Until 4pm – we did nothing.  It was a nice and relaxing day.

Then we went out and did a couple of fireworks.  Wesley and Jillian both shot off a gun, we did a couple of crackling balls and the tank.

Her gun really shot out the streamers.

Watching the tank.

It did not move...

Then we had several hours before we needed to leave to watch the big firework show in Edmonds.   We did not bring our camera.  But I did a search on Flickr and found George Bentley’s great photos from the show.

We did manage to get a family picture in before we left for the show.  The kids thought it was cool that we were all wearing red shirts.

We got back from the fireworks show a little before 11pm.  It was time to shoot off the fireworks that Aunt Dri picked out for the kids.

1st one.

Wesley and Jillian were so funny watching the fireworks.  Their expressions are great!

They did a lot of running around in with excitement.

ground flower

They tried many different "views".

This is the last picture of Jillian happy.

Then she got cold and wanted to be done.

His excitement just grew with each firework!

Sparkler time.

All of the ones we shot off were very tame.  None of them whisled or made very much noise.  I guess the firework people knew what they were doing – Adrianne picked out a little backpack filled with fireworks for the kids – and they were very calm fireworks.

Then we had one last firework.  It shot out the bottom and tipped over and started shooting at us.  One hit Wesley in the leg and then a couple shot out at us.  We all ran and got out of the way.  Luckily Wesley was wearing pants.  He was not hurt and is pants have a small singe on them.  Wesley thought it was scary and cool at the same time.  He kept saying how fast he was and got out of the way.  It was pretty cute.

The one that caused all the problems.

Next year should be very fun.  I can only imagine how excited Wesley will be next year.  And maybe Jillian will try a sparkler too.  This year she would not go near them.

Redmond was enjoying every single smell along the way!

About 1.25 miles up the trail is where the beautiful twin waterfalls are located.

The next 3.5 miles of the trail lead to a campground.  Along the way we saw so many huge banana slugs, a few garter snakes, a mouse, a chipmunk and a few birds.

Wesley would have been in slug heaven!

Not only do you have amazing trees, plants and rocks to look at – since the trail follows the river you get to see it often, but you hear it almost the whole time you are hiking.

I am a slow hiker…I did not make it to the end.  We had to get to Adrianne’s birthday party.  So at the 2 hour mark, even though I knew I was almost at the end, I turned around.  I took the backpack and the camera and started the hike back to the car.  Joshua wanted to get the end (and I wanted him to also) so he and Redmond would run ahead for 10 minutes and hopefully the would get to the end.  They did.  They only had to run for 4 minutes.   They got to the campsite area and then ran back to catch up with me. Our hike back went well.  It always seems faster when you are going back.

No kids to take pictures of so...

I have to include these pictures of Redmond.  Good thing he was on leash the whole time.  He would find a smell and just want to GO to find it.

We headed to the U-district and picked up Pat and then to Fremont in the drizzle (it didn’t last). We found our spot for watching the parade and then waited. Being a solstice parade it starts exactly at noon. We had an hour to kill. Luckily a guy was walking around giving kids chalk. So Wesley and I partook in one of his current favorite activities: hopscotch.

The bikes, and their naked riders, are only sort of semi-official it seems. They lead off the parade before the real parade begins. So shortly before noon Wes and I gave up our game (I was leading 5 to 3) and took to watching some naked people ride bikes. Seeing the men, you realize just how much everything gets squished. Here are a few examples of probably a hundred or more different riders.

Probably Wesley’s favorite part:

Jillian couldn’t take her eyes off this bathtub and its ducks.

After the bicyclists, the parade gets going in earnest.  You never really know what you are going to get. The floats, puppets and entertainment are all hand made by volunteers. You don’t know what you are going to get, but you’re probably going to like it.  I’m not sure if this guy was the master of ceremonies, but he was throwing beads (we caught some gold ones) and was on stilts that made him about 10 feet tall.

The banner and mostly naked women always lead off…

Wesley got to spend most of the time on my shoulders. It gave him a better view and me, well, I’m a little shorter now.

Belly Dancers.

Huge, human powered puppets.

