2000 miles

 We are stoked! 

We met one of our 2015 goals today.  That goal was to cycle 2000 miles this cycling season.

Our season began in early March.  We feel pretty good about achieving this goal considering that we were unable to ride about 6 weeks in those seven months because of out-of-town trips and medical issues/illnesses.

Last year we altered our riding pattern to include a larger number of shorter rides.  We followed that new pattern this year, now having ridden on 100 days.  100 rides, 2000 miles, is an average of 20 miles/ride.

But that average is a bit misleading because we took 64 rides of 11/12 miles, which means that our median ride distance was 12.

Since we are not strong riders, in comparison with the many strong riders there are in the PNW, our 12 mile ride is one we can take almost every day unless we have commitments for the full day or it is raining.  It is fairly hilly, so is a good workout.

This is how far we could have gotten if we had cycled 2000 miles in a straight line from where we live, and if we could cycle on water (which we are not good at yet):

We are celebrating tonight with ice cream!

Thanksgiving in September & our children and grandchildren

Both Marina and Stella REALLY like spending a day at our home and just hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa.  So this year we had many fun, lazy days with them.

Since both Marina and Stella have winter birthdays, we are often on a road trip and miss celebrating with them.  This year when we arrived home we took them shopping. Marina and Stella tried on several outfits and I spent at least an hour in the dressing room with them as they decided on their favorite, changed their minds, tried on more clothes, and then finally found the Perfect Outfit.  Dan waited patiently, drinking coffee outside. 

Then we went out to eat.  When we arrived home, Stella and Marina put on a fashion show for Grandpa.  He oohed and aahed, as any good Grandpa should do.  Here they are on the fashion runway in our front yard:

Every spring Marina and Stella help us pick out flowers and plant them in our hanging baskets and flower pots:

Marina and Stella picked out over 100 different plants for our yard. Then they chose which flowers to put on each basket.  This took a whole afternoon because there were so many flowers and so many different ways to arrange them.  They discussed each basket arrangement at length with us and kept rearranging them.  It was great fun and they made Grandma and Grandpa’s home so very beautiful!

Mother’s day was extra special this year!  Dan and I met up with Jules, Jessica, Ian, and Adam at Horn Rapids Benton County Campground in eastern Washington for Mother’s Day weekend.  Dan and I brought our truck/camper and the rest of the Graybills tent camped. 

Saturday Jules, Dan, and I did the Inland Empire Century, one of our very favorite organized bike rides.  

Early Sunday morning Dan gave me my gift and a loving Mother’s Day card.  Then we all had a Mother’s Day pancake breakfast: 

 

Jules, Jessica, Ian, and Adam left for home and shortly thereafter, Owen arrived from Spokane on his Harley with flowers and a big hug for me:

 

Owen’s “sunhat:”

 

He spent the afternoon with us, but had to leave since he had a 41/2 hour drive home, he was already tired from his long drive to celebrate Mother’s Day with us, and didn’t want to be driving at nighttime.  It was hard to say goodbye:

Mother’s Day was not over.  Marina and Stella arrived with Candice!

They spent the afternoon on their scooters, racing through the sprinklers:

That evening we all played “Go Fish” for hours in the camper.  Most of the time we were laughing hysterically.  It was great fun!  

Marina and Stella slept in their very own tent.  Dan and I were quite surprised and impressed as they are only 10 and 7 years old.  Ian and Adam, who are older, have always slept in the camper with us.  Although when Ian and Adam heard about this, they also insisted on sleeping in their own tent too (which we set up VERY close to the camper).

This was a very special Mother’s Day!

This summer, Marina and Stella spent many afternoons making pot holders and several pairs of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.

 

 

They both were very generous giving family and friends many of their masterpieces:

Dan and I spent a wonderful day with Marina and Stella at the Island County Fair.  The fairgrounds are only a mile from our home so we walked there.  They had several entries in the fair and we got to see them all.  They made scenes and animals with vegetables, were awarded with blue ribbons!  Their  vegetable entry is above their heads on the right side of this picture:

We spent all day at the fair, seeing the exhibits, eating greasy fair food, and being good grandparents by buying massively overpriced tickets so our granddaughters could screech and yell as they twirled around on all the rides. 

 I have lived on Whidbey Island for 33 years and have gone to the fair every one of those years with children and/or grandchildren.  But I have never seen ALL the exhibits.  This year I did!  As we entered the fairgrounds Marina and Stella noticed that they would get a prize if they visited all the fair exhibits, and of course they wanted to get the undisclosed “prize.”  

So we picked up our fair cards that had all 40-50 exhibits listed and off we went to fill out our cards.  At each exhibit we had to admire all the 4-H children’s entries and then find the ONE person that had a stamp to mark our card and verify that we had seen their exhibit.  It was actually kind of fun, but tiring as it took us all day, traipsing from one end of the fair to the other.  

