Many Happy Returns

Apparently, I have been so swept up in the living of life that I've been lapse in recording it. Ah well. This will read much like a travel log, since that is how we have been spending a great deal of our time.

In August, we put our passports to good use (after being told by the border patrol that we really ought to take the time to sign them... whoops) and spent a week with my family by the Shuswap lake in B.C. It was wonderful to connect with family I haven't seen in many years, most of whom had never met Larkin and Finn.

We were suitably wowed by the spread at Auntie Barb and Uncle Don B.'s annual fish feed and wild game dinners, the kids went on countless tubing rides courtesy of infinitely patient cousin Ken, I experienced the daunting nightly Canadian happy hours for the first time as a card-carrying adult, Jim and I hiked through some pretty awesome nearby alpine meadows, we took a day trip to Salmon Arm and drove by what used to be my grandparents' house (sniff), and the whole trip felt like the perfect backdrop for my Uncle Don L.'s memorial service.

Finn still (seemingly at random) reminisces about his time on the lake with Ken and how he and Uncle Don B. calculated that he must be one quarter Canadian. Larkin was especially thrilled to get in a whole week of water play, with the bonus of similarly-aged cousin Katey. Emile wishes he had gotten up on those skis at least once.

And this. This is how I remember childhood vacations:

In September, we were off to UROCK, the unschoolers yurt campout at the Oregon coast that has become an annual highlight of Larkin's and Finn's summers. They spent the long weekend playing at the beach, making countless s'mores by the campfire, exploring the wildlife trails through the bush behind our yurt, and reconnecting with friends that they don't get to see nearly as often as they would like.

This year, as an added bonus, Emile and I also got a chance for a short huckleberry-intensive visit with two of our favorite people!

Helen Fey and Danelle had recently moved to the area and it was so nice to catch up with them again.

In October, Emile had to go down to San Francisco for an all-hands work meeting. Unfortunately (ahem), there was a big sales conference going on at the same time and the only room they were able to find for him was the "Kids Suite" at a swank downtown hotel. After assuring them he could suffer through the accommodation, we decided we might as well all go.

The kids and I went to the Exploratorium, many little art galleries (the stand-outs being Dr. Seuss, an exhibit of photographs of the Beatles, and Picasso), toured Alcatraz, visited the Conservatory of Flowers which had an exhibit on carnivorous plants, and wandered in Golden Gate Park. All while being shocked at how expensive everything in the city was. Then Finn and Larkin went off for two nights with the San Jose cousins and left me to fend for myself in the city for a day. I walked to the City Lights book store (uphill, both ways!) and wandered the Yerba Buena Gardens, then Emile and I went out for a delicious big-city dinner.

It was a fantastic trip, but we were all pretty ready to go home to the forest at the end of the week.

Next week, we're off to Boston (!) to visit Emile's brother, his wife and our (relatively) new niece, Ellory. Then maybe we'll stay home for a few months and work on some of those projects we've been hoping to tackle.