Happy birthday Grandpa

Grandpa had a birthday and celebrated with lunch at Coho! Grandma recently got her new hip and is feeling much better!

2017

We had a really special New Year's Eve. We had planned a bonfire, but the wind started blowing super hard, followed by hail, that we decided to just play games inside. Then, as the clock got closer to 11 it got very calm, so Mason and Jaime went outside and built a bonfire. We all joined and started lighting fireworks. As we joined around the bonfire to welcome the new year, it started snowing! It was the first time we have seen snow on the beach and it was a magical moment. We toasted a bottle of Dom for the adults and cider for the kids, and said "cheers" in whatever languages we knew.



And, of course, we did the annual Polar Bear Plunge! (Well, some of us sponsored it and some of us froze.)

Kids > Adults

Sarah, Kyle, Grammy, Cindy and I were five. Daniel, David, Kenzie, Mason, Ermias, Ale, Jaime and Knut were eight. The ratio was all wrong, but we had a great few days together. I did a lot of cooking! We took the ferry to Victoria one day.

Calm before the storm

We had a couple of days with just the six of us before friends and family joined us for the long holiday. We got started crabbing and just enjoyed the salty air.

Midnight low tide

We love the low-tide walks on the beach. We put our headlamps on and walk to the "starfish rock." Low tide is the only time these magnificent purple creatures are visible.









There were a ton of shrimp laying on the shoreline. We caught a bunch of them but then realized they were full of eggs! So we returned them in hopes of a plentiful shrimping season in the Spring.


This is on top of a very large rock. Bentley also loves the midnight walks.

Family photos

Casual Christmas

Christmas this year started with stockings and presents and our usual Eggs Benedict.

What made it a little different was that the Gardner-Garcia family joined us to "open" our family gift - an August trip to Spain! We are all going to Barcelona--all 12 of us--for 10 days! Since we are in Spain, Borja will join us! Felix will join for a weekend too, but the kids didn't know it at this point.

We also went to Randy & Sary-Jo's. They had their kids plus Sarah's exchange students, Ale, Jaime and Knut.