I realized October is almost over and I haven't done a blog post for a month and a half. So, here are a few snippets of what we've been up to.
The kids and Jip took in a regular-season Mariners game on October 1. We decided I should not attempt it due to my knee and hip. Jip said it was good I didn't try--the seats were up a lot of stairs and getting to and from the ballpark probably would have done me in. But, they had a great time! The Mariners had clinched the Wild Card slot the day before, but the win on the day they went was a nice bonus.
We've had the craziest fall weather in that it hasn't really been autumn around here. It has been unseasonably warm and dry. RJ and Jip took advantage of that dryness a couple weeks ago and took their bikes down for a ride across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
Ryleigh has continued to work on perfecting her Level 5 gymnastics. She's had a few private lessons and the team had an in-house showcase/meet. Their were judges for the showcase, but the scores were really just a way for the girls to see where they are. Ryleigh did great on floor and vault! I've married up her routine with her floor music so you can hear it (though not the highest quality) once this year. I'm sure I'll do my usual with the rest of her videos and make it one song over all of the routines. I made vault part of another video, which also shows Ryleigh working on her baby giant (throwing yourself over the bar without your hips touching as you go around) and her flyaway (dismount with a back flip). I am not including bars from the showcase because I can't seem to run my own phone and took two pics instead of a video. :/ And, I'm not including beam because Ryleigh fell off the beam a couple times and she did not want to share it. She said the beam was slippery because it normally has a cover over it, so it doesn't have the normal wear and all of the chalk that normally covers the beam. Anyway, here she is...
And here are a couple photos from the showcase (it was Halloween themed, so they all wore Halloween or fall-ish leotards) and a photo of her teammates giving her a birthday hug.
Advanced Level 3, Level 4, and Level 5
Level 5
And finally, Jip continues to do cool stuff. Last time, it was practicing putting out fires. This time, it was hanging out with his dive locker. Jip has a few divers that work for him who can do underwater inspections and repairs on ships. So, they invited him to experience a dive for himself. Here he is underwater near the submarine base.
I continue to plug along as kid-taxi-driver-extraordinaire and NMCRS-volunteer-okay-most-of-the time. I am 4 hours away from finishing the required hours for my Accredited Financial Counselor fellowship. I cannot wait for it to be over so the pressure to finish it is finally off.
No guarantees that I'll get another blog post in under a month, but maybe I'll surprise you (and myself). I will promise to try to do better and taking more pictures so the content for the next blog post, whenever that is, is a little more robust.
Ryleigh had a mini sleepover with a couple of girls from gymnastics to celebrate turning 11 the weekend before her birthday. Indigo and Olivia (Indy and Olive to Ryleigh) came home with her from the gym and immediately dove into pizza. Ryleigh opened her gifts and then the girls noshed on mini bundt cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes. The next morning, the girls had cinnamon rolls, did some canvas art, and carb loaded with pasta for the meet the following day.
On her actual birthday, we "celebrated" by getting flu shots. But, then we ate in a restaurant of Ryleigh's choosing, and she chose a new-ish to Kitsap County pizza place. It was delicious! Ryleigh was a very happy girl. Then we came home to open gifts from the family. Mom and Dad gave Ryleigh a new bike a few weeks ago--it was on sale and we really needed her to try it out to make sure it felt right to her. Everyone else spoiled her rotten on her birthday. Thank you for that!
We actually did do some stuff between RJ's birthday and school starting. I've just neglected keeping up the blog about it. So, here goes the 6-weeks' worth of stuff...
RJ got braces. :)
Gymnastics provided a few challenges to Ryleigh in July. First, she fell off the balance beam, and as she was coming down, her foot smacked the beam. I took her to urgent care a few hours later. Thankfully, it was only a bad sprain. She was on crutches for a couple days, then she got back to it.
But, the injury spooked her a little. And, after a couple of mornings of saying she didn't feel good and volunteering for COVID tests, she finally told me how she was feeling about gymnastics--she wanted to quit. I sent an urgent note to one of her coaches, who happened to be returning from a long weekend in the mountains. Cece sent me lots of positive notes to let Ryleigh read and convinced her to come into the gym for a private lesson with just Cece so they could work on stuff while talking out her feelings. Cece and Ryleigh had a good chat and agreed that gymnastics was actually still awesome, but that Ryleigh was overwhelmed by jumping from Level 4 to Level 6 without mastering Level 5 in the way that Ryleigh likes--Ryleigh likes perfection. So, we agreed to slow it down and let Ryleigh go back to practice with the Level 5 girls, but leave the door open to return to Level 6 at any time. She is still working with Cece on her Level 6 skills, but just during private lessons. The private lessons are also a mental health check for Ryleigh. Ryleigh was a new girl after a couple Level 5 practices. She still learned her choreography for her Level 6 floor routine--after all, I already paid for it. But, she can just hold onto that until she is ready later this year or it can hold until next year. Here she is that day, working on the skill that made her fall off the beam and a front layout. More Skills
Jip got to do some cool stuff in July. Maybe we should call it hot stuff... After the USS Bonhomme Richard caught fire (or was set on fire--it was arson) while in a maintenance period in San Diego in July of 2020, the Navy realized it needed to better coordinate firefighting efforts with multiple agencies and practice the plans. Jip was observing a firefighting drill that had submarine crew members and civilian firefighters working together to put out a fire. Jip was invited to throw on some gear and fight the fire along the sailors. It was an amazingly hot day and the fire was hot, of course. So, it was intense. But, Jip loved the experience and the sailors were all impressed that the Shipyard CO was in the trenches with them.
We haven't been geocaching in forever, so Jip took the kids out at the end of July to look for some hidden stuff in the area.
We also had more tree excitement at the end of July. This time, with no wind or rain or any other weird weather, another branch crashed to the ground. Thankfully, it did not hit a car this time. And, thankfully, no one was out for their evening walk, as it fell across a sidewalk used by lots of neighbors to walk their pups. The sidewalk is also heavily travelled in the daytime, especially at lunch by people looking to stretch their legs.
I begged for the Navy or the Housing Contractor to get an arborist to come out to figure out if something is causing the branches to come down or to do some preventive pruning. Supposedly, they are going to get someone out here, but I'm not holding my breath. I keep reminding them that the either of the branches that have fallen in just a four-month span would have hit our house, the house would not have fared well--and there is a good chance that the people inside of it would not have fared well.
At the end of July, Jip got the honor of attending a Navy boot camp graduation. The Shipyard sponsored a class of recruits. During those weeks in boot camp, senior enlisted members from the Shipyard traveled to the boot camp a couple times to meet with recruits to encourage them and let them hear from people out in the fleet. When it came time for graduation, Jip got to share a couple of meals with the class, present awards to top recruits, and give the graduation speech. If you'd like to watch the graduation, it is on YouTube: RTC Bootcamp Graduation 07292022 You can always fast forward--that's what I did.
And as a bonus, Jip got to say hello to Brad, Danika, Mia, and Jack. The Navy can't seem to station us in the same town, but at least Jip gets to visit every-so-often.
After Jip traveled to DC at the beginning of August, he brought home a gift for himself--COVID. No one else ever tested positive--we tested everyone each day before they had an activity with people. So, Jip got to work from home for four days and he got to sleep with the spiders and whatever else likes to hang out in our basement until he tested negative on Day 13. He made himself a nice little setup, though.
The rest of us were grateful not to get COVID and for Jip to recover when he did so that we could see Hamilton. Jip and I bought the tickets in March and managed to keep it a secret from the kids until the week before--we finally had to tell Ryleigh because she was going to have to leave a birthday party early in order to go. The touring company did a nice job. The acoustics in the old Paramount Theater made it hard to hear some of the rapping/dialog, but thankfully we had all seen it before on Disney+ and Jip and Ryleigh listen to the soundtrack ALL THE TIME, so we got the gist of it.
The last weekend in August we did a little stay-close-to-home-cation. After RJ went to coding, we checked into a hotel in Puyallup, ate dinner, played in the pool, and then headed out for a drive around Mount Rainier early-ish the next morning. You can only drive all the way around Rainier in the summer months due to snow, so we decided to take advantage while we could. The first couple hours of the drive were great--not crowded, cool weather. Then we got to the National Park Service visitors' center closest to the top. Wow. Just wow. So crowded. People were parking a mile plus away and hiking up to the visitors' center. So, Jip dropped the kids and I off in the drop-off zone so we could run in to the center to use the bathroom and get the kids' National Park Passports stamped. Then he circled back around to pick us back up. We parked down the hill from the visitors' center and enjoyed a little lunch out of our cooler. Then the drive down through the main park entrance was crazy busy and crowded. Our choice to go through the back entrance and do it early in the morning was wise--we got to see a lot more than we would have if we had gone the traditional route through the park.
We really packed a lot of stuff in to those last weeks of summer. There were other things, too, like spirit week at the gym and paddle boarding on a random weekend afternoon. But, now it is time to find our grooves as we head into the fall schedule.
The summer flew by! The kids started school before Labor Day this year, giving us a shorter summer than last year. But, the kids were still ready to go back.
RJ changed schools due to lots of changes beyond our control in the school district. The first day was a little tough, but he got through it, and by the end of the week, he was finding his groove.
Because of all the changes in the district, Ryleigh is now part of the oldest group of kids in the building. I think she is secretly enjoying the bump in status.