This guy (and a bunch of others) were giving out hugs. He tried to hug Wesley on my shoulders. I leaned forward and Wesley leaned as far back as he possibly could to avoid the hug. Cracked up the crowd. I got a nice hug though.

While he didn’t want to have a hug. And didn’t want to play kickball in the street, he jumped at the chance to get run over by a giant beach ball. He was awesome. He had a great time and a huge, huge smile on his face. Click for bigger pictures of him.

Because the parade is human powered and because there are so many interactive things going on, the flow can be a bit messed up. It moves in fits and starts. Sometimes people just breeze on by and other times they get stalled in front of you and you get a really good chance to see what they are up to. One of the times the stopped in front of us we got to listen to some good Mardi Gras style music. Another time we got hula hoopers.

The military presence is a little different in Fremont.

There were lots of dancers, but this group had the most coordinated effort. We were lucky that they stopped in front of us for a bit and we got to see most of the routine.

No Solstice Parade would be complete without the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This picture doesn’t do them justice. They are always a big hit and do some good charity work, too.

Jillian fell asleep on the walk from the car. When she woke up, she was interested, but grumpy. On the way back she was upset because she wanted “to hug someone in a costume”. We found several people in costume and they agreed to a hug, but I guess they weren’t the right people because Jillian refused and then repeated that she wanted to hug someone in a costume. She was pretty upset.

After the parade we headed to the U-district to have lunch at Fondi. Really good pizza and yummy gelato at a reasonable price. I’d recommend the salted caramel if they have it. Wesley and Jillian (who did perk up at lunch) really liked their birthday cake flavored gelato. And it really did taste like birthday cake. Wesley insists my blackberry tasted more like raspberry. I won’t argue with him, but it was good either way.

Here is a gallery of 47 pictures (including the ones above) that we’ve uploaded to our server. We also have 551 photos in our 2010 Fremont Summer Solstice Parade set on Flickr. Already (only about 3 hours now since they all went up, we’ve had about 16,000 hits on those images. Update: After 1 day Flickr is reporting 42,000 views). A little nudity sells(even body painted public nudity). If you check it out, remember you’ll see breasts, butts and penises. Just so you know.

Aerial view of the park

The hike is on a wide gravel trail that leads down from the rather busy parking lot to a small playfield/picnic area and usually beach access. You drop about 400 feet over 1.25 miles as you descend into the gulch. Most of the trail is pretty moderate with a few steep sections, some of which have stairs. The kids managed to walk the whole way down, but rode pretty much the whole way up. Luckily they were fully rested when we got to the top (more than I can say for Amber and I) so they found the energy to swing and climb on the play structure.

Running down the hill. Lots of energy at the start.

Wesley and Jillian in front of a Douglas Fir on the trail.

Stairs on the steepest portion of the trail.

Amber looking beautiful as usual.

Wesley climbing what he named the "Monkey tree".

The trail is shaded most of the way and follows, more or less, the path of the creek. This time of year there are lots of different plants growing along the trail. We had to have a talk about stinging nettles. I’m sure it won’t be our last.

Bleeding Heart. These were everywhere.

A new fern.

Horse Tails. The trail was mostly dry but surrounding areas were damp.

Holding hands to keep them moving.

Almost at the bottom, Jillian decides she will go no more.

The face of passive resistance.

At the bottom, just past the ranger’s residence, we took a little break at one of several picnic tables and ate some granola bars and cooled off with some water. Jillian picked flowers and Wesley and I played Frisbee.

Even though the beach access is currently closed it didn’t stop a lot of people from climbing under, over or around the fence and heading down there anyway. We decided not to since it was closed to protect the salmon in the stream. What amazed me most is the number of people who got to the bottom and seemed surprised that it was closed. This despite the fact that it has been closed for months and the dozen or so signs at the trail head. It should open in June as they are able to dredge some of the creek without hurting the salmon. Upstream development has caused it to silt up to the point that they had to remove the trail under the train tracks that leads to the beach.

On the way back up the trail Jillian rode in the Ergo on Amber’s back. I carried the backpack and Wesley on my shoulders. We still passed a bunch of people, but boy was I sweaty. The kids were well rested and enjoyed swinging and climbing on this cool toy.

