Hives

Zelda is all over the house these days, and tastes everything. 

 I don't know what she got, but it didn't agree with her and she broke out in hives. 

 It hasn't seemed to faze her.  She is just as smiley as ever.

Destructo Girl Strikes

We turned our backs for a minute ...

Gum

Harvey really wants gum, but he doesn't really want gum.  He thinks he wants gum and he likes the idea of gum, but once he gets it, he doesn't know what to do and doesn't really want it.

This week I let him try a little gum, explaining that you chew and chew, but don't swallow it.  When you are done, you put it in the trash.  In 2 minutes he had swallowed it.  A few days later, he wanted to try again.  So I explained the rules of gum again.  2 minutes later he had swallowed it.

Julius tried gum this morning.  He chewed and chewed until I had him give it to me before going into Church.

When we got home Harvey wanted to try some gum again.  He asked me, "Is it a long time yet?"  I had told him he would need to wait a long time before trying gum again.  I let him try, but told him that he couldn't swallow it.  If he did, he wouldn't get to try again until after his birthday.  So he repeated, "I chew and chew and chew and then spit it in the trash."  He got his piece of gum, put it in his mouth and chewed 3 times and spit it in the trash.  We tried again.  I took half this time to show him.  He chewed and I chewed and he chewed for a few more minutes then asked, "Is this gum done being chewed yet?"  I told him no.  He chewed some more, "Am I done chewing gum yet?" I told him no.  I think he had the gum maybe 5 minutes before I let him stop chewing.  We will see when he wants gum again.

Peaches

Today we preserved peaches.  We had 4 - 24 lb boxes of Red Globe peaches.  

Daphne's friend and her sister came to help.  Thanks girls! (one of them had to go before the picture was taken).

We ended up with,

28 quarts canned

22+ quarts frozen

9 1/2 pints of jam (I am waiting for the jam in the canner)

plus the ones we have eaten over the last week.

Over all a successful endeavor.

Bed Time Help

Daphne, put Zelda to sleep tonight.  

Did I mention, I love that man?

Trip got a hold of the kitchen.  

In My Own Backyard

Rez is putting his climbing skills to good use.

Can you see him in this one?  Look close.

To give you a point of reference, the fence Daphne is standing on is 6 ft high.

I understand that he was a little higher than this, but came down, so Trip could get him in the picture.

Adventures of City Kids... Blake Island

Now that I am blogging, it has changed the way I look at things.  When we started on our day trip to Tillicum Village on Blake Island in Puget Sound, I grabbed the camera and started taking pictures.

We found a place in Seattle to park our huge van, no small feat in itself, and started off.  We had to walk to pier 55 to board the boat.

It was a beautiful day for it.  The sun was shining, but not too hot.

A nice woman took a picture of all of us by the elevator down to the water front.

When we got to the water front, we were at about pier 63.  We had to get to pier 55 before the boat set sail, and we weren't sure how long it would take us to get there, so we walked quickly.  

We made it there on time without anyone getting lost or hit by a car.  That was good.

We boarded the Lady Mary and were off.

The trip was courtesy of Trip's company, so the boat was not very crowded, it was only his co-workers and their families.  

Mo was pretending to drown.

Julius kept himself occupied.

Harvey was cold.

There was some great scenery on the hour long boat ride.

One of the workers, brought over this giant ball thing, he called it a whale egg, before we landed.

He lowered it out the window and this is what it was for...

When we landed, the dock was a little crowded with the other tour boat, so we had to wait.

We couldn't see Mo, oh, he was wanting to be the first one off the boat.

Rez pulled him back to us.

 

At Tillicum Village, we were greeted with mugs of clams in nectar.  I am not a big seafood person, but I tried them and they weren't too bad.

Here is one that escaped.

We were told to drop the clam shells on the ground and stomp on them.  That is what the path is made of.

Another nice person took a picture of all of us.  I don't know when we have had so many family pictures in one day.

Here are the boys stomping the clam shells.

We moved into the longhouse.  Everything was carved and decorated in the traditional Northwest Coast Native American style.

Here is Seattle in the distance.  On the left you can see the space needle.

There were plenty of carvings to pose with.

Here is the salmon being baked for our dinner.

We moved into the dinner area, for a buffet lunch.    There was salad, green beans mixed with white beans, rice pilaf, venison/bison/beef stew, brown bread with butter and of course salmon, with berry cobbler for dessert.  It was all delicious to me.  Julius fed Zelda some salmon.  I wish I had a picture of the first bite he gave her.  It was on the end of his fork and so cute, she reaching for it with her mouth open and him holding it out as far as he could.  The second bite (this one) fell on the table and he picked it up and gave it to her.

Harvey didn't like anything but the bread and butter.  He made a sandwich with the pats of butter, without spreading them around.

They had an amazing show, with story telling and dances.  

There are more pictures here.

After dinner, we explored out back of the longhouse.  

Once the boys got board, they started wrestling (I am going to post about this later).

And chasing each other.

This is the back of the long house.

We also got to see the dancers with their 50 lb masks on.  They can make the mouths open and close, creating a loud clap.

Out side we had time to walk over to the playground at the state park (well the whole Island is actually a state park.  Click on Blake Island to read more about it.

All too soon, it was time to get back on the boat.

Our last look at Tillicum Village.

On the way back we let the kids play their games.

And we saw some sea lions in the middle of the sound.

When we got back to Seattle we had to walk past the aquarium to get to the car, and since we have a family membership I got for participating in the Ocean Science program at the kids school, we decided to stop in.

We sat for a long time recuperating, looking at the wall of fish.  It is a giant fish tank that sometimes has divers in it.

Then we moved on to the touch tanks and the giant pacific octopus.

Their octopus is really cool.  It has a tube that it can go between 2 tanks.

In this picture, you can see Rez through the water, on the other side of the tank.

Harvey took a turn carrying the back pack.

 

Everyone had to have a turn being a jelly fish.

This little puffer fish was so cute.  It looked like it was smiling when it was swimming around.

We saw clown fish.

Julius and Harvey were enthralled with 

this bird.  It stood on one leg.

In this area, the waves from the sound would rush in to the exibit and splash the kids.  They loved it.

We ened up spending 1 1/2 hours at the aquarium.  We were all tired on our way back to the van.

Julius was a trooper, walking along.

Harvey was tuckered out.

Yeah, we made it back. 

When we got home we all crashed.  Day seized!

Mo's quote of the day, when told he needed to get a sweatshirt because it might get cold on the boat, "I don't need a sweatshirt because my armpits are always warm."