Monday, August 14, 2017

Birch Bay Sand Castles With Theo, Jake, Cindy & Uncle Mooch

I have not been near a computer since last Friday. I have a back log of blogging material and photo documentation of that blogging material.

But I may not get around to having fun reducing that back log of blogging material for about a week.

Tomorrow I head south from the Great Pacific Northwest, to the HOT Valley of the Sun, to spend a week with my mom.

I have been a little busy since last Tuesday. Yesterday, Sunday, was my first semi day of rest.

Sunday brought about a scenario the likes of which I could not have imagined what could possibly bring about such a scenario, if you had suggested such a scenario, say, two, five, ten or twenty years ago. That being what you see above. Me, my brother Jake, and my favorite ex-sister-in-law, Cindy, walking on the tidal flats of Birch Bay,

The day began with a long awaited visit from Nurse Canecracker and Betty Jo Bouvier. I have known few people as long as Nurse Canecracker and Betty Jo, who delivered me a bag full of Northwest goodies, including smoked salmon, raspberry jam, sourdough bread and dozens of Canecracker cookies. Eventually Nurse Canecracker and Betty Jo took me to a seaside seafood joint where we had seafood in the form of cod in various iterations. The feeding was fine, but visiting Betty Jo and the Canecracker was excellent.

In the afternoon Theo, David, their uncle Jake, mama Kristin and myself headed to the beach with the goal being to build a sand castle whilst the water was in tide going out mode. The day before we had had ourselves a mighty fine time defending a giant sand alligator from the incoming tide.

We were in mid sand castle building when Spencer Jack, his dad, Jason, and grandma Cindy showed up. Spencer helped with the castle building for awhile and then opted to join Ruby in the pool, leaving just the original castle builders to continue building.

Eventually the tide grew close. Soon we had to fight to defend our castle. It is always a losing effort. After we surrendered we retreated to an interior space where we found Spencer Jack, Jason, Cindy and others. We had ourselves a fine time visiting and enjoying grandma Cindy's special Northwest type brownies.

After Spencer Jack decided it was time to head home Theo convinced me to go swimming with him and Ruby in the pool, not the bay. We did so for what seemed a long time. I quit first. Upon returning to the condo I opened the door to find the place filled with a fresh supply of relatives, including the infamous, much revered, Uncle Mooch.

We all had ourselves a might fine time visiting Uncle Mooch and the rest of the clan. Ruby had herself a lot of fun with Mooch's grandson, Kwan, dismantling my former bed and turning it into a giant fort.

The Mooch Gang left sometime after midnight, my time. After that Theo and David talked me into going back into the bay to experience what David calls 'bio-luminescence'. We armed ourselves with a flashlight and made our way to the bay. All we need say about this part of the day is we did not get wet enough to see the water glow.

I slept well last night. This morning we ventured to the rooftop for some scenic view photos of the remains of yesterday's sand castle. And then soon it was check out time. The drive back to Tacoma did not have the traffic jam nightmares of the sort which made miserable the drive north on Friday. In Seattle we left I-5 to go to Dick's by the Seattle Center and then drive by the HUGE Amazon campus, largely under construction. Ruby and I got out for a quick photo op at the giant Amazon spheres, then we continued our quick tour of way too busy downtown Seattle.

More on Seattle and the past few days, later. This may be my last time on a computer for several days.

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