Hanging out in the "spider's web".

Hi Dad!!!!!

It started off on Sunday 3/28.  We went to my mom’s house where Aunt Ashley and Grams put on quiet the spread.  The their Easter buckets were overflowing with books, candy and toys.

Then on Wednesday Grams and Auntie Ashely came to play and decorated cookies with us.

All of our yummy cookies.

The day before Easter we did our Easter egg coloring.  It was nice to have an extra adult to help the kids.  Ashley worked with Wesley and I got to work with Jillian.  Joshua did a great job documenting the process.

All set up.

Hands…nothing gets eggs out of dye better.

We wanted to share the experience with Redmond too, so Joshua gave him a peeled egg.

But he is not sure what to do with it.

The kids broke open the egg and tried to force feed Redmond.

Easter morning the kids woke up around 8.  That never happens during the week…

Easter baskets were waiting for them at the table.

Then we put boots on and started our search for the 3 dozen eggs.

We got more pictures of Jillian because she searched pretty slowly.

Look how full his basket is!

Then after all the eggs were accounted for, we got ready to drive up to Sedro-Woolley to spend the day with family.

Our first stop was at Grandpa Geoff’s house.  No actual “Easter” celebrating went on – but we had a great time exploring the property.

Joshua found a baby snake.

Then we found this big one. We thought is was just cold, but after we left Geoff told us that is had died. Poor thing.

Then we went to Yaya and Papa’s house.  The bunny left quiet the spread for these little bunnies.

Let the egg hunt begin!

Wesley gets his paper mache dinosaur egg open by using the fire hydrant to smash it.

Jillian saw what success Wesley had, so she tried to do it herself.

Got it!

Playing with the toys from inside the dino egg.

We had such a wonderful day.  This is our first holiday back home in Washington.  It sure felt good to see the kids with all of the family!!!

Since we were so near Corpus Christi (for Texas anyway) and since the kids, especially Wesley, love aquariums, we decided to stop at the Texas State Aquarium on our way back to Austin from Port Aransas. From the website, we got the impression that the aquarium was a bit larger and dare I say nicer than it actually was, but it was plenty big enough for us to fill a few hours before getting back in the car. I wouldn’t make a special trip from Austin just to go to the aquarium, but it was worth stopping by since we were in the area.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Before we got to the aquarium, we took a small ferry across the entry to Corpus Christi Bay. The ferries held about 20 cars each and made the crossing in about 3 minutes. During the crossing we saw some more Dolphins.  As you can see from this image from Google Maps, the ferries are pretty maneuverable (compared to the much larger Washington State ferries) and they’ll just go around obstacles.

In our case the ferry waited a bit and then zipped around a large oil tanker, the Eagle Augusta. It took us about an hour to get the aquarium by car. An hour after we got there we saw it go by us while we were watching the dolphin show at the aquarium.

The aquarium has three dolphins and they put on a pretty good show for about 15 minutes.  Jillian was more interested in climbing up and down the stairs, but Wesley got into it.

During and after lunch Wesley really got into the touch tank. They had a few kinds of ray, which by getting his sleeves really wet, Wesley could get a quick touch.  Too bad the water stank so much.

While there were a few nice exhibits (a couple were closed for repairs), the best part really is the dolphins. We spent a lot of time (more than the kids cared for) watching them under water. We thought they were swimming back and forth looking at us. Turns out the their side of the glass is mirrored. Probably a lesson in that for us somewhere.  On the upside, the aquarium wasn’t busy so we had the whole room to ourselves.

Jillian was still in the midst of being sick and was pretty warn out. Even though we were only at the aquarium a few hours she had had enough. J broke down and we decided it was time to go.

We had another four or so more hours to go in the car. We stopped for dinner at a kind of creepy Mexican restaurant (the food was okay, but not great) and had a very long drive home. It was a very long drive home. A very, very long drive home. But we made it and we’ll never go back, so it is all okay.

