I apologize for taking such a long time to post anything on the website. It’s been an especially busy last couple of weeks, and weekend before last we stayed in town and didn’t do anything really interesting (at least interesting enough to write about!).
So what have we been up to? Well life in general is the same – I’ve been busy doing school work for my Masters classes. Tobin has now finished out Summer School, so now he has a few weeks of summer. Of course I’m still working (always am). Nice though, ‘cause work just hired someone to help me, so now I can get back to managing the websites more rather than working with the emails.
Last weekend we went to Ephrata – or tried to go anyways. Have you ever had a trip or a vacation – or a time that was scheduled to be relaxing – that just ended up not being as relaxing as you were hoping for? Or a trip that just maybe shouldn’t have happened? Well last weekend was starting to feel that way. On Thursday before last weekend, the sunroof in the Bimmer decided to stop working. I figured it hopped the track, so I decided we’d see if Daddy could fix it in Ephrata, since we were headed that way anyways. Well to make a very long story short, on Friday, we made it to the summit before we had to turn around due to the engine & transmission lights coming on (the car’s scheduled at Seattle BMW this Friday). I hope they can fix that car – I really do like that car and don’t want to be forced to sell.
Stephen and Heather were headed to Ephrata as well last weekend, so while all this was going down with the Bimmer, we called and pleaded with them to take us (they did). After initially leaving Seattle at 2:30 pm, we finally made it to Ephrata by about 11:45…
Saturday we wanted to take the boats out, so we took both (Big Red and the Cat) to Moses. It was super windy so we knew from the start we wouldn’t be doing much but tubing behind Big Red. But the guys were super excited for the wind – Stephen had brought along his GPS so they’d be able to see how fast they were going. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Cat setup time is not small in calm conditions – and the wind certainly didn’t help. Partway into the process we broke a bolt, that Daddy had to run into town to buy. So maybe it took us 2½-3 hours to set that thing up. You have to understand too, that our experience with boating has been to pull up, take the cover off, throw the ice chest in the boat, and back it in. This Cat is a lesion in patience for all of us!
We FINALLY got the boats in the water – and then things got a lot better. Stephen ran a Pirate flag up to the top of the Cat and then he, Tobin and Daddy played the part of pirates whenever they were within earshot of Big Red (all the ladies stayed in the ski boat for most of the day). Believe it or not, they got that Cat going 11 mph with the three of them on it. When Tobin jumped off, they got up to 13 mph. That’s pretty fast! Everyone got to ride on the Cat ‘cept Mommy & Heather (though Heather rode it a bunch 2 weeks before). It was pretty sweet. Stephen got the diapers figured out (they’re basically super uncomfortable harnesses that you wear to suspend yourself over the water), and so that was pretty cool. The unfortunate thing was that the trampoline tore out (we knew it would only be a matter of time). I think that a new one is already on order though.
So all in all, the day on the water was fun. We didn’t do any skiing – I think we did pull Tobin on the tube just a little bit. I took a bunch of pictures, but they didn’t turn out as well as the ones turned out 2 weekends before – as it was a bit of a blustery day. Not all calm and glassy like before!
Fast forward to Sunday. We went to church, ate lunch, hung out and then picked up Daddy’s OTHER Catamaran (yes he has two). I should mention that Stephen and Heather were driving Heather’s parent’s suburban, pulling a Catamaran trailer they bought off Craigslist a few days ago. It took a little longer than expected to get the Cat all situated on the trailer (we went in and visited with Grandpa who wasn’t feeling too well). Then we finally left around 5:30 or so. It was windy which isn’t too much fun to pull a trailer in. Vantage was super bad. In fact it was super windy from Ephrata to about Cle Elum. When we got to about Easton it started to rain and when Stephen went to turn on the windshield wipers, they moved about an inch and stopped. Not cool. We ended up driving to the summit (what is it about our luck with the Summit?), without windshield wipers (and pulling a trailer), where we gassed up the Suburban (again), and Stephen fiddled around with the wipers ‘till they worked. Well the wipers stopped a few times after that, but we got smart and left them going constantly to give them less chance of binding (or whatever was happening). What an adventure!!! We made it to Stephen and Heathers at around 10 I think, and then Tobin and I drove home in the Brown Bomber.
What a weekend!!! It had its fun elements but unfortunately a lot of stress made it’s way in too. To compound everything that I’ve just mentioned, I had a pretty large amount of homework that was due at the beginning of this week. Come on! Summer’s supposed to be relaxing! :-) Oh well. We’ve had an awesome summer so far – in a way I’m glad that all the things that seemed to go wrong this weekend happened on one weekend rather than spacing themselves out over the summer!
Well anyways, now Stephen has a Cat. He’s got some work to do on it – but at least he’s got a working Pirate flag! Oh and he’s got several Pirate hats on order. Now we just need to buy a ski boat and a truck (hey we’re looking!). Speaking of Pirates, I’ll leave you with this shirt ML found that I’m thinking we might have to buy for sailing. And if you really want to you can buy a similar one here.
Bye for now, Tammie