San Juan Summer

          From about ages 12 to 17, I would spend most of my summer with my parents (and sometimes other family members) on our boat, The Carefree.  We would make the long trip north up the coast of Washington to cruise the waters around Puget Sound and Vancouver Island, Canada.  Boating has always been a special part of my life, and I have really fond memories of those summers.  Of course I liked to complain about how terrible it was to be stuck on a boat for 5 weeks in the middle of nowhere with my parents during my teenage years.  But now that I am a parent, I have a feeling it was a lot harder for them!

          Regardless, one of the areas we first visited was the beautiful San Juan Islands.  Even though they are part of Washington, the islands feel like you are completely away from it all.  As a kid, I took all this Pacific Northwest beauty for granted.  But particularly while I was living in Prague, I felt  homesick for the Northwest and put it on my list of places to visit when we moved back to the States.  Seven years and two kids later ... we get to spend a week in the San Juans!  
          Obviously things have changed a bit since 1988:  my parents have been boating in Mexico for almost 20 years and our family has grown a bit.  :)  So renting a house for a week was the best way to enjoy the islands this time around.  We chose San Juan Island, the most developed island, because there was plenty for us to do, but still get away from it all.  And we invited my parents to join us, since they hadn't been back there in 20+ years either. 

          My parents van was big enough to accommodate all of us and all the stuff we were bringing.   To break up the six hour drive and ferry ride, we drove to Seattle and visited our good friends, Sue and Joe and their baby Brody.  It was great seeing them, and we got to visit Alki Beach, play at a park, and have an wonderful dinner with them.  We drove a bit farther that evening and spent the night in Mount Vernon, Washington, so we could easily catch the ferry from Anacortes to San Juan Island in the morning.  My dad actually lived in Mount Vernon as a kid for a few years, so he enjoyed driving through the old town.

          We got lucky the next day catching an earlier ferry to the island, and we also got really lucky with the weather.  We had clear blue skies and a high of 70 degrees every day.... perfect!  The ferry ride was fun and was nice for the girls to be able to run around.  We found a great house on the water that had room for all of us and space for the kids to explore freely.  I was hoping it would be as nice and relaxing as it looked in the pictures, and it was!  It was so peaceful, the air was so fresh, and I couldn't get over how quiet it was!   You don't really realize how much noise and business is constantly around you, until you get away from it all.  The house was in the woods a bit, and had a long grassy lawn down to Garrison Bay. While we didn't have access to a dock, we could muck around on the shore, watch birds, and enjoy the view of all the boats in the harbor.   We had impromptu soccer games and hide and seek on the lawn, cigars (for the guys) and drinks overlooking the bay, evening deer watching, and nice adult dinners after the girls were in bed.  An added bonus was the owners of the home lived next door and would bring us fresh-baked treats every morning we were there!  The wife is Italian and loves to cook, so we spent one evening at their house at a pizza-making class.  Despite having two active, little girls who keep the same schedule regardless if it's vacation or not, to enjoy all of this for an entire week was such a treat! 

          We did spend a lot of time relaxing at the house, but there was plenty to do on the island, giving us reasons to go on little excursions each day.  We were quite close to charming Roche Harbor.  I remember visiting it when we were on our boat.  The marina has grown dramatically, but the quaint little village looks the same with its main store and old hotel.  We strolled the docks and found many Grand Banks, the type of boat my parents have.  I even saw the marina laundry and showers, where I probably visited back when I was a kid.  We had a terrific lunch, sitting on the deck in the sunshine, overlooking the marina.  July 8 was our 12th wedding anniversary, so Sam made reservations at the fancy restaurant, and we enjoyed a fabulous meal, watching the sun set and the employees do the evening color guard/flag salute.  As they marched out there, music played, a cannon went off, and Sam kept saying it was a little bit like Kellerman's (from the movie Dirty Dancing).  All part of the charm!  Roche Harbor also has a playground and pool (which I never got to visit when I was a kid!), so Sam and I took the girls there later in the week to burn off some energy.

Happy 12th Anniversary!

          Other fun day trips we made were to Lime Kiln Park, a shoreline park where you can watch whales.  We visited the lighthouse, walked along the rocky cliffs, spotted a harbor seal, but didn't spot any whales.  From there, we headed to a lavender farm for a lunch.  Lavender and a picnic: two of my favorite things!  The girls had fun running down the rows of lavender, I loved browsing the shop with every lavender product you could imagine, and we all enjoyed a picnic in the sun.  There was an alpaca farm nearby so that made another little trip with the girls, who were fascinated with these sweet little creatures.  And for a bit of history, we visited the English Camp, where British soldiers had a camp in the mid-1800s while the US and England figured out who would get to own the islands.  Morgan is just starting to get a sense of the "olden days," but it was mainly yet another place for them to run around. 

Whale watching at Lime Kiln Park

At the Alpaca Farm

On vacation you can have ice cream for lunch!

English Camp

Morgan teaches Sasha to make a wish!

          One of my favorite parts of the trip was sea kayaking!  I will kayak any chance I get, and the San Juans are a great place to do it.  While my parents watched the girls, we went out for a few hours with a group and paddled Haro Straights, which several pods of orca whales spend lots of time in throughout the year, but especially the summer.  We were really lucky to have perfect weather and see lots of whildlife.  We spotted a bald eagle, paddled through kelp beds, and watched some seals snoozing in the kelp.  But the highlight was near the end of the tour when we saw a pod of orcas cruise by!  They were pretty far away, but their tall black fins were unmistakable.  

         Wait, just when I think I have covered it all, I remember more things we did or saw!  Like spending time in cute Friday Harbor, the main town on the island.  We did some touristy shopping, ate our share of seafood, and visited the marina where "Popeye" the seal lives.  Morgan got to feed her some fish from the fish market, and we got to eat yummy fresh crab cocktails!  And while I said we had perfect weather, we did until the last night when we had a huge thunderstorm that lasted all night and knocked out the power, which is a petty rare thing for this part of the country.

         
          Honestly, though, the best part was making memories together as a family.  Watching our girls spend time with their grandparents, and seeing my parents get to know the girls better was so perfect.  My dad introduced his famous "1-2-3 toss you into bed" trick that he did with me when I was a kid.  The girls loved that, of course, and Sasha kept asking "three?"  My mom did puzzles with Morgan and looked for animals outside (including banana slugs).  Morgan was more adventurous than I gave her credit for.  She loved mucking around on the shore during low tide and catching hermit crabs with me.  She didn't mind holding them, and named the first one we caught "Ron Holloway"!  Sasha was full of toddler energy and laughing all the time.  She turned into a natural comedian with her grandparents as a perfect audience.  She also learned to express herself, talking more, and even shouting "No!" when things weren't going her way.  Traveling with kids is getting easier, I think, probably because I have adjusted my expectations to make sure we all have a good vacation!

Our week in the San Juan Islands was all that I was hoping for and much more.  Not only did it offer so many new and wonderful memories as a family, but it also brought back many old ones.  I suppose the only thing missing was the Carefree.  So while we didn't get to explore the water on a boat, everything seemed very familiar and comforting to me:  the intense green of the forests, the endless coves and inlets, the salty-diesel smell of the docks, and the peace and quiet of being away from civilization.  Only this time...it was all my idea!

Fourth of July Fun!

I seem to say this a lot, but our celebrations of various holidays seem to keep evolving as kids enter our lives and grow up.  Holidays are an important part of our lives (and our culture), so keeping up with the traditions and making new ones is important as a family.  And it's also a lot of fun.  Fourth of July is one of those holidays that is getting to me more fun as the girls get older.  This year, like last year, we went to our friends house in Beaverton for a nice lunch and to watch their little neighborhood parade.  The weather was perfect and the girls had fun playing with the other kids.  Sasha loved the motorcycles and fire trucks and managed not to poke her eye out with a flag!

Later that day, after some power napping by all of us, we went to another party at our neighbors.  We brought some new neighbors to our friends house so their little boy could meet other families, and the kids entertained themselves all afternoon.  A bouncy house helped, and Sasha absolutely LOVED it!  She was giggling so hard and bouncing all around - super cute! 

The sun finally got (sort of) low enough in the sky to start some fireworks for the kids, so we lined them all up on the curb and lit off some fireworks in the street.  I loved that the kids were impressed with all the lame legal fireworks.  This was Morgan's first real time getting to stay up late enough to watch them, especially up close. Sam had taken Sasha home and I got to stay and chat with the other parents while we watched our kiddos ooh and aah over explosive things.  It felt very American!

I was impressed with Morgan who was going strong til after 9pm.  But I think I should have taken her home a little earlier because she did a double somersault down our friends concrete steps as a grand finale!  I watched it all happen, as if in slow motion, and was amazed when all she ended up with was a few scratches.  She must be part superhero!

Exploring Motherhood Without Children 2012

My best friend, Naomi, and I are both stay-at-home mothers, and we always seem to be talking (more like fantasizing) about taking a trip together and getting away from it all.  Somehow in the past six months we came up with the brilliant idea to finally do it!  Of course we could always come up with a million reasons why we shouldn't do it and how we can't justify the time away, but we realized that it was time to move our wishes to the very top of the never-ending to-do list.  That, and the fact both our husbands travel a fair amount for work has left us a little grumpy.  While we have terrific husbands (I'll get to that later), we can't help but be jealous of the work travel they do: visiting different cities, staying in hotels, air travel completely alone, and eating out at new restaurants. It gets old for them and is mostly work meetings, but we all know that they really do have some fun and secretly relish getting away from the kids, while we do double duty at home and dream about a day when there is no laundry or dishes or someone arguing with every single thing we say!

