North, South, East, West

Here is a catch up blog on all of our activities in the past couple weeks. First, we went up north to Skeeter Island (aka Lopez Island). While it was great to see my mom and Al, the skeeters were bad. Real bad. From the moment we opened up the van door, several zoomed inside just smelling the fresh cityfolk meat. We got bitten immediately. We had to jump out of the van, grab Zo, grab our stuff, and high-tail it inside Grandma’s house. We hung out for a while, getting out the skeeter repellent and “stop the itchies” stuff.

Later we ran out to the van and drove over to the Lopez Farmers Market and looked around, showing off Zoey to Grandma Arlene’s friends. Murphee was a good girl and walked along with us, trying to bite all the bees that were around. We ended up with some yummy foccacia and fresh salmon, caught that morning (the fish, not the bread). We headed back to Grandma’s and had some lunch. We pretty much stayed inside for the rest of the day to try and not get bit.

About 30 skeeter bites per adult later (Zoey didn’t get bitten at all!), we decided us city folk couldn’t handle the skeeters any longer, so we left early Sunday morning. We headed to the Burlington outlet mall, ’cause you always gotta check out what Carter’s has going on for baby clothes.

From there, we headed northeast to Bellingham/Sudden Valley. After a couple quick calls to find out Grandpa Lou’s number and to get directions (yeah, we totally forgot to bring all that–oops), we hung out in Bellingham and cruised through one of my alma maters, Western Washington University. Marrowstone Music Festival was going on and we saw a lot of kids heading toward the music building ready for their concert.

On to Lou and Rachel’s new pad. First of all, it is really nice in Sudden Valley, 8 miles due east of Bellingham. There is so much lush vegetation, and Lake Whatcom is right there and the roads are nicely paved. It was a very smooth ride. We found Lou and Rachel’s place among the sweet street names like Strawberry court and Huckleberry Lane. Then, the wacky ones (when they decided they really like it) like Creekside Court, Creekside Place, Creekside Lane, and Creekside Circle, all of which are all right next to each other! But, oh the trees, and it smelled so wonderful, and NO SKEETERS! Their new house was great! Very roomy and Lou had his whole library stocked. We had a very nice dinner and headed to bed.

The next day, we headed back out to Bellingham and walked around campus to talk and think about a new interesting idea. What if we moved to Sudden Valley? Three bedroom homes with unfinished basements for about $175K? Interesting. We jotted down a lot of pros and cons. A lot of pros and a lot of cons. I won’t go into it all here, but the pros were winning. A lot to think about.

We thought about it all the way through dinner and the drive home. And we are still thinking about it. But for our wonderful friends here (and yes, moving away from you guys was on the cons list with a high value mark) this wouldn’t happen for a good 6-12 months from now. But if we decide to do it we will have a very nice guest room!

In other news, Zoey had some more new food. We gave her quinoa cereal. She was okay with it, but not excited. No allergic reation, though. Then, two days ago, we tried out applesauce. “No Way!”, Zoey said. The look on her face was absolutely hysterical. There was no mistaking that she did not like applesauce. I think it was a little too sour for her, so we will be bringing it back in another couple weeks. We had some more avocado yesterday and she ate more of it than before. Yummy! The next food we are going to try in a couple more days will be squash. We have to wait until we are sure she is not allergic to applesauce. So far, so good.

In athletic news, Zoey can now (as of this morning) get herself to a sitting position from a hands and knees position! Wahoo! Way to go Zo! No crawling yet. She can get around just fine by rolling. She has discovered the dvds and cds on the lower shelves. She is also doing very well at swimming! We have had two lessons so far. There are fun songs like “The Wheels on the Bus” and “The Hokey Pokey”. Zoey was kicking and splashing and drinking up the yummy chlorine water. (Ooops.) But she didn’t cry once! I think Daddy is enjoying himself, too! The first lesson they learned blowing bubbles under water (Daddy did that for Zoey). The second lesson was about floating on your back and on your tummy. Zoey is very bouyant, I am told. She did very well.