whale waiting

There are so many pictures and too many thoughts rushing through my head to explain what has been going on at our house these past two weeks.  As some of you know, our oldest daughter was here visiting from Germany.  You might be thinking.... oldest?!? Yes, she biologically isn't mine but she might as well be.  She fits into our family as if she was always meant to be here.  She has her own life now and her own way of doing things but when she is with us... she weaves into our lives and goes with the flow.  She gets us.  She doesn't question what we do, how we do it or why we do it.  She does it right along with us.

Lina's visit brought days of laughs, shopping, love, hair brushing, tons of pictures, food, cash prizes and so many moments I had to sit back and soak up because I knew she would be gone faster then when she got here.  We don't have pictures of EVERYTHING we did but I have a few hundred or so of the things we wanted to capture the most: pumpkin carving and whale watching.

:: Gizdich Farms

We traveled north with a group of our friends, of course, to pick out the perfect pumpkin.  The pumpkin patch really wasn't a patch but a small spot in their fields with already picked pumpkins.  It was perfect enough for a distracted two year old.  Izzy really didn't pick out her pumpkin... I did while she played in the dirt and threw rotten apples in the ditch.  Lina picked the biggest pumpkin we have ever carved.  We ended the afternoon with a picnic and homemade apple pie with ice cream made right there in the cafe of Gizdich Farm.



A few days later we laid out the table cloth, opened our pumpkin carving kit and got to work.  Izzy wouldn't stick her hand in the pumpkin to clean it out but she did enjoy drawing the face on the pumpkin and then carving it with the really small knife.  A few hours later we had two masterpieces.  (Currently the pumpkins are rotted out because of the rain and heat we got but they were awesome for the few days they were lit.)





 :: Whale Watching Waiting

I think my expectations for the whale watching trip were a little too high.  This is what I envisioned.... We would pull up and a whale would swim right up next to the boat.  Then it would dive down and shoot out of the water and hold a pose in the air so I could capture it all on my camera.  Free Willy would be playing in the background while the whale wore a sequenced glove and Michael Jackson would be riding on his back.  Not really about the last two things... just making sure you were paying attention. 

So this is not exactly what happened.  What had happened was.... we Lina saw some whale spouts shooting off in the distance.  The boat would race in that the direction but by the time we got there the whales had already dived down into the depths of the oceans, then 15 minutes later when they came back up they were on the other side of the ocean.  We did a lot of whale waiting.  Not so much whale watching.  However, we did get to see some and it was my first time ever in a boat in the ocean so it wasn't a total waste.  We also saw a ton of fish, jellyfish and dolphins.  It was fun but would have been much cooler if we would have been able to get closer.


 


So this is just a small glimpse into our lives these past two weeks.  We are missing Lina again but know she will be back soon.  Izzy wander's the house sometimes and ask where is sissy or nana (aka Lina).  As for now, we are counting down the days until we fly home for Christmas.  We will enjoy Thanksgiving with our neighbors and keep busy during the other days with more bonfires, walks to Starbucks, and playing.