Here we are, the three girls proudly getting Grandpa to take our picture, with our “prize.”   

Drum roll.......a metal button with a blue ribbon attached, that read “I Saw It All In 2015, Whidbey Island Fair!”

As summer draws to an end and fall approaches Dan and I start to feel the pull of our beloved deserts.  We will be soon leaving on Road Trip 5, and leaving our lovely Whidbey Island home and our Pacific Northwest family.  So it is a happy time and a sad time. One thing that Dan and I particularly miss is our big family Thanksgiving celebrations.  

So this year we decided to have Thanksgiving in September!  We invited all our local family.  Everyone joined our celebration and each family brought a dinner entree.  I cooked two turkeys and set all our tables together so we could have a big formal family dinner.  It was a beautiful fall day and such a fun day!  

Of particular fun was watching Ian, Marina, Adam, Stella, and Guri chasing each other and wrestling for hours, each trying to gain possession of the only tennis ball found on our property.  Our grandchildren are still children this year, but we fear that by next year they may have outgrown this kind of game:

Summer with the grandkids

Summers on Whidbey Island are for family.  This summer we had another set of fun times with the grandsons.

First, in April (sort of summer, for us, since seasons are defined in a different way when one is retired), we took Soren to Wild Adventures in Valdosta Georgia.  We had checked the place out a few months before, and found that it opened the first week of April.

HOW-FREAKING-EVER, though, the website neglected to mention that during April it was only open on weekends.  We didn't know that until we had flown to Georgia, secured a rental car, drove four hours to Valdosta, and checked into our motel.  When we told Soren, expecting great disappointment, he said "That's OK.  We'll find other fun things to do."  What an ability to roll with the punches.  And we did--we went to a nature preserve, where we hiked and saw alligators, a movie, a fun house, swam, etc.  

 See the gator sunning himself? 

And decided to stay one more day so we could see Wild Adventures.

This is an interesting place.  It has a lot of rides, a water park (not open at all until real summer), and a very respectable zoo.  There was no waiting for rides, and it wasn't all that expensive.  It is a private amusement park, one of the few left in the nation.  It exceeded expectations.

Soren had a blast on the rides.  (so did we, to tell the truth).

 One feature of the zoo was an exhibit of tigers.  And a tiger "show."  The zoo actually tries to help animals, not just displaying them in cramped cages. 

 

Our next grandson excursion was a camping trip to the Hoh Rainforest and the Olympic Peninsula.  We took Ian and Adam in our camper.  Did a lot of hiking.   

 

Saw elk right outside our camper.

The next trip, about six weeks later, was to Mt. Baker.  We stayed in a cabin with Ian and Adam and took some spectacular hikes.

 

 

Then in early September it was back to Georgia to camp with Soren, Sebastian, and family.  Our final day there we took Sebastian to the zoo.

 

Gummy worms are animals too, aren't they?

While writing this blog entry I realize that when we do things with grandchildren we often gravitate to those outdoor activities that we love ourselves. 

We feel very blessed to be able to be a part of these four special young peoples' lives.  They do so much for us.  We hope we are doing something for them also.

Baby owl

One of the joys of living on Whidbey Island is the wildlife here.  We regularly see dozens of different types of birds, two kinds of squirrels, chipmunks, deer, coyotes, and raccoons.

Lately we have enjoyed a baby owl that hangs around our place.  It is too young to hoot, so basically screeches instead.  We hear it in the night.  We see it on our trees, on our fence, and once on our deck! 

When it rains, and you can't bike or hike....

Play ping pong!

We bought a table this year.  Not sure how it occurred to us to do that.  In fact, yesterday we tried to recall how we first thought about it and arrived at the decision.  We couldn't remember.

But we did.  We got a nice one, using our philosophy that money spent up front on things usually pays off on the backside if you either want them to last for a time or you want to sell them on Craigslist.

It folds up easily and rolls into the garage.  Usually we play on our breezeway, but it has been windy and kind of cold these last few days.  So we took advantage of the fact that we have a large great room, and rolled it into there.

We try to play 30 minutes a day.  It is good exercise, although not as good as hiking, biking or dancing.  But it is good for fine motor coordination and balance, and it does accomplish that health goal of standing for as much of the day as you can. 

Since we had played little ping pong since the 1960s, we decided we should revisit the rules.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

A game is no longer played to 21 points.  That was changed to 11 points to accommodate television viewers with short attention spans (a redundancy I know).  My opinion is that if the powers above want to shorten an athletic event that they should shorten soccer games to about 10 minutes because I get bored with it long before then.

Also, you no longer serve five points at a time but instead serve two points at a time.

We still play to 21.