There was a covey of quail hanging around in our backyard during the first few weeks of September. It seems there is something in our rock garden that they really like.
These pictures of Merry and Megan enjoying the pool are a little blurry because it was getting dark so my camera was being fussy. The girls spent the night with us so Jason and Courtney could celebrate their 11th anniversary with a night at Whistling Jacks and then a white-water rafting trip. We had a good time with the girls and Jason and Courtney enjoyed their anniversary trip. What a hoot to see them in the rafting get-ups.
We also had a birthday party for Megan at Becky and Mike's house on the same weekend. Since Megan really enjoyed her soccer season, we got her a soccer cake. After we had a BBQ, she got to open her gifts and then we had birthday cake. Brandon did the honors of lighting the candles and Megan got them all out after making a wish. Aunt Becky let Megan choose what piece of cake she wanted and she chose the one with her name on it. How fun!!
Here are some shots of Lindsey playing in a volleyball game. She made the freshman varsity team and she plays a position called libero. What is a libero? Here's a definition that I found online: The volleyball libero is a defensive specialist position in indoor volleyball. The position was added to the game in 1999 along with special rules for play in order to foster more digs and rallies and to make the game more exciting. The libero remains in the game at all times and is the only player not limited by rules of rotation. She usually replaces the middle blocker position when they rotate to the back row and never rotates to the front row himself. This is a new position since Becky played in high school. They have also changed the way they score points and the number of points in a game. I guess it's called progress. Lindsey got a concussion during a practice the week following this game and lost almost 2 weeks of play. She is doing fine now but had to follow strict guidelines set up by the school district before being able to practice and play again.
We spent the last two weeks of September in Sekiu hoping to catch lots of coho (silver). This was during a special season that you are allowed to keep both wild and hatchery coho as well as pinks. Well, the fishing was really, really slow so I took pictures of other things. There were lots of boats out so I took some pics of them and there are a number of landmarks the fishermen have named. There is the rock formation called Big Mussolini and the buoy call The Bell. If you google Mussolini, you might see a similarity of the rock formation and the real Mussolini wearing his beret.
Besides this quillback rockfish that Pete caught, we only caught 8 salmon (4 wild, 4 hatchery and 1 pink) after 9 days of fishing. In 2010, we caught 33 salmon and in 2009, we caught 40 during the same season. What a difference!!! Not only was the fishing really slow but the last week we had storms after storms. There were two days that we couldn't even get out because of small craft warnings due to wind and rain and there were several days that the winds kept us from fishing more than several hours. During the first week of fishing, Kay and Lee joined us for 4 days of fishing and Lee did get several fish. I guess the disappointing number of fish kept me from getting excited and taking pictures of the salmon we did catch. We wished it had been better fishing for all of us.
While we were at Sekiu, Jason and Courtney participated in a 5K. They are 24 and 25 at the beginning of race. Courtney walked the race with friends and won a raffle - a body media arm band. How fun is that. Jason looks like he is really concentrating on his run in the other picture and he was the 2nd man to finish the race. We thought that was great since it was his very first 5K. He is off hunting deer in Wyoming right now and we wish him good luck there. Thanks to whoever posted these pictures on FB so I could use them on our blog.
Brett has friends in Port Hadlock so we arranged to meet him there. We drove from Sekiu and he drove from Yelm. We really enjoyed seeing him and meeting his friends, Kasi and Tom Skaarer. Brett stayed a few weeks with Kasi and Tom during the summer. They have been an awesome support to him. We are thankful he has them for friends.
Kasi and Tom's kids are so sweet. Adison and Aiden are 3 and 4 this year and are real characters. Tom is holding the kids in a picture and then there is a picture of Adison. The picture of Adison, Tom and Kasi and the one of Brett with the kids are pictures from Kasi's album on FB that I borrowed (stole???) to use here. We loved meeting Kasi, Tom, Aiden and Adison and really enjoyed the afternoon we spent visiting with all of them.
We are getting ready to leave Sekiu. Pete towed the boat to our house with their motorhome and we really appreciated not having to make a trip back there to get the boat. Suzy and Teri drove their car that they usually tow behind their motorhome. Bill towed our trailer and here we are all crowded in our driveway. We all managed a smile for the farewell pictures because we had a good time in spite of the poor fishing.
The one advantage of rain and clouds are the great pictures you can get while on the water. A nice, serene picture to end September.