So, after some back and forth phone calls about where to go and what to do, we settled on Austin, Texas!  While we dreamed about escaping to some dramatic locale, like Mexico or Hawaii or New York City, the logistics were impossible.  But the Texas trip that we planned would work and had a bit of everything:  All-America road trip, some shopping, some history, dining out, spa treatments, lots of pool time, hiking, star gazing, urban kayaking, cocktails, and lots of uninterrupted time to hang out together.  So, a couple weeks ago I flew to Dallas where Naomi lives, we drove four hours to Austin, spent some time exploring the city, then headed out of town 20+ miles to a wonderful resort for two nights.  It turned out we planned the trip really well, with a few scheduled activities and the rest open to whatever we felt like doing.

During the journey, Naomi and I came up with the brilliant idea that this trip was essentially our "business trip," our professional development conference where we learn new ways to do our job better and inspire our day-to-day performance at "work."  To make it official, we named our conference "Exploring Motherhood Without Children," and with a fair amount of sarcasm in our voices, we went about discussing the different "seminars" we were participating in (or not participating in) and reflecting on the deep meaning that they brought to our lives.  (See, we are such great moms that we take our jobs so seriously, even we are on vacation!)  So, here are some of the seminars and "key learning" that we took away from the 1st Annual EMWC Conference (a.k.a. my awesome trip with my best friend!)

*  It's OK to run away from home sometimes.  Traveling by myself was quite surreal.  I tiptoed out of my house at 4 in the morning feeling like I was on the lam, leaving my husband and kids to fend for themselves.  For at least the first day I constantly felt like I had lost or was missing something, and going through security at the airport and flying completely alone was SO easy.  It was a luxury to have that much time to read, nap, stare, think.  I had very little baggage...both literal and figurative. 

*  Heat things up!   It was about 100 degrees every day I was in Texas so it actually felt like a real vacation since summer has yet to really begin here in Oregon.  It was pretty intense, but considering we were able to spend a lot of it in a pool, it wasn't too bad!

*   Get out of your comfort zone.  Texas is a bit like being in a different country because it is so different than the Pacific Northwest.  With the heat, humidity, and crazy bugs, I was starting to wonder if I was still in the US.  I heard the buzz of cicadas that was even louder than I remember in the south of France, creepy Junebugs that aren't as cute as their name sounds, and crickets that were everywhere you stepped!  While I was also on the lookout for snakes (many which are poisonous), I was also treated to lots of pretty butterflies, cardinals, and white egrets.

*  Don't underestimate the power of the Road Trip!  There is something exciting and fun about heading out on the open highway that can't compare to flying in a plane.  But as a parent of young children, the thought of "road trip" sounds more like a nightmare.  But Naomi and I loved traveling in a non-mom vehicle (thanks Alex!), singing along to songs, stopping when we felt like it, having HOURS to talk (or not) to each other, ... and there was no whining, bathroom accidents, or craning around to pass/retrieve things from the back seat!  

Me, the Czech flag, and the kid selling lemonade

*   Take time to stop and smell the kolaches.  In an all-American moment, we stopped at a tiny town just off the freeway called West, Texas.  It was founded by Czechs in the 1800s and their cultural pride has remained.  It was pretty surreal to see Czech flags flying next to Texas flags smack dab in the middle of the state. We tried their famous "kolaches," a doughy roll filled with fruit or meat, and cups of 70 cent coffee at the cute little bakery.  But I knew I wasn't in the Czech Republic because people we so nice and friendly - glad to see that part of the culture didn't stick.     

Down home charm at the Village Bakery

*  Shop outside the (big) box.  Exploring Austin was really fun, and we stopped spontaneously at the Capitol and wandered around the stately (and air conditioned) building (for the record, I heard crickets in the Senate chambers).  It wasn't Florence's Duomo but it reminded me of all those old churches I toured in Europe.  Then we explored SoCo, the South Congress neighborhood full of funky shops with antiques, cowboy boots, and hipster clothes.  Having a leisurely adult lunch and a couple hours to browse shops that contained many fragile items is a luxury we rarely (never?) seem to get.  I'm so used to impulse shopping because I don't know when my kids will meltdown, and of course I"m always at a big box store so I only have to make one stop.  Breaking out of that routine was so refreshing!

