We are ready for a new president

Actually we are beyond ready.  

D was quite curious and engaged with many of our voting decisions and the whole political process, listening in on the politics podcast Jack frequently listens to.  

It’s interesting to watch much of the rest of the country start working from home and voting by mail/drop box. Just as I am totally accustomed to working from home already it’s hard to remember when we had to vote in person.  

the series of the moment

No, not the world series .... books!

The Seattle Public Library finally opened up a few weeks ago for curbside pickup.  I've been going once a week to pick up holds and D's rate of reading and the fact that there's no browsing has been keeping me on my toes.   My mom has also brought us lots of new books for the last few months since the King County Libraries opened earlier.

For better or worse, children's chapter books seem to be all in series so I've had to get organized about tracking which books he's already read.  To celebrate D's reading and to keep track of future books for Dd, here are the series we've been reading.  He reads a lot of these in about an hour, so finding age appropriate stories that can keep him busy for longer periods of time is getting tougher.   

Series We Have Read Several of:

• Dog Man - graphic novels with witty pun titles referencing classic titles like "Brawl of the Wild", these are probably D's favorites
• CatStronauts - also graphic novels that make D laugh, set in space
• Captain Awesome - I don't really know but D seemed to enjoy them
• Sherlock Sam - these have a higher level vocabulary and have been mostly read aloud books.  They are set in Singapore.
• The Clubhouse Mysteries/Black Dinosaurs - We started out reading these aloud and then he kept finishing them on his own.  The characters are pre-teens who keep getting into scrapes.

Series We Have Just Started:

• Desmond Cole - ghost stories - we've read one and look forward to more
• Luciana -  science adventures
• Cam Jansen - I think I read some of these as a kid and they are plentiful, quick mystery reads
• Upside-down Magic - a misfit girl with magical powers
• Lemonade Wars - set in a the real world, with lots of math embedded in the story

Books We Want to Read:

• Redwall
• Narnia
• Trumpet of The Swans -- one I still remember that is not part of a series!!
• Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter - we'll continue with these when the time is right

Lastly the category of books we have read 5,000 times is brought to you by Dd.  All four of us can recite “machines go to work in the city” by heart. 

Did you see highly camouflaged D in this last picture?   Boo!

beach - smoke - beach - sickness

As noted, September has a miserable amount of wildfire smoke.  Dd brought home a cold that knocked me down as well.  Miraculously we managed two little getaways exactly in the gaps without smoke or sickness.

At Grayland Beach State park (Yurt 118) we had relaxing time wandering the beach and visiting with my sister and brother in law.  Packing was even on the simpler sides since we shared dinners, didn't pack all the normal tent camping sleeping gear or our bikes.   It was a little cool, but that suited us.

Two weeks later we took the new Argosy small ferry to Blake Island and met my parents there, who kindly carried most of our gear.  They have probably taken their boat there four or five times this season since it is one of their closest getaways from Des Moines.  We had planned to camp two nights but the smoke didn't let up until Saturday morning and Dd's cold improved a lot Friday evening, so we were pleasantly surprised to make it there for one night of camping.  Because of the recent departure of the smoke and a rainy Friday night, the very popular park was nearly empty on Saturday and Sunday morning, which was a treat.  We played on the beach, hiked a bit and spent some good time with my parents.   We had a gorgeous site (#28) and set up our tarp very successfully because there was a bit of rain.  We bought a new tent at the end of last season and this was our second time using it and our first time testing it in the rain and worked very well (unlike the tent it replaced, which would have been miserable in a serious rain).  No one could say we slept well, but compared to our camping trip last August, it was a big improvement.