded on a plane.  Of course it took longer but we did get to see some beautiful scenery as it runs right along the coastline. We got into Seattle, found the light rail and got to the airport and headed home.

I was a happy fish, back home in my own little pond.  A very happy fish!

Hiking.  After days of activities that cost money we decided to do a lost cost/no cost activity and chose to go hiking.  Now deciding where to hike was a challenge because we had a variety of people with us.  Three couples were hikers and enjoyed going on brisk hikes with a bit of climbing and challenge in them.  The other four couples didn't hike often and were prepared for more of a stroll than a hike.  We settled on a trail along the Campbell River.  It was a three mile round trip hike with virtually no vertical climb.  We actually sweet talked the non-hikers into continuing on to a waterfall farther along the trail and so our trip ended up being about four miles total. 

Here we are at the beginning of the hike.  Oh how I hate my poofy hair.  I'm letting it grow and it seems to have a life of it's own some days.

Pictures I took along the walk.  It as almost rainforest type vegetation, heavy undergrowth, a lot of ferns and moss.

Very pleasant to walk through.  The path was well worn, a path, not a trail so it was easy to find/follow/walk on. But of course my husband had to be the one looking left while walking right and falling off the only place of the path where one could do so.

We had watched a movie the night before, Zombieland.  Yes, seriously, Zombieland.  So while we were doctoring his knee and patching him up we came up with a plan to smear blood on his face (or salmon berry juice) and have him drag himself up the trail moaning like a Zombie.  Would have been hilarious but we resisted the temptation.

This little guy got a little upset at me trying to move his perch so I could get a better shot of him.  He reared up and shook his "horns" at me.

When we reached the end of the trail there were the waterfalls.

We went up above the falls and the water rushing down was most impressive.  It moved at a very rapid pace and I think anyone trying to cross the stream would have easily been swept down the stream and over the falls.

After exploring the falls area and leaping about the rocks for a while a few of us decided to take a different trail back to the beginning.  We ended up finding a small lake, a second set of falls and then stumbled upon a man playing his violin in a cathedral formed by nature by the overhanging trees.  It was a quiet mournful song he was playing.  I asked him what he was playing and he explained he was practicing for a funeral that afternoon.  But then he started talking about the song.  He had written it and when I asked what it was about he talked about how he believes that the salmon came from the trees and how if we were to check the DNA in the very tops of the trees we would find the same DNA that is in the salmon.  His song was about the relationship between the salmon and the trees and how the salmon before man was on the earth would dance in the tree tops (which is why their DNA is only in the tops of the trees).  His dream was to have an orchestra record his symphony (of which his song was part of) in this great natural cathedral and then show it to school children to show them where the salmon came from and how cutting down the trees destroys the salmon.  I slowly began to edge away from him...... he was still rattling on when we left.  I'm not sure he's going to find a Science teacher willing to show his film, but then these days you never know.

He did play a pretty violin though.

This night we headed back to the lodge where we ate a special meal at the restaurant. No real socializing as everyone was busy packing. We were going to be heading back to Victoria and then on to Vancouver the next day. 

The day after fishing we all went on an "eco-tour".  It was originally booked as a whale watching tour but since the humpback whales had not reached the area yet and sighting Orcas was going to be hit or miss they re-billed it as an eco-tour.  We were promised great views and the most up-to-date information about the areas ecological state and future.  If we stumbled upon any wildlife they would be sure to point it out to us.  I will admit the views were beautiful.  We were out on the ocean going between the islands along the mainland for four hours.  We met at the dock and boarded a boat that had a nice heated cabin, was stocked with hot drinks (and lunch for later) and had topside seating in the open for brisk fresh air viewing.  It was not this boat.....

We headed out and began enjoying the views.

Along the way we saw a lot of isolated residences.  Now it was quite ironic that many of these residences were owned by Hollywood elite that tout their "green" ways yet the amount of energy used to haul all the materials to the isolated coves in addition to the giant diesel generators that powered the homes must have been huge.  There is no electricity to most of the area and to get to these homes you must use a boat or a helicopter, which we found out most of the people use.  Just seems a bit hypocritical to me.  But then what do I know....  Anyway, one of the places we passed was an elite resort.  Our group had originally looked into staying at this resort but quickly decided against it when they discovered it was $800 a night to stay in it.  I guess even the trip planners had their limits.  Thank God.

During the trip we were treated to long diatribes about global warming, the dangers of carbon dioxide and the evils of the energy business.  They had no clue who was paying their salary that day.  There was a lot of smiling and bland looks through their "talks" which were more akin to rants than anything educational and emotion rather than facts seemed to be the guiding standard.

We came across a boat that was someone's summer home.  They had everything on this boat, generator, mini-bikes, etc etc.  The folks lounging on the boat looked quite relaxed.

By lunch time we had not seen any wildlife.  We stopped in a cove and they broke out sandwiches for us.  Now I have to admit a really cool thing they did which I liked was they used stiff fettuccine noodles for coffee/tea/hot chocolate stirring sticks.  I'd never seen that before and it was an innovative way to reduce trash and make the sticks edible.    Anyway I appreciated it.  (not all green things are bad but folks.... Carbon Dioxide is NOT a toxic gas, YOU exhale it and plants use it to grow.....)

Right after lunch we ran into our wildlife..... Seals and one black bear.  Okay I have to admit it was hilarious the way people went nuts over the bear.  A black bear.  I'm afraid I was less than impressed.  On our backpacking trip back in 1999 we saw NINE black bears and I was so tired of bears that I didn't even bat an eye at them after a while.  Last summer hiking in Colorado we saw a bear (and a moose!), I've seen a lot of bears and this was a nice healthy black bear but nothing special.  I kind of chuckled and in a whisper told my husband... "sheesh, you'd think they'd never seen a bear before..." and he commented.... "honey, most of these people HAVEN'T seen a bear in the wild before."  I felt a little silly, I guess I was under the assumption that most folks had seen bears before.... I think most folks growing up where both he and I did have.  It's one of those things you kind of take for granted without thinking about it.  Wildlife is that way for me.  I appreciate it but to me bears are common, not special.  Now whales.... they are special.  But to the folks in Hawaii... whales are nothing... all a matter of perspective.  So properly chastised I didn't mock anyone snapping the thousand pictures they took of this one bear because to them it was special and I realized that.   And I DID get a picture of him foraging for mussels myself.

And the seals basking on the rocks in the semi-sunshine.

We headed back to the dock and had about an hour ride.  They didn't slow to look at anything and it got a bit boring after a while and so I started taking pictures of the odds and ends about me.  Most everyone stayed inside but my husband and I escaped onto the back of the boat where the wind didn't hit us but we were outdoors.

And some of my random pictures.

And then I noticed a boat sneaking up on us from behind.  I think these photos would make a good layout for a sales brochure for this boat!  Especially the first one.  I think these folks had fun jumping our wake.

And another day was done.  We ate out and I played Bananagrams with some of the ladies before bedtime.  I was actually social this particular evening.