We picked my mom up at the airport and drove the four and a half hours more or less straight through to the beach house, stopping only at target (the kids were supposed to be wearing shoes when they got in the car) and the What-A-Burger By The Bay in Corpus Christi for dinner (Wesley likes their fries). Amber got the privilege of sitting in the back seat between Wesley’s booster and Jillian’s car seat.  She is both skinny enough to fit between them and has short enough legs. Lucky her!

The house, by the way is gorgeous. Much nicer than ours frankly. It is fully appointed with TVs, cable, internet access, dishes, silverware, pans, appliances, towels, blankets, sheets, pillows, you name it. It has four official bedrooms, plus a Murphy bed in the living room. So much bigger than our house! The kids enjoyed the jetted tub upstairs in the master bath.

The weather when we first got their was very Northwest only warmer. It was mostly overcast and windy, but still nice enough to walk around in shorts and a sweatshirt. Because of an offshore storm the waves were much bigger than normal. And apparently every surfer in Texas was out as the waves were rather unusual. By the time we left the waves had flattened to just a few inches high, the often driving wind had subsided and the sun was coming out. So we got the full range of weather possibilities (minus the rain, thankfully).

Both kids were in varying states of illness. Jillian, usually opposed to napping when healthy, seemed incapable of staying awake when in earshot of the shore. So we don’t have too many pictures of her awake at the beach. The couple of times we took her she passed out after only a few minutes.

For Jillian it only took about ten minutes for this:

to turn into this:

It happened to her on the pier, at the beach, anywhere she could hear the waves. Apparently Jillian’s Kryptonite is white noise.

A reasonable walk or short drive down the beach from the house is Horace Caldwell Pier. Oddly you have to pay to go on the pier even though it at first appears to be public.

Anway, $2 per person and you’re on. The day we were there the waters were full of surfers and the pier full of people fishing for anything but Hardheads (but not catching anything else apparently). The Hardhead or Sea Catfish is apparently abundant and according to one State of Texas website “it isn’t very tasty and the fish is difficult to clean”. They also have mildly toxic barbed spines that cause swelling and are really hard to pull out. What this means for the fish is that people catch them all the time, they want to throw them back,  but can’t touch them. So they take quite a beating as people fling them around, thump them on railings and yank on them with pliers trying to get their hooks out. It was a little disturbing. One gentleman, who seemed to have enough experience to treat the fish humanely caught a fish and let Wesley reel it in before smoothly removing the hook and dropping him back in the water.

I don’t know if it is typical or if it was because of the storm, but the beach was lined with all sorts of shells, sea stars, hermit crabs, crabs, and jelly fish in varying states of life.  Especially in the morning, before it had been picked clean, we had great luck finding shells and even some very large hermit crabs (bodies 4-5″ long).  Wesley “saved” several sea stars that had washed up on shore and was very proud of himself for doing it.

We found a surprising variety of shells: Lightning Whelks (the state shell of Texas), Olive snails, Sharks Eye snails, sand dollars, sea biscuits, Giant Eastern Murex, limpets, a plethora of clams, cockles and scallops, just to name a few. We also saw some dead cabbage head jellyfish and some moon jellyfish, too.

The shells spread out at home.

Lightning Whelk - Side View

Lightning Whelk - End View

Olive Snails

Great Eastern Murex

Cabbage head Jellyfish (We didn't bring him home)

The outer edge of Mustang Island is open to the ocean the inner edge is open to Corpus Christi Bay and is a much calmer swamp marsh; an ideal habitat for birds. We visited a bird sanctuary and saw pelicans (a couple of species), turtles, ducks, herons and most importantly, though at some distance, Roseate Spoonbills. It was really windy so most of the birds were just hunkering down on the lee side of the reeds. But we still saw quite a few for the few minutes the kids would put up with it.

Roseate Spoonbill

Pointing at Spoonbills.

Though there were many warning signs at the bird sanctuary, this is as close as we came to being eaten by a ‘gator.

