Hot Town, Summer in the City!

Summer has arrived in all her glory!  It's been warm (upwards of 90 on some days) and the sun is magnificent.  This is the season of vacations, festivals, farmers markets, and letting our pale, pasty, winter skin drink in the sun and vitamin D, and bronze up a bit.

Or in our case, turn red because we went to the beach and are complete idiots who forgot to put on sunscreen.

It was totally worth it.

Last weekend we decided to explore some of the Washington beaches near Aberdeen.  We've heard they are nice (though not as fabulous as our beloved Oregon coast), so we decided to see for ourselves.  We spent the afternoon in Westport and Ocean City.

The above pictures are Westport.  The one picture is of a kite-surfer (it's really hard to see).  There was a strong wind and he was going FAST.  As fast as we've gone waterskiing with a motorboat pulling us on the lakes of Minnesota.  Crazy!  Westport is a popular surfing spot, and there were lots of surfers out.  It's really cool to watch them.  I've become obsessed with surfing and I may have to join them sooner rather than later.

Up here people surf in wet suits because the ocean waters in the Pacific Northwest are pretty chilly, but they do manage to surf during all four seasons.  I find that a bit crazy, but this culture does not consist of the blond, suntanned beach bunnies of southern California or Hawaii; no, these people with their wet suits and long boards are rugged adventurers.  I've been doing some reading about surfing and where to learn, and there are quite a few instructors dotting the coastal waters who are willing to give a lesson.  Interestingly, many of them migrated north after surfing for years in Southern California.  I guess they felt they needed a challenge.

Those two pictures are at Ocean City, just up the coast a bit and across Gray's Harbor from Westport.  Ocean City is one of several tiny little burgs that line the coast.  Not much going on in any of them.  You might find a hotel or two, but you won't find a Hilton, and maybe no actual chain hotels.  The big developers never made it this far north, I guess.  That's fine with us.  See all these pictures of the water?  Well, this is what the actual beaches look like:

See that?  Nothing.  No hotel, no boardwalk, no vendors.  Just the dunes and some driftwood.  Perfect.  The sand was darker, more volcanic looking in Westport, but Ocean City was that perfect, pristine sand.  Oh, and we found tons of sand dollars at Westport!

Of course, there have been more goings-on than feeding our family-obsession with the ocean.  My number of friends in Seattle has doubled, with the arrival of my friend and colleague, Ravisha, and my friend Leigh and her daughter, Paige.

Ravisha was one of my greatest friends in Cbus and at MDK, and she and her friend Luke have taken the plunge and moved to the Emerald City.  This is a wonderful thing, as I have thought from the beginning that this town has Ravisha written all over it.  And of course, I have missed her!

Big changes abound for Leigh and Paige, also!  I imagine this is a great place to grow up, and it's nice that Leigh can give Paige this.  Something that is so different from how we grew up for sure.  Paige and Lorelei are fast friends and Paige is serving as the big sister Lorelei has yearned for.  Both of them act the big sister to Maya, too.

Both Ravisha and Leigh wasted no time getting organized and finding jobs/homes, etc.  It's funny, you move here and your life is instantly changed.  Instantly.  There is a different rhythm to this city.  There is no time to delay putting it all together.  I work harder, have a longer commute because of traffic and we are busier with Lorelei than ever.  Shawn is working longer hours, busy with school and trying to work on learning web development skills on the side that he doesn't get at work or school.  We are crazy busy, and yet, we spend whole days at the beach or in the mountains.  The laundry still gets done, the groceries bought and dinner cooked.  I wonder sometimes what we did with all of our time when we lived in Ohio.

I remember being in Columbus and watching the airplanes when I would find myself on the east side of town.  I always had a sort of wistful feeling, wondering where the planes were going to or coming from, and imagining all those people going on an exotic vacation or embarking on a great adventure.  I would remind myself that I have a great life in Ohio and a wonderful family, and there will always be time for those exotic vacations and great adventures.  I've had itchy feet my whole life and I was kind of used to that feeling of feeling like I need to GO.

I no longer have that wistful feeling when I watch the planes going into or out of Seatac Airport.  We still have the responsibility of day-to-day living and paying bills.  None of us has won the lottery and hires people to do all the work.  But when there is that day when nothing pressing needs done and the skies have cleared, we embark on one of those adventures.  I love our life here.  I feel like we are truly living it and not killing time until the next opportunity to have fun.  Sometimes after a long day at work, the biggest adventure we have is watching the sunset over the Sound from our balcony.  But...we are watching the sunset over the SOUND.  The Puget Sound.  With the Olympic Mountain Range as a backdrop.

I no longer have itchy feet.  We are home.

Birthday Palooza, The Big Peak, and Springtime in Seattle

I hate it when I get behind working on the blog.  I get behind mostly because of work responsibilities taking over and not so much fun stuff, but this time, it's a nice mixture of both.  Since the last blog entry, we had Lorelei's birthday at the Oregon coast, a visit to Mt. Rainier, Mariners baseball game, I went to Dallas twice for work, and a couple of visits from old friends.  It helps that we had a string of 10 days or so where it was 75 degrees and gorgeous.  After the long dark of winter, it was just what the doctor ordered.

