We got to see Kindin. Yeah, for the first time we got to hold and talk to Kindin. She was fun. She was really uncomfortable with the small space and all the guests, so she was a lot unhappier than at home. That stressed out Mandy. We all had a great time and thought it was fun to play with her. Dad took her out for walks on the beach all the time, and Elisa and I got some turns at that too.

I think the favorite sport this year was Bocce ball. Waterskiing was way down on people’s list because the weather has already turned cool. I got to learn how, though, which made me really sore when I was doing “Once There Was A Snowman” with the primary kids today. I think Elisa hung on the rope really tight. She got up right away and went for quite awhile. Your Dad says that I got up in “1 ½” tries, but I think it was more like six. I went bare footing once and skiing about three times. Each time we went it took us a couple hours to really feel warm again. So we hung around the houseboat and read more often than usual.

We got beached. It was on the last day. A wind kept pushing us during the night until one pontoon had gotten pushed into the sand. Also in the middle of the night the powerboat’s mooring rope broke and we had to go tie it up again. In the morning, Dad kept swinging the houseboat left and right to get the pontoon free. Finally he had succeeded in walking the houseboat an extra 10 feet further onto the beach! The sand was soft or something so the usual techniques didn’t work. We finally had to call the marina to get a tow.

After that we hurried to Hobie Cat beach to meet the family we were handing the house boat off to. They didn’t arrive by 11 am, or even 12 or 1. Finally we gave up on them. There is no cell service there so we have no idea what went wrong. We left the houseboat on its buoy and drove away at about 3:30 pm. That gave us a pretty late start on the trip home.

When we were driving outside of Price, we drove through a snow storm. Most of the nights we spent on top of the house boat we were pretty cold. I think next year we would need for the temperature to be about 20º higher.

Friday night Elisa and I stayed with Jeff and Sarah and Sophia. Sophia was way more alert and active this time. Saturday morning we all went up to Temple Square. There was a video in the Legacy Theater called, “Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration.” We liked it. I bawled the whole way through. I guess that doesn’t necessarily show that it was good, but it was.

Now we’re back in Seattle. It’s so nice to be home. I agree.

Last Saturday we spent the day bumming around Seattle. We went downtown for an IMAX movie about Egyptian pyramids. And we went on a cool roller-coaster ride. Then there was a neighborhood event that was pretty fun with sno-cones and kids’ games. We were kind of bored so we kept looking for things to do.

Last Monday was Labor Day. Elisa and I went down to Tacoma to see the Point Defiance zoo. Tara went with us and Elisa’s grandma Sophie too. The snow fox was one of the really cool looking animals but we only got a picture of its behind. Elisa also got a picture of me next to a retreating whale. National Geographic we are not. Elisa and I have a dahlia garden in the back, and there is a really big rose and dahlia garden down there. Dahlias are big flowers and kind of otherworldly looking. I think they look like fireworks. We got some good pictures from that. (The dahlias don’t move as fast as the whales).

Elisa spent most of Thursday at the temple. It was the stake fill-the-temple day. I don’t have that kind of stamina, by the way.

On Thursday evening we went to a park in Bellevue and ended up people-watching for awhile. Bellevue is entertaining. There was a club of tons of little ugly dogs that all get together every night at the same time. It’s like a support group for yappy dog owners. We also watched a group of kids lose a balloon in a tree, and then lots of people walking over to help them get it down with shoes, coats, Frisbees, etc. Sometimes we are really easy to entertain.

Last night when I was going to bed, Elisa turned to me in her sleep and said, “That’s a really good idea.” I said, “You have really good ideas too, honey…. What idea?” She said, “Sleeeeeep!”

This week Elisa and I went to the Evergreen State Fair. It’s a lot like the Idaho State Fair. Except they call them elephant ears up here, not tiger ears. Elisa’s family thought I was pretty funny for asking for a tiger ear. We rode the swing ride. Yeah, right after we had all that heavy greasy fair food. The food was excellent. I had been craving real strawberry shortcake since our wedding. Theirs passed the test and I can finally rest easy knowing that everything is right in the world.

I ripped up the corner of our bathroom floor yesterday. There’s some water damage that was showing through the linoleum. It turns out that all the wafer board subflooring is spoiled—it has rotted into dirt. Some of the 2x4s are bad too. We’ll have to rebuild part of both of the floors of our two adjoining bathrooms. Luckily, we also get to get rid of the ugly blue stuff on the walls in the shower. I went under the house while Elisa had the shower water running, and a stream of water was just running down through the cracks in the caulking and it collected on the wood underneath the tub. And it landed on me while I was there. So it’s pretty clear where the water is coming from. (That’s the good news since locating a leak can be difficult.) We don’t yet have a plan for fixing it. Oh, yeah, in the process of looking under the tub through a panel in our bed room, Chad stood up right under and into some shelves in the wall. It ripped them clear out and everything came tumbling down. He fixes the house well. I didn’t like the shelves anyway. 🙂 That’s a little home maintenance technique I like to call, “One step forward, two steps back.”

Our tomato plant has kept burgeoning out into the entire plot while the rest of the vegetables die. This week it finally broke through the bamboo supports around it. It toppled over and now is sort of a tomato puddle. We’re going to have a billion ripe tomatoes anyday.

I had four deacons show up for class today! They are all active. One is new because he just had a birthday. I had him in primary with me. One is probably going to be moving into the ward with his mom. We also rescheduled scouts for Tuesday. I can keep playing soccer with my old team on Wednesday! I really didn’t want to have to quit.

Here’s your interesting factoid of the week. Elisa was wondering what the singular form of the word “cattle” was. Also, in our reading of the Old Testament it said that the Hebrews had “beeves” but we didn’t know what that meant. Well, I know you can’t stand the suspense, but we found out the answers to both questions! An article on Wikipedia all about cattle explained it. The word “cow” only refers to females, and “bull” only refers to males. So lots of cows and bulls together are “cattle.” But there is not really any word at all for a singular “cattle.” It said that technically the word is “ox.” Nobody uses that word anymore because ox makes people think of a different animal (“musk ox”). Some people want to use the word “catron.” Then when we are teaching kids about what noise each animal makes we can just shorten that and tell them that a cat goes “moo.” Not confusing at all. But the better part is that there is a singular for beef cows or “beeves” (which answered our bible question). The singular is beef. What sound does a beef make?