Portland II

A lovely weekend in Portland with old and new friends. On the way down we stopped at Burgerville in Centralia, where we feasted on cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and french fries - although the french fries turned out to have some gluten in them. :(

We went to sleep not long after wards (well, most of us did) and woke up in the morning to find that their had been gluten in the french fries. Mama and Lou did not feel good!

Nonetheless, we went to Charlie's lacrosse game and cheered him on. Then we headed to Bob's Red Mill and had a wonderful brunch. (gluten free for those who needed it) Pancakes, french toast, hash browns, omelets, muffins, eggs. Need I go on?

After brunch, we split up, half of us going to the Colombia Outlet.

The rest of the day we hung out and as I said, watched basketball, jumped on the trampoline, and napped.

Zaz in the play room/nook.

Lou, Peter, and Leah.

Aunt Betty and Mama catching up.

Oh, how I love trampolines! A beautiful day = beautiful pictures.

Charlie, Pete, and Lou.

Jumping for joy! Me!

Lou and I traded off with the camera, doing photo shoots of each other. So fun!

Portland

We've been here less than 24 hours and I've taken more than 150 pictures. Prepare for a picture overload sometime this week! This morning we went to a lacrosse game, Bob's Red Mill, and the Columbia Outlet. This afternoon was all about napping, jumping on the trampoline, and watching basketball.

Happy Saturday

Skiing Weekend

Two weeks ago, we had winter break at Ecole Vieux Pin. The previous post done on this subject would have been better named Christmas break, but oh well. We took a lovely two-day skiing trip to Stevens Pass the first day and Mission Ridge the second, after spending the night in Wenatchee.

Zaz was very excited to go skiing as we got ready, but slightly less so when it actually happened.

Cheerful smiles.

Zaz also spent considerable time studying the map. Even though it was upside down...

We had fairly good weather at Stevens, although it rained a bit at the end. Such beautiful sunshine!

Zaz skied very well

More studying of the map over lunch.

Mission was really beautiful too, especially after coming out of dry Wenatchee. Talking to friends later, we realized that we were truly blessed with a clear day. We could see Mt. Rainer and Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood was hiding a little behind some clouds.

The view was stunning. Lou got a bit annoyed at me for taking so many pictures. (i.e. taking my camera out a LOT!)

We also got to see the wing from the bomber that crashed there during World War II and learn it's history.

After lunch Zaz got to go play, and us other five enjoyed skiing together.

Plus a nice ski-patrol man took our picture together.

The way the wind has pushed the snow on the trees, buildings, and these posts at the top of the lift was really cool - and beautiful.

We are very thankful for a fun, successful trip, clear, blue skies, and enjoying God's creation. This was also only the second time we've able to go skiing this year, although Papa and Zaz are off to Snoqualmie tomorrow morning for a ski adventure in honor of Zaz's 4th birthday.

Marina

Making Music with our Friends

Last week while visiting friends we had a musical interlude. I'd planned to post about this auspicious event, but my friend Kerry beat me to it! It's great, because it saves me the work of posting. I will however, add a couple photos... including one of Kerry with her Very Large Whisk. Honestly, have you ever seen a whisk this big?? Maybe it is for beating ostrich eggs. It was a great day, except for the part about Loulou lying on the couch until she woke up and barfed. But she got better again, eventually. Hopefully we didn't pass on anything scary to our friends. But that's partly why I haven't been blogging -- all the sick people on the couch needing lovies and juice.

"Look out, Egg Whites!"

musical interlude - duet for guitar and violin in the key of "makin' it work"

Happy Boys having lunch

Ecole Vieux Pin hits the Road

This was a big day for Ecole Vieux Pin. We went on an all day field trip to sites in the Jura. First stop was the Grottes de Reclere, where stalagmites and stalagtites abound in beautiful formations along a 1.5 kilometer path underground.

This formation is called "the portrait" because it resembles a woman's face in profile.

After the caves, we visited the "Prehisto-Park" where scale models of various dinosaurs are planted throughout a nice patch of deciduous forest. But our favorite critter was this kitty tour guide who walked the entire path with us and would hop up on the dinos to pose for the camera.

After the dinos we drove towards St. Ursanne, passing through a peninsula of France to get there. That's where we saw this Lavoire, an old public washing place. It's on the town square where the women of yesteryear would bring their laundry to wash all together. This illustrates the need for monograms -- so you would go home with your own skivvies and not someone elses.

Next we visited St. Ursanne, an elegant cloister built in the 1100s.

We're reading The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli and Robin is currently staying in a monastery, so it's lovely to have this example for the kids to put in their minds.

Then on the way back to Boncourt we stopped in Porrentruy long enough to put Manu and the kids on the train. Zarli was so happy that he couldn't even smile -- just took it all in.

Pumpkin Patch

Last week we went on our first official-ish homeschool field trip with the Lairds, Reinigers, Jessees and Classes. Here is our passel of kids, just before the ill-fated corn maze mis-adventure.
Zarli dressed up for the occasion in the pumpkin hat Marina knit him and his cool new camoflauge boots.

Salmon Watching and Otters

Uncle Chip came over this morning, and after getting some math and a little writing out of the way, we took him along for Salmon Watching. King County and the City of Bellevue have a program where citizens sign up to "watch" a particular waterway and count and identify the salmon returning to spawn. I heard about it in the spring and as we had just decided to homeschool, it sounded like the perfect hands-on science program.

So this morning we went out on our inaugaral "watch". Our creek is Sturtevant Creek, small, shallow and slow-moving, running right by the intersection of 405 and SE 8th Street and right past several large office buildings,perhaps not the most promising of salmon sites. But apparently chinook salmon have been sighted there before, so we move forward in faith that they will show up again. I want the children to be encouraged, so I have prayed that God will bring the salmon, and actually this morning I asked Him to surprise us. I was thinking of a surprise in terms of quantities of salmon, but He had a surprise of another sort.

We got there, put on our special day-glow colored polarized salmon watching glasses, tried not to think about how much this wobbly bridge seemed to be rotting away, and watched. We watched water bugs skating along the surface of the water and an orange Myntz candy box sitting at the bottom, but no fish. We tried to lure the salmon by picking blackberries from the bushes along the bank, and throwing in the ones we didn't eat or squish into Uncle Chip's hands. No fish. So after our obligatory fifteen minutes we filled out our data sheet with the time, date and a zero in the box marked "# of live fish".

Then on a whim we crossed the big into which our creek flows at the north end of Mercer Slough just in case we could spy some salmon lurking there. We still saw no salmon but we did see three creatures frolicking in the water at the far end of the pond. Muskrats, beavers or otters? It was too far away to tell and we lamented not bringing binoculars. But they began to swim in our direction toward the bridge we were standing on. We got down so they couldn't see us but we could look through the slats of the sides of the bridge. They swam right underneath us so we could identify them as three wild river otters. We followed them downstream for a bit, and at one point, one slowed and came toward the bank where we all stood, trying to be extra quiet, except for Zarli who understood the pointing part, but not the quiet part. He looked right at us, and then trod water and craned his neck up for a better view before sliding after his family members. We're guessing either a mother and father and otter child, or a mother with two mostly grown otter kits. A little later, two of them stopped and did the same thing, as curious about us as we were about them.

As we walked back to the car and were all exclaiming at how this was the first time we'd ever seen otters in the wild (if you can call urban Bellevue "the wild"), I asked the kids how many wild otters they thought the kids at their old school saw today. At least we know where the salmon probably are... in the stomachs of the otters.