That picture above is Lorelei at the Oregon coast again.  We can't seem to stay away from there.  It was amazing as usual.  With that place, I really just have to let the pictures do the talking.  It's too beautiful for words.  We arrived toward evening and had a nice dinner at the pub and then watched the sunset on the beach.

The next day, we climbed this crazy tall dune (maybe a football field high) and the pictures above were the view that we had.  From that vantage point we also watched the morning mist roll in and out from the ocean, and a para-sailor and hang-glider take off from the dunes.  There's nothing quite like it.

We then did some exploring on the far side of the dune that juts out into the ocean.  It was an unusually low tide, so I decided to jump the fence and head into the inlets and cliffs that disappear into the ocean.  It was wonderful.  Beautiful sandstone cliffs and tide pools and being right up next to the wild Pacific.  I can't get enough of it.

That's my happy place.  Shawn's too.  Lorelei also feels the call of the beach.  I imagine we will have to do something more permanent involving the Oregon coast at some point.  My only hesitation is that I can't bear the thought of Lorelei going to Oregon for college and being a Duck.  That's a disgusting notion.  University of Washington is just fine (and an excellent school), but Oregon...uh, not so much.  Maybe it won't matter and my "gentle encouragement" for her to go to The Ohio State University will pay off.

The low tide was great for getting out on the rocks and checking out tide pools, too.  These rocks that we are walking on are usually underwater.

All in all, it was a fabulous birthday weekend for Lorelei.  She even had celebratory rootbeer float (her first rootbeer float!).

I went for a more traditional type of celebration:

Anyway, so in thinking about moving to the Oregon coast, I think I want to learn to surf.  Lorelei would make a great surfer, right?  Check out these high school kids going for an evening surf; we could do that, right?

Birthday palooza fell right between my two Dallas trips.  It was work stuff and entirely boring, but for the part when I got to see Brian, Ted and Megan from MDK.  Nice to see some friendly faces!  Dallas isn't so bad, but I wish I had some time to check out the sites.  Unfortunately, it was all work and no play.  I managed to find Lorelei some bitchin' boots though:

During the stint of glorious spring weather, we decided to take a trip to Mt. Rainier.  It was 80 degrees in Seattle that day and about 50 at Paradise, which is about 5,000 feet up and the highest we could get this time of year.  Mt. Rainier is over 14,000 feet at its highest peak.  Paradise got 723 inches of snow this winter.  It was melting when we were there, but the snow pack must have been pretty high still.  We had a blast having a snowball fight in our shorts.

Those are the tops of trees that Lorelei is playing in.  It has to be a pretty deep snow pack.  There were also some gorgeous shots of Mt. Rainier's peak in the background.  It was nice to be so close for once!

The drive was gorgeous too.  We stopped at one of the viewing sites to observe the glacier run-off.

We'll go back to Mt. Rainier in August when that whole snowbank in Paradise is a meadow full of wildflowers!  That will be cool - seeing it packed with 10 feet of snow and then again with the wildflowers.  I'll take some pictures.

Lorelei found some snow to slide down while we were there, of course.

I had to sneak one in there with Shawn - I have barely posted pictures of us this time!  Mt. Rainier was a great success.  My work and Shawn's school/work will keep us from having too much fun in the coming months, but my work should calm down some by the end of June, and Shawn finishes this semester in August, when we'll have some time off.  Hopefully we won't have to wait that long to have some more fun around town, though.

I just want to preface this next part with the fact that I'm still a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.  They are my sort of hapless baseball team, but I love them all the same.  HOWEVER, I live in a baseball town now, and I can't help but cheer for the Mariners.  They kind of remind me of my hapless Pirates a bit.  We went to a game recently with Lorelei's school, and it was great fun.

Just like last year, Lorelei got cotton candy.

Pretty sure I have an identical photo from last year's Gatewood Elementary Night at Safeco Field.  It was mayhem with all these elementary school kids eating all this cotton candy.  Yikes.

I do love the baseball game though.  Just like hockey, it's a lot better in person.  We hope to make a few more games this year.

In other news, Lorelei is an orange belt now in Tae Kwon Do, and this is Lorelei receiving her belt after the last belt test.

I also got to enjoy some time with Megan and Dan (I worked with Megan at MDK) and Daniel Hammer (my lovely Sarah's husband).  I love that Seattle draws people for vacation and work things. I struggle lately with homesickness because I don't really have the option to go back to Ohio.  Work has been in a bit of a tailspin for the last several months and will remain that way until the end of June at least.  Eventually we'll figure it out, but for now, we just power through and when we have a few free minutes, check out some of the great things to do around here.

Here's some parting words to ponder:  I found out a couple of days ago that the grandson of THE Boeing, the guy who founded Boeing, has put together an Aviation High School.  Right here in Seattle.  I think you can rest assured that if Lorelei is not learning to surf on the Oregon coast during her high school years, she may be spending them at the Aviation High School.  :)

This post is dedicated to Mr. Krueger and Shelly Clay.  The world lost a little of its shine when you moved on.

Love to all,
Becky