low tide.

today was one of the lowest tides of the year in the Puget Sound area. my friend robyn invited us to go to the beach with her and her clan; her mom has a condo right on the water with a private beach and so we went over there to explore what there was to be found. there were TONS of cool sea critters; crabs and sea stars and geoducks and sea anemone and sea cucumbers.......here are a few pics from our adventures today.


one of the only pics with austin in it. apparently he is too cool to actually be interested in this lame stuff. even though any other time (when there aren't other people around) he would be totally interested.


katie, ever, ona and decker examining a sea star.


sea star


sam and leona


sam and ona looking at a crab.


samuel exploring.


he's looking at me.....


me holding mr. krabs


katie and samuel, with the beautiful manette bridge in the background


samuel, about to poke a crab


everleigh and katie


katie, the girl who picks up giant slugs all the time, was afraid to touch the sea star.





sam and i

why knot?

i am so excited about my latest sewing project.....i have been wanting to try a knot dress forever. i finally picked up some cheap fabric to experiment with and i *love* how it turned out. i loved it so much that i needed to make some matching capris to go with it. the dress is a little big, especially with the capris underneath....i wish you could see the capris more. i may hem the dress a lil' more to make that happen. i used the indygo juction sister's smock pattern for the dress, and the boutique bottoms pattern.

a blustery day.

we had some pretty intense winds monday. i came home from taking austin to scouts and this was what greeted me out back.







thank goodness it didn't get the house....don't think it was heavy enough to do damage to the siding, but it definitely could've broken a window. it took out one of our tiki torches, and broke the latch on the gate and one of the post caps. i heaved them back over the fence into the forest and when austin got home he cleaned up the rest of the little branches and leaves.

14 years.

(and two days since i'm a slacker.)

my baby was born. happy (belated) birthday austin!

an overview :: our day in 250 words.

we started the day with coffee at tiff's. friends for katie to play with at coffee have become scarce since almost our entire original group has moved away. it is usually katie and a couple babies. she has decided that tiffany's baby, gabby, makes an awesome doll, and she likes to lead her around and sit her in her lap and read to her.....they were so stinkin' adorable today. we came home when austin got home from school to pick him up, then we headed over to the kitsap kid's playground (also known as the "castle park") where we met up with heidi, steven and sophie. that made both austin and katie happy :D we left just in time to take austin to karate, and then we met up with heidi and her kids again at mcdonald's for dinner. samuel fell asleep on the way home and was *not* pleased with me when i had to wake him up for a bath before bed. and katie fell asleep on the couch before i could even tuck her in. gotta love these beautiful warm spring days, where the kids can run free outside and get all tuckered out!

tomorrow does not look like it will be quite as nice as today, but it shouldn't be too bad. gonna go for a run with heidi at the Y in the morning, and then maybe take the bremerton/port orchard foot ferry over the the port orchard farmer's market, whose grand opening for the season is tomorrow.

i'm famous.

last weekend we went to several rummage sales; including the one held by austin's boy scout troop at the VFW (where i scored 3 gymboree blankets for $2.00, wooot!) we also went to the RAGS (Rotary Annual Garage Sale) held at the fairgrounds. while we were perusing the goods, some strange guy started snapping pics of us. i guess i must've given him my "what the heck're you doing?!" look, because he came over and told me he was with the Central Kitsap Reporter and that i had such adorable kids and could he put our pic in the paper? why, of course! why didn't you say so! now i need to go get my hands on a hard copy.

signs of warmer weather.

*walks on the beach*
*wearing capris*
*new growth in the garden*
*garage sales galore*
*the ice cream man*
*driving with the windows down*
*driveway doggy baths*


the weather here has been absolutely gorgeous lately. we've been spending lots of time outdoors....working in the yard, going for walks around the block, and visiting some local area beaches. a couple we've been to this week are shine tidelands state park and anna smith children's park. missy loves the beach, and went swimming despite the frigid water temps. brrrr. this of course meant she required a *bath*, not one of her favorite activities (despite her love of swimming in the water, go figure.) we usually take her to naturally 4 paws, they have an awesome self-service grooming center.....but when we got there discovered the grooming stations were closed due to their spring fair. ugh. so we had to resort to a driveway bath. which wouldn't have been bad had it been a ~little~ warmer. she was a trooper though; and she got lots of extra doggie treats afterwards.