Fugly!!

I'm participating in a 'Mystery' shawl knitalong where you get one part of the pattern each week. It's a beautiful lace and cable pattern called "Mystic Light". I bought Fleece Artist merino sock yarn in a colorway called Origin which I like...but not for this project. It's just ugly and looks like a muddy mess. I am starting again with Kauni yarn which already looks much better.

Nothing Better than a Yarn Store Garage Sale!

I got an email from Holy Threads (local yarn store that closed last month) announcing they were having a garage sale of their remaining items. Woot Woot!

I hauled down there as soon as I could (not soon enough perhaps; it started at 9 am and I didn't get there till 2). What was left? Patterns, lots of patterns. I bought tons of them, plus a couple of sets of buttons (some wood ones that will be perfect for Aran type sweaters and a set of adorable pale green buttons with little yellow chickens on them), a Circular Solution Port a Pocket (for carrying a little project in, perfect for socks. I paid $2.00 for it! I just bought one a couple of weeks ago for around 15...), plus 9 'cakes' of White Buffalo unspun yarn in a color I'll call Tobacco. Not the most gorgeous color, but they were only 2 bucks each so how could I turn them down.

No, I didn't get anything as gorgeous as the yarn in the picture, sadly. But still came away with a box o stuff that they had to carry to my car.

Zoo Fun

We managed to squeeze in a stop at Woodland Park Zoo on our way home (I stayed and extra day and came home with the twins and Michael) OMG, what a ZOO it was! Spring Break, and I swear to God that every single family in Seattle and surrounding area was at the zoo. Parking, hideous. Lines, awful (we heard a rumor that those with passes could get in at another gate, so we followed the crowd like the lemmings we are. We walked halfway around the zoo, and got in another line about the same size as the one we left :-0)

Waiting to get into the Zoo...So cute!

First stop once we got in was the Zoo-mazium. Since there were about 10,000 little kids jammed in there, we immediately lost track of Michael. Unfortch, there were 3 kids with red hoodies, so we spent quite a lot of time following the wrong toddlers. Mikey was finally located and the twins stuck to him like glue after that (thank goodness!) They climbed everything climb-able in there including the stuff Mikey was 'too small' to go on. LOL, that didn't stop our fearless man!

In true family tradition, we were total 'scrap noodles', not having much left in the way of clean clothes. Michael dressed himself in his Batman pj tops, dinosaur pj bottoms and boots. None of us had socks. I'm pretty sure we all had clean underwear, but otherwise we were packin' a lot of Whidbey sand home with us.

I managed to get them out of that madhouse, and we did see a few animals:

The jaguar was very active, pacing around in circles poor thing.

Liam practiced his photography skills, and got some nice photos of the gorillas. The new baby gorilla was so freaking cute! Looked just like Mikey with big round eyes and scrappy hair.

We couldn't get close to much else, so we went and ate lunch (also a madhouse), got our picture taken in the photo booth (a high point, as they are always begging to do this), the finished up with a carrousel ride:

Whidbey Adventures

What a fun Spring Break we had! Thanks to Lorraine and the boys, I got to visit Whidbey Island for a few days of beach adventures. We had a darling cabin on Useless Bay (I think it was named that b/c of the darn mudflats you have to cross to get to the sand and water! I sunk in the 'quicksand' up to my boot tops much to the boys' delight). While the weather was 'variable', we still got outside every day to explore.

Alex (above) posed for a very nice photo on the lawn in front of the cabin.

Liam and Michael gathering important stuff from the beach.

BFF!!! Gramma Laurie and Alex hangin' out together.

Virus Reminder

The A-holes are still putting little viruses on the 'comments' section. Remember, if it's not a post from someone you know and/or it says something like 'look here' with a link, it's prolly a virus. I try to remove them as fast as I can, guess I will have to go to the moderated comment thing soon...

Officer Friendly!

Never let it be said the po-po aren't great guys and gals! Lorraine locked her keys in the car at Double Bluff, and a passing officer let her and the boys sit in his cruiser while waiting for AAA to show. She got a call yesterday from the Island County sherrif's office saying that Alex had left his gator mittens in the police car. Since they could tell they were 'special' hand-knit mittens, they tracked her down and they are mailing the mittens back. Isn't that awesome?!

Fort Casey---We Loved It!

I am pretty sure that Fort Casey State Park on Whidbey Island is a boy's dream come true. It's got giant guns, ammo bunkers dug into the hillsides where you can make scary noises and yell all you want, great ocean views, more giant guns, acres of grass you can run on and play war, even more guns, ladders to climb, roofs you can climb on (well maybe you are not supposed to, but we didn't see any signs ;-) deer and bunny rabbits galore you can chase or use your stick weapons to shoot at and much much more. The gang visited the fort at least 3 times during our vacation and spent hours just playing. Here are a few pix:

Mikey don't need no stinking stairs. If there was a muddy hill to climb or to slide down, he was all over it.

Liam standing watch for enemy combatants in front of some of the ammo bunkers.

Alex is exploring the fine acoustics in one of the bunkers. Great for making ghost noises!~

As usual, Riveria was on the move and I got no pix of him. Just imagine a blur of moving boy off in the distance, climing or chasing something.

I will have more pictures and posts re our Whidbey adventures tomorrow!