Port A is nothing if not a typical tourist town. The population is only a few thousand and it is clear that tourism is the main industry. Here you’ll find everything you’d expect at any small tourist town, plus some things I hadn’t seen before. They had restaurants that would cook your catch for you, candy shops, places to rent these little gas golf cart things (primarily for driving on the beach road I guess), many giant sharks statues, at least two gift/surf shops on every corner and a good number of playgrounds and free piers for fishing. We did most of touristy stuff including taking the obligatory goofy pictures:

Inside a giant walk-through shark. These were all over town.

Giant Seahorses along the road.

Amber did a really good job of finding things for us to do that the kids would enjoy. She really ran the whole trip and kept everyone having a good time. At one pier we were able to see dolphins just swimming in the channel. We weren’t able to get a picture because they came and went so quickly and because the surf was rough due to winds, but it sure made Amber’s day. Wesley had a pretty good time, too.

On the pier where we saw dolphins.

My favorite photo from the whole trip.

Excited to go to the beach. Run!

Perhaps the kids’ favorite part of the house (mine, too) was the widow’s walk. We had to go up at least twice a day. Because the house is about a half block from the beach and because the beach has some pretty hefty dunes that block views of the ocean most of the houses in the neighborhood have some form of widow’s walk.  I imagine it would be great to sit up there  with a cool drink and read a book on a warm day.

Note the spiral staircase up to the widow's walk.

Looking up from the top of the spiral staircase.

On the walk near sunset.

Here is a 360 degree panorama from the widow’s walk near dusk. Click for a much larger view (it will take you to Flickr).

Panorama at dusk

We’ll post a “part two” about the trip to the Texas State Aquarium soon.  If you haven’t gotten enough pictures yet, you can check out our whole “Port Aransas” set on Flickr. But be warned it contains 450+ photos.

Oh, and one more thing… If you go to Port Aransas BEWARE THE ROBOTS. They’ll get you!

Look out!

We got there right at 6, but Santa was a bit late…

Sitting in Santa's Chair.

The kids were really excited while we waited in line.  But as soon as they got up close to him… that was a different matter.

So I showed them that Santa was nice.

Then Joshua told Wesley that, THIS was his chance to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas.  But he was pretty nervous and a bit terrified.  But he really managed to pull it together an conquer his initial fear and sat with Santa like a champ.

Drying his tears...

This is right before he said he wants a FISH TANK from Santa.

We really wanted to try a picture with Jillian too…

I was really surprised that she even sat with him.

This was after about 10 seconds, she had really calmed down. If only we had 10 more, she may have even smiled.

I promised the kids cookies, to try to get them to cooperate with Santa, so we went over to the rec center and had cookies and hot chocolate.

Enjoying their snack.

Yummy!

He just did not want to smile for me!

Time to go home.  But first, a few more pictures…

It was about 50 out tonight.  It felt pretty good.  But we (When I say we, I mean the kids and Joshua.  Of course I was in a jacket.  I even had a scarf on too.) were the only family without jackets on.  And most kids had on mittens and a hat!

It was a good night.  We are looking forward to walking along the trails tomorrow and looking at the luminaries and the Christmas lights.  The tractor train will be out tomorrow, so I can’t wait to get photos with Joshua and the kids!

This year we got our Christmas tree at Home Depot. Which makes me a little sad because I really enjoy the hours of agonizing over which of a thousand identical trees is the just the right one. Unfortunately the trees in Texas are terrible and Costco wasn’t selling, so we went to the hardware store. On the upside it came with a 90 day return policy which might come in hand if we don’t need a Valentine’s Day tree.

The kids had a great time decorating it just the same. They were almost busting at the seams to get the ornaments out of the boxes.

We let them do nearly all of the decorating.

So we had a little bit of bunching …

To encourage a more even distribution Amber and I got involved.

And of course we needed our traditional tree topper, a large glass snowman.

While Amber was up north we added some chains with the “lick-and-stick” paper that YaYa sent. The kids liked putting them together better than I would have expected and I really like how they look on the tree.  Wesley wanted to send a photo of the tree to YaYa so we took this one (J was asleep).

After the chains we did tinsel. I don’t know what we were thinking. The kids loved it of course. We’ll probably need to buy a new vacuum cleaner after sucking up all the extra from the floor.

And of course the final product: