A Day at the Strawberry Farm- or Teaching Children the Value of Education

Last week was our annual trek to Moorpark, to Underwood Family Farms, to pick strawberries. This is one of our favorite spring outings, and we usually go with one of our Co-op classes. The kids get to take a tractor ride out to the fields.

Then we each pick about a pound of strawberries. ALthough I'm sure it's unhealthy in some way (although I'm fairly certain they said these were non-pesticide strawbs), we eat as many as we can handle while we're out there. Surprisingly, Grayson did this most of the time.

Derek was excited to fill his carton!

Grasyon spent a lot of the time squatting and eating.

Then it was back to the rest of the farm for hay bales, dirty animals and tractor climbing! Yee haw! And you thought we couldn't get down on the farm in LA!

Deception Pass and Hurricane Ridge

We ended up at Everett WA on Sunday. We had dinner with Richard and Barbara Ek. The fam visited there 25 years ago on that Yellowstone / Canada trip.

To get there we took the ferry from Port Townsend to Whidby Island. To get off the Island we crossed Deception Pass and a plethora of bridges.

Somehow I resisted the urge to take pictures of the barges being towed through the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

We had a little time in touristy Fort Townsend before we departed. Great Victorian Era city with an updown, a downtown and an "uptown downtown"

Before we caught our Ferry at 12:15 we drove to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic Nat. Park. Snowfields, Glaciers and straightdown drops make it beautiful.

Hello from the Olympic Peninsula

Hi all! We're on the third day of our journey. Made it to the Olympic Peninsula today. We're staying in an RV park in the little village of Sequim ( pronounced Skwim). We took a short hike in part of the National Park and then hiked down to the world's longest sand spit---Dungeness Spit. You take Kitchen Dick road to get there---interesting. A little wind out on the spit. The weather is great, though-----cool but sunny. We'll send more later. Love you all

Beach Day!!!!

When the temperature reaches 101 degrees on April 20 in the Valley, there's only one thing to do- that would be to GET THE HECK OUT! And go to Zuma, of course. It was our first beach trip in quite some time, so the kids were stoked, to say the least. Unfortunately, Carissa and Lee had to go to school. ( I guess there are some advantages to being a stay-at-home-mom, right??)

As usual, there were lots of dolphins passing by pretty much the whole time. They were fairly close. Today we even saw a whale that wasn't too much further out than this. That was pretty cool! Derek, of course, headed straight for the waves.

He was "doing his moves".

He was pretty excited.



Grayson was fairly busy playing with his ladybug...

and digging in the sand.


There was a lot of "sand throwing" at each other

And plenty of boogie board action.

(And yes, I know that those shorts are too small.)

Way to go Derek! No fear this year. Except, of course, for the "meat eating crabs that keep grabbing my feet in the water."

Unfortunately, we had to come home at some time to our triple digit spring.

Monterey Bay Aquarium-Revised Spring Break

After having our long-anticipated "first spring break ever" trip cancelled due to "injury", we decided to head up to Monterey anyway since we had all been looking forward to that so much. We knew we could drag Lee around in a wheel chair for the day and that, other than his pride, it wouldn't injure him further. One great thing about being"handicapped" is that you get to go to the front of all lines, ppl open doors for you, everyone looks like they feel really sorry for you, and you have a good place to put all your stuff. Other than that- it pretty much stinks.There was so much to see and do. We literally spent the entire day there and the kids never tired of it all. It was an absolutely gorgeous Monterey day. We even got Lee out for some fresh sea air.Derek loved the sharks, especially, but doing the stamping craft in the otter exhibit was fun, too! Without a doubt, we spent the most time at the "big tank", watching sharks, Yellowfin Tuna, schools of sardines, sea rays, etc. swim around and around. It was a pleasure for me, considering that last time we were here, Derek was about 3 weeks old, and I spent the entire time in this room nursing him.
Lee mostly had to sit at the back of the room at all the exhibits while I took pictures of him.
I think he got tired of me taking pictures and laughing. I also think the other museum patrons thought I was a heartless wench.
Hey! He made it out of the chair!!!



Grayson pooped out at about 4pm in the seahorse exhibit where we got to see male sea horses giving birth. Yikes!! What a perfect resting spot. Hopefully Lee will recover quickly and this will be our last "wheelchair post".

Passing Time While Mom's in the Shower

Look Mom, fudge stew!

The Red Kitchen

Yup-----red. May not stay this way, but this is it for now.