Three of our four grandsons arrived by train early yesterday evening (July 16, 2010) from Portland. It's their first trip by train by themselves and our first time to have them for a visit without their parents present.
Every trip off this island, of course, begins with a ferry line so that's where we will begin our journey.
Ferry lines are never really a problem if you bring lots of good reading material, especially in the summer time when the tourists make the lines inordinately long...
Next year Logan will be old enough to allow them to all ride the train even closer to Anacortes for pick up.
Amtrak regulations force them to disembark at Evertt now until one of them is 15 years old. At age 15, that child is considered old enough to allow him to be responsibile enough to disembark with younger children at a station where a station master may not be present. At this time, the next train stop closer to us cannot guarantee that a station master will be present at the time they arrive, so Evertt was our pick up stop by default this frist time.
Since we had to spend the night on the mainland anyway in order to pick them up, we decided it was time to finally see the Boeing Flight Center. Today we had the privilege of taking them on a tour of the Boeing Everett Plant and saw the new giant 787 in production!
Gary's father worked for Boeing all his life, the last 11 years at the Everett plant itself, making a two hour commute each way by shuttle bus from South of Seattle. However, Gary had never visited the Everett plant himself so it was a thrill today to visit the plant for the first time in the company of three of the grandsons.
Loren retired from Boeing in 1976. One of the last projects he supervised was the creation of the "passenger comfort services" section of the interior of the 747, i.e. the galleys, restrooms and passenger seats.
In the above photo they stand in front of a video panel telling the roll-out story of the 747.
but they had a great time!
A flight simulator is in the left of this photo. You can take a ride and pilot your own Barn Storming plane of a by-gone era.
(above) Here they have climbed inside flight simulator that rocks and rolls while you are locked inside as though in the pilot's seat of an early barnstorming plane.
The door is locked for 5 minutes and there is no escape for the seasick.
Here they come staggering out.
At the Visitors Center they had created various simulated sections of the 787 that you could enter. I must say, there is a lot more head room in this new plane! Hopefully more leg room and seat room too.
(below) They asked for volunteers to help hold up a section of the plane so all four boys jumped at the chance.
Logan standing next to some of the landing gear of the 787.
Below, Conner has just thrown a boomerang, but somehow I didn't capture it in the photo. On the next throw it went into the parking lot and did not come back so we figured it was really a frisbie that escaped under the auspice of pretending to be a bommerang.
can't keep up with us!
When the cats away the mice are gonna PLAY!! That's a given! Right? Uh, this gang was too pooped to stay awake.....until we arrived at the Berry Barn, that is.
This time a year there is a Berry Produce Stand at least every mile along almost any road that gets any traffic at all!
And of course, ice cream always goes great with berries! As does PIE! We brought two pies home. We''ve gone thru one Marionberry pie already!
As we waited in the ferry line to return home, the boys asked to go down to the shore. The next thing I knew they were high up in an old tree and calling to me!
Today we'll go to the grocery store to get all the ingredients to bake chocolate chip cookies. Oh yes, and all the nutritious stuff we decided upon for our meals.
It is 9:30 and they are still sound asleep! Guess we wore them out yesterday. Come to think of it, Grandpa is kind of tuckered today too but he stayed up late last night meeting deadlines and got up at 7 this morning to meet another deadline. Their day will come!
The guys all played cards right after breakfast. Grandpa happily joined them. Cards are second only to BERRIES in the Alexander lineage.
We all went to the grocery store about 11:00. Logan didn't look so hot by the time we got home. Sure enough by about 2pm he said he didn't feel well....chills, achey,etc. Got out the thermometer. Hmmm 99.4. Mingma gave him some liquids and had him lay down for a couple of hours.
At 4pm we drove to the radio station for about 15 minutes to watch Gary do his radio show. Each of the boys had a chance to introduce a CD on the air.
The boys had all wanted to go to the school football field to fly their airplanes but Logan simply wasn't up to it so the boys stayed only 30 minutes.
Somehow the boomerang wound up on the roof of the school at one point but a kindly painter got it down for us. Kind of humorous since we had gone to the school in the first place to avoid the roof of our house. (Trevor had to climb up the ladder twice at the house to get an airplane off the roof.)
The School has some amazing climbing equipment that the boys were immediately taken with.
This first piece was controlled by shifting your body weight from one side to the other to make it spin.
If two people get on, then you have to cooperate to make it spin.
Conner thought it was the coolest school playgorund he had ever seen and said "It must be pretty cool to go to school here on Lopez. I think I might even like it."
Trevor was amazed that there were fewer kids in the whole school than the total in just all the 6th grade classes alone in his school last year.
The last exertion of the day before heading home was poured into a wrestling match over who was going to have last control of the boomerang before heading for the car.
I witnessed all four grandsons take each other on in wrestling last fall in the school field across from Sarah's place. It was pretty amazing because it was not that long after Conner's 2nd surgery of the second bone graft from the hip to the dental arch.
But boy, he is one scrappy bundle of wirey engery when it comes to wrestling! And he is quick!
Once again Conner ultimately won after a very tough struggle.
Once again, though slighter in build and much lighter in weight than his cousin, he demonstrated incredible determination and tenacity and prevailed.
WOW! The day has flown by!
WEDNESDAY MORNING - Making French Toast
I forgot to take photos of their preparing dinner the first night they were with us....skinning the chicken, then "painting" the chicken with BBQ sauce, slicing the potatoes and then "painting" them with olive oil and sprinkling them with a few spices before popping them in the oven to bake.
Here they are making French Toast one morning. They did a great job. Logan had wisely suggested Hazelnut Bread for the recipe.
They did all the kitchen chores -- both cooking and cleaning -- with great enthusiasm. We had GREAT FUN! I shared with them how my siblings and I were taught by our father and mother all our lives to work as a team and that I still love to work with my siblings today in that same way.
That it is one of the reasons why family reunions are so much fun...because we know how to work as a team. And we tried to bring up our children the same way. Everyone has assigned meal chores and clean-up during our family reunions and you can sign up with whichever team you want. Now we're passing it on to the 3rd generation.
After the kitchen was cleaned up, I took them to the climate controlled storage shed where most of the family history is kept. Here they were delighted to see albums with their names printed on the spines.
They gleefully pulled them off the shelf and spread them out to read. Their comments and rememberances were priceless. It would have been awesome to have had a tape recorder running!
Somehow the camera got into their hands and soon gorey pictures galore began to appear for this blog.
TREVOR tries to sneak up on the Easter Bunny.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON - BACK AT THE SCHOOL
I gave them a choice of going to one of their favorite climbing spots near the beach or to the school. They chose to go back to the school. Since Logan had been sick the day before, he was more than game for this choice.
You'd think there would be an easier way to take a nap!
The school started a gardening program a couple of years ago. The students have been involved from the ground up. It has been a wonderful practical learning experience for them.They even built a pond.
Wonder if the students ever got to drive the back-hoe?
THURSDAY MORNING - TIME TO HEAD HOME
The guys had a 5:30 wake-up call to catch the 6:10 ferry.
They kind of dozed on the ferry back to the mainland.
They were reasonably awake by the time we reached the train station having consumed their breakfast goodies from Holly Bees Bakery, a reknowned Pacific Northwest bakery right here on Lopez Island.
I was glad Gary was able to make the time to go with me to pick up the guys. I think they enjoyed each others company more this visit than any other time because Gary spent so much time with them.
