Saturday August 26, 2015 {WIND}

1. Saturday morning, Isabelle and Mom left for the farmer's market right after I got up. Isabelle was going to sell her stuffed dogs.

2. After they left, I didn't do too much. I listened to music, read, and hung out for a while.

3. Throughout all of this, it was really, really windy. It was warm, probably about 70, but really windy. The power kept flickering on and off all morning, and at about noon, it went out for good.

4. We have these trees behind out house that are very tall, and that sway a lot when it's windy. Two years ago, we had one of them fall when we were gone (we were in Florida at the time), but it fell at such an angle that it didn't come near the house.

5. Today, a little before 1pm, mom called to say that they had closed the market early because the wind was getting too dangerous, and were sending everyone home. A few minutes after that, one of the trees in the back fell straight at the house. Luckily, it didn't break at the roots, but snapped halfway up the trunk, and also luckily, it was a very flexible but not too heavy tree. 

6. I was standing in the kitchen watching as it fell into the back windows of our house, and, amazingly, did not beak through, but instead slid onto the ground. It was still leaning against the house, but did no major damage.

7. There was lots of commotion for a little while as neighbors ran over and looked around and all decided that everything was fine. 

8. After mom got home, we did stuff around the house for a while, then went to Haggen to eat dinner, and then went to my dad's house, since he still had power, to change our phones.

9. We went back home,played some card games, read The Time Traveler's Wife, and went to bed.

Thursday August 27, 2015 {Larrabee}

1. Mom left for work, and then I didn't do much for a while, then showered and got dressed.

2. Isabelle left to volunteer with the cats, and I baked some cookies. (gluten free oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip cookies).

3. I also went through the books that got damaged with the mold and water stuff, and made a list. I'm posting it in parts on my other blog, part one went up today!

4. Julie picked us up and (after picking up a few boys from another house) we headed to Larrabee state park. I hadn't been there at all this summer, and the weather was great, so it was really nice down there.

5. We wandered around the beach, looked at crabs, pushed each other off of logs, and ate lots of popcorn and cookies and grapes. Julie took a ton of really great pictures of us, and we did lots of poses on the logs.

6. We dropped the three boys off at Cosmic Comics for some Magic thing, and then Isabelle and I got dropped off at our dad's house.

7. We had dinner there (steak) and then went to Pure Bliss Deserts downtown. I got Chocolate Salted Caramel, which is definitely my favorite of their cakes.

8. We went home, watched Lost (we're re-watching it with Isabelle now. It's mom's 4th time, my 2nd, Isabelle's 1st), read The Time Traveler's Wife, and went to bed.

Today felt like the last hurrah of summer. The weather is supposed to be getting cold and rainy for a while, which is good in a lot of ways (we really need this rain!) but it's also sad. I like the dry, warm weather. Plus, with mom back at work, and rain coming, it really feels like the end of the summer.

The Lost Books: Part 1 {Emotional Attachment}

*This post may contain affiliate links, and if you make a purchase after clicking them, I will receive compensation.*

Tragically, I lost some books this week to a plumbing problem. There were 17 books that had enough water and/or mold damage that they had to be thrown out. I went though the books that are officially lost causes and made a few different lists, which will go up as a few different blog posts.

This is the first part, the books with emotional attachment/books that might not be replaceable.

Luckily, there are really only two books that fit into this category.

The first is Tales from the Ballet by Louis Untermeyer. I got this book at a library book sale for $1 many years ago. When I was little I checked it out from the library many times and I loved the stories and beautiful pictures in it. The copy I had was from the original 1968 printing, and it had a handwritten note on the first page dated December 1968.



This was the same cover as the copy I had. I would love to replace this book if possible, but I don't know if that'll be doable.


The second book is another one that I bought at a library book sale, probably for about $0.50. It was a copy of In the Hands of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce. It was an old library copy that had been pulled from circulation. It was from the origional printing (and had the origional cover), and was old and kind of ragged. When that book was in circulation, I checked it out from the library probably no less than 10 times in a period of 3 or 4 years. When I saw it at a book sale, I had to buy it.

This is probably the book I'm saddest to lose. I doubt it'll be easy to find a copy from that printing, and more than anything, I just loved having that copy of it, which I had read so many times when I was younger.

Sunday August 24, 2015 {A Graduation and a Birthday}

1. Sunday morning we got up and headed out pretty quickly. My mom dropped me off at Village Books (our wonderful local independent bookstore) and then she and Isabelle went to the "Dog Days of Summer" event at Lake Padden.

2. I looked around for awhile before buying socks and fudge for my friend L, whose party I was going to go to, plus a card and chocolate for Emma, who just had a birthday. I also bought a book for myself (The Book Thief).

3. I ran into a person I knew vaguely (a friend of my dad's who I have been friends with on Facebook for a long time) and had a brief conversation with him about college and books and such. It pained me greatly to have to turn down an ARC he offered to grab for me (I can only have 4 out at a time, and I didn't have any to return, so I couldn't take another one). I don't know if I can say what book it was, but it's the book I'm most excited about that's coming out this fall.

4. Mom and Isabelle picked me up and we headed to L's graduation/birthday party. All sorts of people were there, and it was great.

5. We came home and watched the two last episodes of Gravity Falls. I'd seen the whole series before, but now Mom and Isabelle are caught up too.

6. Read the Time Traveler's Wife, and went to bed.

Friday August 21, 2015 {The Lynden Fair}

1. We got up and headed to Stanwood to pick up my grandmother. We stopped at her house for a while while my mom made a few calls about the mold situation. We have this mold problem that is probably actually a plumbing issue, and that is really bad and needs to be fixed asap. Mom talked to an insurance person and a friend who was helping with it, and then we headed to Marysville to go shopping.