Just to give you idea of how much can change in a relatively short amount of time... Here are their First Day of Kindergarten pictures versus this year in their "Class of..." shirts.
I am confident this is going to be a great year for both my Best Boy and Best Girl.
When we were planning this year's vacation, the safety and COVID alerts for Mexico had us thinking we needed to implement Plan B--somewhere else. So, after a little research and a lot of planning, we embarked on a giant, road trip through 2 Canadian provinces.
The most painful part of Day 1 was getting through the border and into British Columbia. A website that tracks border crossing times said it should be about 10 minutes to cross. The signs about 10 miles from the border told us to plan on about 20 minutes. Well, either their calculations are way off or we just had bad luck and got behind some vehicles that took way longer than normal. After an hour of baking in the sun while we were in line, we finally made it through. We got grief both on the way in and out of Canada about having Colorado plates though we live in Washington. We explained that military members can keep their license plates where the military lists their residence for tax purposes, but the looks we received in return for that explanation were skeptical, but we must have been somewhat convincing since they let us through.
On Day 2, after playing Holiday Road to get us in the spirit of our Griswold-esque trip, we got the pleasure of getting stuck in a traffic jam. Google Maps showed that the delay was due to an accident, but by the time we finally got through, there wasn't much evidence of that. But, the slowdown helped us out by allowing me to use our intermittent cell phone signal to find a place for lunch. I happened upon a grilled cheese food truck, and we were so glad we did. While the chef was making our order, he directed us to public restrooms next to the town mural that were clean and so unlike anything you would find in the US. Then he pointed us to a park with lots of picnic tables and a spectacular view while we ate our delicious sandwiches. RJ said it is my mission to figure out how the Killa Bs Grilled Cheese sandwiches are made.
That evening, we arrived in Banff (Alberta). One of the primary reasons we chose to stay in Banff was to be in a town that had a Chili's. So, Jip went for a bike ride (and saw a bear) while the kids and I took care of getting Chili's delivered.
The next day, we set out for our longest day. We drove north through Banff National Park and Jasper National Park. We didn't get to see too much wildlife, but there was beautiful scenery and waterfalls everywhere you looked. And yes--that is the real color of the water--the silt left behind by the glaciers makes it that gorgeous blue.
After a stop at a gift shop in Jasper National Park to get matching sweatshirts and then another stop in the town of Jasper for lunch at a waffles place (yum!), we then finished out our day with normal highway speeds as we traveled to Edmonton. In Edmonton, we stayed at the Fantasyland Hotel, which is attached to the West Edmonton Mall. We stayed in a truck-themed room. Jip slept in the bed of the truck, which we guessed was '72 Ford F-100, RJ and I took the bunk beds, and Ryleigh slept in the cab of the truck because she thought the old bench seat was comfortable.
Aside from staying at the crazy hotel, our other objective for going to Edmonton was to do the water park that is also at the mall. It is home to the biggest wave pool in Canada. We rented a cabana, so we wouldn't have to fight for seating, and we are so glad we did--there were lots and lots of school groups there (school was just ending in Alberta), so it was a little nutty.
After leaving Edmonton, we had a leisurely drive through lots and lots of farmland as we headed to Drumheller. When entering the badlands area around Drumheller, you suddenly drop from the flat farms into a valley of crazy cliffs and rocks. In those crazy cliffs and rocks is one of the largest repositories of dinosaur fossils in the world. And, that was why we were there--we wanted to experience the Royal Tyrrell Museum. We wandered through the museum for a few hours, joined a class to make casts of fossils, and joined a class to actually unearth fossils from large blocks of rock that they had brought into the museum.
After we wrapped up at the museum, we went for a drive. We traversed a river on a little 4-car ferry that is operated by the city using weights and pulleys. We enjoyed the largest dinosaur sculpture in the world (supposedly) and some crazy hoodoos.
Our last destination was Kelowna, back in British Columbia. Kelowna and the surrounding area is home to a rails-to-trails bicycle path that is a mixture of paved and not-even-close-to-paved surfaces. Jip rode the entire ride, 50km, which included lots of old train trestles at the beginning of the ride and lots of bumps and knee-high water in the middle. Jip got rained on a bit. Then I brought the kids to a meeting point on the trail so the kids could do the last 20 km with Jip. Thankfully, the rain subsided before the kids had to head down the trail.
We elected to skip the lunch that was provided, but supplemented the fast food we did get with a stop at a roadside fruit stand. The area around Kelowna has lots and lots of apples, peaches, cherries, and grapes--The kids got ice cream and Jip and I enjoyed some very fresh cherries.
And, finally after our week in Canada, we headed home. We returned to the US through a different (and much quieter) border crossing and then drove some Washington roads we've never done before. We did just over 2500 miles on our trip. We lucked out with mostly beautiful weather, good health, and wonderful memories.
