08.31.07
Ordway’s Meet and Greet
We met the teachers (both very nice!) and traipsed up and down the halls of our elementary school yesterday. My favorite observation: the 2nd grade classroom magnetic word tiles, arranged to make these lines:
I cry like a blue baby
one pink wet frog
peace moon imagine wing
Outing: Fay Bainbridge State Park
Yesterday, one of the very last days of summer vacation, the kids and I spent a few bucolic hours at the beach. The blackberries are in abundance, so while the kids played, I picked!
Fay Bainbridge is one of my favorite places in the world–you can lean back against the massive driftwood logs and look across the Sound to Seattle; or to the south, Mount Rainier rises gloriously from the horizon. One clear day, I’ll get a good picture of it.
08.29.07
All-Comers Track Meet
Monday night was the last all-comers meet of the summer, and we’re kind of bummed because we’ve had so much fun watching the kids run.
To watch a news clip about the all-comers meet, click here.
(if you’ve got lightning-fast powers of observation, you can see A___ running in a striped shirt, and a close-up of S____’s name in the paper!)
08.28.07
Overheard at Back of Beyond
Time: 11:00 am
Woman behind kayak-rental desk to kayak guide: “I sent a guy out for two hours. He seemed a little shaky…I think he might come back wet.”
08.19.07
My Tendency to Spurge
One of my favorite places to spend an afternoon (and a bit of dough) is the great Bainbridge Gardens.
So far, I’ve bought:
Spurge
Obedient plant
(2 of those, actually, I named them Kate and Sophie in a fit of irony)
Balloon flowers
White Japanese iris
Japanese blood grass
A blue hydrangea
17 strawberry plants
2 crimson rhubarb plants
Irish moss (that’s the ground cover with the lovely little white flowers)
I still salivate at the sight of Japanese maples; I’m just waiting until fall to buy one and transplant the 3 rose bushes.
Flora & Fauna: Front Door Moth
There are a whole host of moths that just love our front doorway. They aren’t huge, scary-looking things, just little lacy delicate creatures ranging from dust brown to an almost translucent milky color.
I took a fancy to this one:
Flora & Fauna: Backyard Deer
I still think they’re beautiful, they still make me gasp with surprise and pleasure that they’ve ventured so close to the house, they still make me creep out barefoot in my pajamas with a camera–but how I wish they’d leave my garden alone!
Not content with the wild berries and cherries in the backyard, they jump the fence into the side yard and eat my peas and spinach (now on the second planting, cross your fingers for me!). Our neighbors told me, “If you want a garden, get a dog.”
Hmmm. I think it’s a little less work to replant the spinach.
08.17.07
Ordway Elementary, here we come!
I got a phone call from the secretary at Ordway Elementary yesterday afternoon; we’ve been waiting all summer for that call! After hearing so much about the wonderful music teacher at Blakeley Elementary, K___ was a little disappointed. But we’ll re-focus on the positives that Ordway offers:
*it’s close enough to bike to!
*class begins an hour earlier, and thus ends an hour earlier than Blakeley (7:55-2:20)
–on second thought, is that a positive or not?!
*it’s the only school on the island that’s named after a woman–Lizzie Ordway, who was every bit as strong a character and educator as Virginia Grainger (who was our Okanogan home’s first owner and the founder of the elementary school there). Here’s the school’s website!
www.bainbridge.wednet.edu/ordway/
08.13.07
In Praise of Indoor Pools
My take on swim lessons at the Aquatic Center:
Pros:
*no sunblock necessary–no chance of sunburns!
*warm water
*fun, capable teachers
Cons:
*breathing chlorine-rich air for the duration of my kids’ swimming lessons isn’t the most pleasant thing, but there’s no way around that one.
*when I signed the girls up for swimming lessons I misjudged their abilities by one class; there’s no refund or recourse if their teacher says they should be moved down a class. So K___ has to miss out on swimming lessons; luckily, there was a spot for S___.
My favorite thing is watching the contrast between the four-year-old class, and the aquatic aerobic class for ladies of mature age–the time for both classes overlaps, so you get these wriggling, splashing, delighted children learning to swim just a few feet away from the dignified swoops and stretches of wise grandmas.
08.11.07
Outing: Point No Point
Because the forecast said there would be a high of 76 degrees, I thought it would be a good idea to go to the beach today. Hmmm. Well, the kids had fun. They’d have fun jumping naked in snow-melt, though. I sat with my yellow rain coat on, hood pulled tight, with a beach towel wrapped around my freezing legs, and thought, This is what 80 degrees feels like to my mom. Except it was more like 60 degrees and even the warm sand couldn’t make up for those cold gusts coming off the water.
The sandy beach is divine, though. We happened to sit next to another family from Bainbridge, and their delightful children shared all their great sand toys with our kids, and in all, it was a good outing.
Next time, though, I’ll come prepared with the ear muffs and the gloves.
