Whew! It’s been a busy August. Without realizing quite what we were doing, we signed Joshua up for what ended up being gymnastics (Thursday afternoons, most of July and August) and swimming (Tuesday and Thursday evenings, most of August) classes for overlapping days. That made August’s Thursdays quite full!
Both classes ended on the same day, last Thursday, so I (Joel) left work early to join for gymnastics class, dinner at the Dairy Queen restaurant next to the gymnastics Rec Center, and the final swimming class.
For the final gymnastics class, parents were invited in to the room to watch each of the kids go through the routine that they’d been working on during the class. Here are some photos of the class and Joshua’s routine.
And here is the video of Joshua doing his routine:
Whew! We’re sooo glad that our big vacation of 2018 is over! After many months of planning, starting over a year ago, we had lined up a four-day camping trip in the San Juan Islands outside of Seattle. My Mom joined us for the camping, and my sister (Marie) and brother-in-law and their seven-month-old joined via a cottage reservation on the other side of the island. We planned to do hiking, swimming, sight-seeing, and we had made reservations for a big orca whale watching boat tour as well!
The weather was perfect, the scenery was gorgeous, and all looked like it was setup to play out as planned for our long-awaited, much-anticipated family trip. Until the plague hit. Every one of us ended up with a puking and/or diarrhea sickness at some point on the trip, which was later confirmed to be norovirus. What a disaster! Tent camping with vomit and the runs is no fun… so many “runs” to the bathroom were had! It didn’t help that we didn’t have cell coverage either, so communicating with Marie and with anyone not in camp was impossible.. We probably won’t ever do a trip again with small children where we’re stuck on an island and a ferry-trip away from home.
Kristen and Joshua on the beach while waiting for ferryJoshua and Elliott enjoying the view from the ferryEveryone gathered around on the ferry, with the beautiful San Juan Islands scenery around usOur family from Orcas Island’s Mt. Constitution, the highest point in the San Juan Islands, and just up the road a few miles from our campgroundEnjoying a hike past waterfalls on Monday morning… before the plague hit!
On Monday night around dinnertime, Joshua threw up several times — seemingly out of the blue. Elliott followed soon thereafter. Joshua started to have diarrhea soon too. We didn’t know what to do! I (Joel) buzzed into town to buy ice and a tarp, so we could have Joshua and me sleep outside the tent with a tarp to avoid getting vomit or diarrhea all over our nice tent. Elliott was sleeping in a pack-n-play, which we figured would contain his mess. Thankfully, by bedtime, they were both done with being actively sick.
On Tuesday afternoon, we had our reservation for the 3-hour orca whale watching trip. Everyone seemed well enough, so we proceeded to do it. This involved getting on a ferry to another island, snagging some lunch, getting on the whale watching boat for the tour, and then catching another ferry back to our island. The return ferry was delayed, but otherwise the logistics of the trip worked great! We even saw two different types of orcas (residents and transients) which is pretty rare to see on the same trip. Joshua was so tired from being sick that he slept through nearly all of the whale sightings though.
The boat we went on from Friday Harbor to do the whale watching tour
Transient Orcas
Resident Orcas
The ferry ride back to Orcas Island from Friday Harbor, after the whale watching tour
On Wednesday morning, Joel woke up with diarrhea and felt bad all day. Joel’s Mom Laurie got it later that day. Kristen also started to not feel well. The boys still had some fun playing in the lake next to our campground, but the energy level of everyone was super low. Thursday morning, Laurie was still experiencing the lovely symptoms of the plague, and Kristen had started in on it too. Joel packed up camp, and we headed home.
Our plan had been to get a hotel somewhere on the way home and have another play day before returning, but we were all ready to be home, so we drove straight home after getting off the ferry. It made for a very long day of travel but we were glad to have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to rest and recover. We had expected that having a couple of days after the camping trip would be nice to get unpacked and settled in again, but little did we know how much we’d need that recovery time!
We did a 3-year photoshoot for Joshua at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival down in Woodburn. While we were at it, we snagged a few pictures of Elliott (just a bit over 10 months at that point) and some family pictures too! We took 1117 pictures to get these keepers – such is photography with busy little people!
We’d also done our 10-month photo shoot for Elliott a bit closer to his 10-month birthday. He sure is cute!
You know that you picked a winner for the theme of your kid’s birthday party when the parents have a funny moment at the party connecting about how that particular TV show has a song for every major experience or emotion that your toddler will experience. For Joshua’s 3-year birthday party on Saturday, we did share some great laughs with other parents about how we sing Daniel Tiger’s songs with our kids about “It is good to be kind” or “Try new foods ‘cuz they might taste Goo-ood!” — or my personal favorite, “If you have to go potty, STOP and go right away!”
Daniel Tiger is a recent animated refresh/throwback of the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood show from decades ago. While Joshua’s screen time is limited (Kristen is an elementary educator, after all, and she’s seen what too much TV does to a kid!), this is one of the few shows that he does occasionally get to watch. And he does love it! The show has great characters, great songs, and great simple lessons for kids. And it has lots of concepts that transform really well into opportunities for a birthday party theme. Kristen did a really great job imagining and reimagining ideas and turning our house into a great “land of make believe” for Joshua, his friends, their parents, and our families.
The Meyers 