Allen's Boot Shop in Austin

Hiking along the Colorado River (Texas version)

*  Get in touch with the nature, Part 1: Hiking  We spent two nights at a Hyatt Resort outside of Austin that was fabulous.  In fact, I was thankful for the trips Sam makes and the points he has earned at Hyatts.  We used some points to upgrade ourselves to the "Club" level, where we could use the lounge that had breakfast, snacks, and drinks all day.  Anyway, after a yummy breakfast where we could drink our coffee with no one talking back, we went for a hike in the adjacent Nature Park.   I was on the lookout for the aforementioned bugs and snakes, but all we saw were a few sweet little deer and one enormous pecan tree.  Whew!  Hiking is something I rarely do anymore, and I really miss it.  We only went a couple of miles (and it was already close to 90 degrees that morning), but it was so nice to get outdoors and hit the trail....with no whining allowed!

Ready, set, paddle!

*  Get in touch with the nature, part 2: Kayaking   At many professional development meetings or retreats, employees participate in some kind of team-building/character-challenging exercises.  You could call our kayaking adventure that portion of our trip. Our second night away we went in to Austin to kayak on Ladybird Lake and observe the largest colony of Mexican free-tailed bats as they make their nightly exit to catch insects.  Our tour guide was kind of an idiot and there were some entertaining folks on our tour, but it was a fun adventure.  Nearing sunset, we headed out paddling into the blazing, bright sun (it was 8pm and still 97 degrees), for a much farther paddle than we envisioned.  But it was pretty cool to be paddling right into downtown Austin.  The bats nest under the Congress Avenue bridge during the summer, and not only did we hear their little squeaks as we waited for the sunset but we could smell (and feel) their "guano."  They were tough to see because they didn't fly out until it was nearly dark, but we did see them and made the long paddle back to the dock at night!  While we were mainly worried about the family in our tour who had disappeared (they turned up at the end), we didn't anticipate Naomi's camera (or the lower half of her body) sitting in a puddle of water for two hours!  

Austin skyline at night and the Congress Ave. Bridge

*  Get in touch with nature, Part 3: Stargazing  I'm not sure if a man-made "lazy river" in a resort pool is considered a part of nature, but when you are floating along with the current gazing up at the dark, star-filled sky, I think it's pretty close.  That was how we spent our first night at the resort (until they kicked us out of the pool at 10pm) and it was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip!

*  It's important to spend time with other adults (i.e., at the adult pool).   I'm not usually one who can sit and lay by a pool, but because it's such a rare occurrence, I took full advantage of it. We also took advantage of the excellent poolside service and tasty cocktails.  I can't really explain it, but those drinks tasted so much better when I was sitting by (or floating in) the adult pool!

That perfect lazy river!

Motherhood should always be this relaxing!

*  Overindulgence is important after years of sacrifice.  While a massage when you're already feeling relaxed, or another cocktail when you already feel pretty happy may seem overindulgent, it actually isn't when you can't remember the last time you put exactly what you want before anyone else.  And knowing that it was all going to come to an end rather quickly, left me with no guilt.  

Cheers for adult pools...and really great husbands!

*  Talk to someone who is actually listening.  Naomi and I try to talk regularly, but with our kids' schedules and the two-hour time difference, we really only talk a couple times a month.  We seem to be getting better at that lately, but it was such a treat to have uninterrupted hours, ... no, make that DAYS, to chat about whatever we wanted.  Music, running, inside jokes, sleeping, aging, our marriages, our bodies, our houses, our sisters, going back to work, staying home, and a lot about our kids.  It's easy to get lost in motherhood and forget who you were before it all began and who you are apart from your children, so we both found ourselves wondering what is next for us as our kids get older and this job continues to evolves.  

*  Marry the right person.  I'm not sure how Naomi and I knew what we were doing, but we both seemed to know who we wanted to marry right around the time we turned the legal drinking age.  That boggles my mind, but I know we are both thankful for our supportive, hard-working, and thoughtful husbands who make the job of being a stay-at-home mother much easier.  Thanks, Alex and Sam, for watching the kiddos so we could make this trip happen!

I think these smiles speak for themselves!

*  Money can definitely buy some happiness, but time with your best friend is priceless.   A family friend commented on a Facebook photo of Naomi and I that we are "like sisters who grew up in different houses."  It is so true.  Yet Naomi and I have not spent this much time together probably since our senior year in high school.  That was 19 years ago.  Nineteen years!  But being together for four days straight was so easy and relaxing because we know each other so well and are so similar.  I couldn't ask for a better traveling partner, and I see many adventures ahead for us!  

And while it will likely be a very long time until we can do something like this again, being able to look back at these photos and remember the fun, laughter (I haven't laughed that hard in a long time!), and the much-needed break we had will sustain both of us on those crazy parenting days and nights ahead!