Summer-North and South

Dad here to do some guest blogging. I've been reminded by Big Christina how we're not keeping the blog updated, so I'm trying to pick up the pace a bit.

Little Christina has been in Nicaragua this summer working for La Esperanza Granada. They're a volunteer-staffed service group that primarily promotes education for the have-nots in Granada, Nicaraugua. The website has the best info (follow the link above), but I did get a decent picture from their newsletter recently.
She's shown here at one of the worksites with her ninos. Apparently, judging from the sheen on her skin, she's learning what tropical weather is all about. She'll be home in a few weeks, which is a good thing, since we all miss her at home. Churd had a visit with her while she was there, taking an in-country spanish language class.

We had some tropical weather of our own recently, with the temperatures in Seattle hitting 103 degrees. We sought relief by heading out to LaPush to visit some of Heather's old haunts from when she was a ranger at Olympic National Park.

On the way we visited with Jim and Kim, who we all love. They're great people, who seem to have perfected the art of finding happiness in all things. Here's Cole demonstrating his action moves, while Audrey tells Jim how it is. Jackie's son and Cole really hit it off, with RJ forsaking Cole's given name and calling him "Ma Fren". Cole for his part, asked when we were going to get to Jim and Kim's house on the way home. When he found out that we wern't stopping there he screamed "How will I get to play with RJ?!!!!!" I'm glad they all had fun together.

It was probably 40 degrees cooler on the coast, and overcast to boot.
Classic coastal weather, you only had to go inland 2 or 3 miles to be under blue skies and sunshine.
Cole and Audrey both really enjoy the beach and this was no exception. Endless opportunities to explore.......climb, imagine, and make his parents worry about the stability of wave-stacked logs. I figure at 40 pounds, he probably wouldn't make a big difference on most of them due to their sheer size. Still, I never could get very comfortable with the idea of his climbing around on them.

He enjoyed the classic game of dodge the wave. As the day progressed, he got further and further into the water, prompting some intervention from Mom and Dad, lest he get pulled out with the receeding waves. As it was, this is the very last picture of him we have that day that's suitable for blogging with since he soaked his pants and just went au naturel.

We hiked out to Hole In The Wall...Got to explore some tide pools...
Soaked the heat out of the sand...
Messed with a neat cairn we encountered...
And enjoyed the heck out of the beach day. Even Audrey, who was initially apprehensive about the waves got used to it all. Mostly I think because she saw her brother, whom she idolizes, shrieking with delight.
That evening we stayed at the hotel out in LaPush, which was quite nice-clean, oceanfront, and had a kitchenette. They sold us a permit for a fire, which goes straight to the heart of young boys, since they like nothing better than starting a fire...
He heard somewhere that you can start a fire by rubbing a couple of sticks together, so he gave that a try, but decided that matches, newspaper, and dry kindling was more to his liking.


Audrey learned the pleasure of warm tootsies, and I worked on my cold fingers.

I even got to enjoy the local paper for a bit. Actually, this was staged, since the kids keep us too busy for this sort of luxury most of the time.Unfortunately, the town fire marshall strolled up soon after and told us that there was a burn ban in effect and we had to extinguish the fire :(
Heather made lemonade from the lemons by finding a big hole someone had dug in the sand that the kids made good use of.

As the tide advanced, Cole tried to stop it by yelling for to not go any further. It seemed to work, mostly because we were at the high water mark. I hope he doesn't let him think he can stop the tide by yelling. He does enough of that already, and I'd hate to lose such a tired out aphorism as "you can't stop the tide".

Audrey's idea of making good use of the hole was to take a running leap into it, usually this was followed by shrieks of laughter.
I think she liked it.

The next day we stopped at the 3 Rivers resort and restaurant. Heather used to go in there after 10 days in the backcountry. The food was better then, but I think it has something to do with the 10 days of eating cold bread and food out of a can that preceeded her visits.

After working at Washington State Ferries for 17 years now, I amazed my lovely bride by making two westbound reservations on the boat that runs between Port Townsend and Keystone. As a result, we had to drive down to the Seattle-Winslow boat. The kids cruised the weather deck, looking for seagulls to feed.

Heather and Audrey wrapped up the trip with a break from their sunset watching for a little snapshot.
We all enjoyed ourselves and are looking forward to a repeat of it, hopefully soon!