I am currently on a mini four day vacation in Seattle visiting with my sister and her family. And like life it’s been somewhat imperfect, yet still fun.
We decided we would rent canoes over at the University of Washington, but it turns out we were not the only ones to come up with this fabulous idea. The harried looking canoe-checker-outer woman informed us that it would be at least a two hour wait.
Yeah . . . that wouldn’t probably be a good idea to sit in the hot sun for hours with four progressively cranky kids. So we walked the twenty minutes back to my sister’s house to regroup and come up with a new plan.
My brother-in-law Dmitry has a small sailboat, so we bullied him into taking us out onto Lake Washington despite his insistence that there wasn’t enough wind. And you know what? There wasn’t enough wind.
So we took the boat back into dock and I bought popsicles for a number of cranky people, both large and small.
But the day was not a total bust. We stopped at the Medrona Farmer’s market on the way home and bought a couple pounds of cherries and enjoyed a nice long (shady) walk in the Arboretum.
Dinner was a barbeque of yummy sausages enjoyed with the company of my old college chum Ed.
Tomorrow will hopefully not be so thwarted, but I’m not worried. My sister and I plan on waking early and sneaking out to Goodwill before everyone is up. (The child-free aspect of this journey will greatly increase the enjoyment.)
But no freaking way am I even going to entertain the thought of getting in a boat. That, I believe is cursed.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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I am from Hawaii and when we were teens we used to picnic on a friend’s (still tied up) sailboat. Even though we didn’t take it out (not allowed yet without a knowledgable grown up) it was really fun and different…The early invention of the “staycation”!
I’ve done the canoe at the University of Washington thing (that’s my alma mater, go Huskies!) and trust me, it gets pretty hairy. If you’re trying to paddle your way from the rental place to the Arboretum, you have to cross the Montlake cut, which is a very busy waterway filled with boats large and small, motorized and otherwise. I thought we were goners on numerous occasions. This was 20 years ago and I’ve never been brave enough to try it again!
I hope the rest of your vacation goes better. Was it hot enough for you today? 🙂 It was way too hot for us at our 4th of July celebration…
I hope you and your sister have fun Katy. I sure miss my sister and can’t wait to see her. Nothing like sisters….
My friends and I had an ice cream social for the 4th. It was a lot of fun–cheap, relaxed, close by, and cool (we stayed inside in air-conditioning, not bothered by the record high heat). I doubt if I’ll feel like eating ice cream again for a very long time, though!
So have you hit up the goodwill *outlet* store down in SODO (6th and holgate, i believe) yet? Really, you should try to get there. Kids books are something like 20 cents, clothes are sold by the pound. It’s hit and miss, but a lot of fun.