2. We went to the Seattle Outlets, which are not, despite the name, in Seattle. I suppose in the general scheme of things they are pretty near Seattle, but to me the name has always seemed strange because I think of them as very separate places. We were there for our annual end of summer shopping trip with my grandmother, and got clothes and shoes for the year.

3. We were there most of the day, and headed back midaftenoon. We dropped my grandmother back off in Stanwood, and then headed home.

4. Almost as soon as we got home, we left again. Mom dropped Isabelle and I, plus MP and IP off at the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden. We met up with Spencer and Grace, and the four of us (Spencer, Grace, C. and I) wandered around looking at various things and eating lots of food. The three girls wandered off with the money they were given and weren't seen for most of the evening.

5. I think we got to the fair at about 6, and we left a little after 10, so we weren't actually there all that long. We didn't end up doing any rides or even going over to the carnival section at all. We spent most of our time looking at the animals and the various plants and quilts and other exhibits.

6. Spencer drove the five of us home and dropped Isabelle and I off at our house. It was a weird feeling driving with the three girls talking in the back and Spencer and I in the front talking about traffic laws and the fair and stuff. I've gotten pretty used to being pretty independent on my own lately, taking the bus to school and back, and doing a lot of stuff on my own. This was different though, it felt oddly domestic. :P

7. I was really tired when we got home. Read The Time Traveler's Wife, and crashed.

Bend Camping Trip 2015: Aug 12-16 2015

This week was the second year a big group of homeschool families all went to Bend, OR together to camp at Tumalo State Park. Instead of outlining each day, I'm going to do a rough outline of the whole trip here, and then to another post with some stories from the week.

First of all, we left Bellingham around 9:30am on Wednesday. We dropped by the Bagelry to get bagels on our way out, and then headed south. We stopped just south of Olympia to each lunch at a rest stop, and then powered through with just one more short bathroom break. We were delayed by having to take a detour off of Highway 26 because of a brush fire. We made it to the camp ground at around 6pm. That night, we made hot dogs as people slowly drifted in, and all went to bed relatively early.

Thursday: The younger kids all were up early and we all were up and eating breakfast by 9ish, and were heading out on our first rafting expedition by around 11. We took one short ride down the river (maybe 20ish minutes), then most of us headed back to the campsite to eat lunch. After lunch, we went back and did another, somewhat longer run. We hiked up about a mile, and then rode back down to the camp. HK and I took another long run, while most of the other kids played games. We had soup for dinner, made by my mom and Julie, and then most of us played The Resistance (an awesome game you should all check out) for a few hours and went to bed around 11:30.

Friday: It was a lot colder, and no one did any rafting. We mostly hung around the campsite for the morning, and played more of The Resistence, and then headed into town. We drove to Pilot Butte, which was a great view of the city and surrounding area, and then got ice cream. After that, we drove to a neighborhood park where most of the kids and dads played wiffle ball. We headed back to the campsite, and had currey for dinner, made by Connie. Most people headed to bed a bit sooner that night, but Isabelle, Spencer, Ted, and I ended up staying up til about 12:30 discussing the "happy chair" problem (maybe I'll explain that later), why people use drugs like LSD, the strangeness of Gonzo journalism, and much more.

Saturday: Julie took a bunch of the kids to Starbucks before I got up, and when I went to the fire, there was a much smaller than usual group awake. We ate breakfast, and got ready for our big rafting trip. The idea was to start at the spot we usually stopped and then ride all the way down to Tumalo, about 2 miles down stream. No one had gone that far before, so we didn't really know what to expect. It ended up being pretty mild, and a lot of fun. We got out in the tiny, tiny town of Tumalo, and some of the other adults came and picked us up. What had taken us close to two hours to raft took us less than ten minutes to drive. We ate chili for dinner, and played mafia. People drifted off to bed at all different times, and Mom, Isabelle, Ted, Spencer, and I were again the last to bed.

Sunday; We ate breakfast and started packing up to leave. We all left around 11:30. On the way south, we took I5 to Gresham, and then veered east, but going north, we went to Yakima, and then headed over Snoqualmie pass to Issaquah. That route was supposed to be faster, but ended up being much slower because of a slowdown on the pass that added over an hour to our trip. We ate dinner at the Chipotle in Issaquah, and made it home by 10pm.

Hate vs. Indifference {Question #3}

Welcome to the series where I answer open ended questions from a quiz I found on Tumblr. They are a great opportunity for me to share bits and pieces about myself on the blog.

Today's question is:

Is there anyone close to you that you know you can't trust?

There was a situation not too long ago with a person who was a friend of mine who I always knew I shouldn’t trust, but still did. That situation spiraled completely out of control, and ended up very badly for a number of people. That person and I are no longer friends.

Since then, I try to be more careful about who I’m friends with. I don’t want to end up in a situation like that again. There are people I wouldn’t tell my deepest secrets to, of course, but all the people closest to me are people I trust.

Recently, I saw someone online say “Hate is too strong an emotion to waste on those you don’t like.” At first it made me mad, because I knew that person was trying to invalidate someone who said they hated them, but then I thought about it a little more. There is a very, very small number of people who I would say I legitimately hate. And the reason I hate those people is that I did like them once. I liked them, and they screwed me over, and made me hate them.

So I completely agree. Hate IS too strong an emotion for those you don’t like. Most of the time, my negative response to someone is just indifference. It’s only hate because I liked them once.

Sorry, that was kind of a tangent. To answer the actual question, there are some people close to me that I wouldn’t trust with certain information, but I try not to be close to people who I really can’t trust.