Marina, Stella, toys, projects, cycling...........days on Whidbey Island

We have a lot of on-going projects.  One, of course, is our training for the STP.  We took two days off after our Father's Day Century, and then did a hard 55 miles around hilly Whidbey Island with Vicky's brother Doug and his friend George.  George rides a lot with the man who has done all of the STPs, all of them in one day. 

Part of our training, of course, is to try out different biking outfits.  It was an absolute necessity to test out this year's STP jerseys.  They are very attractive.  Like Vicky's biking skirt?  

The two of us are quite color coordinated, don't you think?--her with the red headband, and me with the red shorts (which Doug had regrettably remembered used to be Vicky's, so of course I got a lot of questions from him and George about what else I might be wearing that used to belong to Vicky......NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!)

It was a great ride, and a great time.  Both of these guys are so much faster than us, but they were good sports about it, and were able to have a good time at a pace that is below what they easily could do.

I bought a new toy!  A power washer.  Now I see all kinds of things that tell me that, yes indeedy, I really did need this new toy.

I could spray our chains and sprockets with de-greaser, and get our bikes really clean, finally.  That felt good.

 And, of course, as a newly inducted member of the male macho F350 4X4 Dually crowd, I have an obligation to keep the tires on it looking really spiffy.



 But the ostensible purpose of the power washer is to clean the house because......gulp.....we have decided we will try to paint it ourselves.  That's why putting up the new gutters was a mistake--made the rest of the house look worse.

It needs painting, though.  That is just a regular part of up keep, and protects one's investment in their home.  We could probably get away with not doing it for two or three years and be OK, but we are also kind of tired of the brown color.

When I bought the house in 2006 everything in it and on it that wasn't brown was a shade of gray.  Dark and gloomy.  Over time I, with a lot of guidance from my daughter-in-law Jessica, and now we, have tried to brighten things up.  The exterior is next on the queue.

The power washer does a great job of getting the moss off of the siding, and cleaning the wood.

After this side of the house was power washed twice, I applied a couple of test colors to it.  We both clearly liked the one on the left--a sage.

Like it?  We are going to do it in this color, and keep a few accent pieces in the brown (repainted to be brighter) with a little bit of off-white trim.

We aren't going to try to get it all done this summer.  We'll just doing it as we can, one wall at a time.  There will be a lot of prep work because things like all of the telephone cords were not routed under the house but along the outside walls (huh?).    We also will not be climbing very high on ladders.  There is one section where the height is a little more than I'm comfortable with, and we will simply rent scaffolding for it (actually I have another idea which I am going to wait to describe because it feels too much like a Jeff Foxworthy joke).

It will be fun.  And it will really lighten up the house.  The color is close to that of the trees, which feels right.

What else is happening these days?  Well, it is the Invasion of the Caterpillars.  This year we have had these caterpillars all over the place.  It's impossible to cycle without crushing a lot of them, which we don't like but can't avoid.  It would be nice if they all produced beautiful butterflies, but I suspect we'll just get a bunch of pesky moths.  The birds must be happy, though.

Anybody know what this is?

Yesterday afternoon we had Stella and Marina out to the house once again.  We've been trying to see them once a week or so, which we usually can unless they are out of town.  They are fun.

This is Marina playing the old Marx toy of mine, a one-man band.  And Stella patiently (?) waiting her turn.

Marina making Silly Putty sandwiches:

Stella loves the stuffed owl.  Wanted it to be her face:

Stella helping grandma make dinner.  With supervision, she did a great job of cutting up vegetables--repeating to herself to keep the knife lower than her hand.  She likes to be useful--a good quality.

This is something that Marina often does that is so cool.  She likes to make different kinds of concoctions with her baked potato.  She scoops the potato out of the peel, and eats the inside.  Then, she adds whatever she can find--this time it was corn she cut from the cob, tomatoes, gravy, and avocado and makes a potato sandwich of sorts.

No matter what she puts into her creation, she always gobbles the whole thing down:

Marina found out she had missed grandma's birthday, so headed for the construction paper, and didn't stop until she had produced a card for her grandma.  That was so sweet.

And doesn't it look nice?  It will be a refrigerator decoration:

Stella looks like she's climbing into the bird bath, but not really.  We were just taking a walk in the lower 40:

We have a camping trip date planned with them now.  We now have dates for Ian, Adam, Soren, Stella, and Marina.




That's our Life on Whidbey Island for the past two days.  Not too bad, huh?