Aunt C Visit

Aunt C came to see Pop Pop, but we all had a lovely visit. Some highlights:

Morning at Treasure Island:

Ridiculous energy here:

Sawdust Art Festival:

There is a high concentration of luxury sports cars in SoCal. We run thick with them in our scratched minivan.

 

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Firstborn Is Nine!

 Here we are, halfway to independence. We hope and pray for great things for him. He has big dreams of doing heroic things and currently wants to join the Army.

We will have stats later. (October appt.) You can see him with his mask in hand above. He is at Redwoods National Park below. He wanted to stay at that spot forever.

We celebrated the day after our return, which was his actual birthday. However, we were only slightly recovered from the drive. The following day was Labor Day. So it worked out well.

Sometimes we get a little impatient when baking. This was an ice cream cake, which we put ice cream on too soon. It tasted amazing.

The Engineer wrapped his brother's present with blankets. This photo is mostly for posterity.

Legos never get old!

Hero of the day:

Because he's cute:

We bought him a bone fide punching bag, boxing gloves, and wrist wraps. The stipulation is that he will not practice self-defense on others. He needs a good outlet for extra energy and emotions.

Stats:

Height- 4'7", 82nd%

Weight- 88lbs., 2oz., 94th%

Happy birthday, sweet boy! We love you so much!!!

Check out his previous years:

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, & Eight.

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Pacific Northwest (Part 4)

San Francisco for the win! We promised to bring the kids here "one day" after our lovely 2018 trip. They loved everything about "the neatest city on earth," especially the steep hills. The first two are from my phone while DH drove. But even with terrible image quality, the Golden Gate looks impressive!

Coit Tower as seen from Lombard Street & Gardens. The kids were thrilled to see all the places shown on Inside Out. Yes, we watch far too much TV. Here they said, "everyone was angry and honking," on the movie; however we arrived early enough to avoid all traffic.

Not the steepest hill we drove, but one with a view of Alcatraz.

Coit Tower, which was closed until further notice. The city is too busy shutting down churches:

However, San Fran had time to remove a statue of Columbus:

Lombard Street from the Coit Tower park:

We were so grateful to see some family friends, whose daughter I housed with for three years. Friendships like these are lifelong; and I count myself blessed to have a few.

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Pacific Northwest (Part 3)

We altered our trip so we could see the Redwoods; and we were so glad we did! This park is difficult to get to; and we were relatively close. So, it made sense to make the extra effort to see it. We gave the kids the choice of a second day in Olympic or Redwoods. They unanimously chose the latter. They were truly in awe. 

These happened in reverse order. I don't have time/energy to fix them. This was an awe-inspiring visit; and I'm so glad we took the extra effort to get here!

I struggled with lighting (and realized my light meter got knocked off zero; and my lens was switched accidentally to "manual focus" for some of these. But I tried...).

The ground was unlike most I've ever walked. It had a similar buoyancy to gym foam and was not unlike the Roman Forum, catacombs, and other ground of its age.

The light was amazing everywhere. This one came through my lens just like my eye.

We stopped by "The Big One."

A school teacher took our photo.

The drive to The Big One offered partial ocean views, many of which looked like Big Sur.

So much of our drive was beautiful! I want to do this again with DH without people complaining in the back rows. (They were pleasant much of the time, but, you know.)

Morning mist:

After the long drive from Medford to Bremerton to Medford, we were super happy to be back in California! This is where my autofocus was knocked off.

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