Not in L.A. Anymore!

When I go to a tractor parade on a Friday night, it's just another reminder that I don't live in the greater Los Angeles area anymore!! : D This year with the rain, it was pretty short and uneventful. I enjoyed last year's tractor parade with the little tikes riding their plastic John Deers down the street right after the humongous tractors which were doing varied interesting stunts. This year's was mostly like this....
On Saturday morning, we watched the Berry Dairy Days parade. We enjoyed that with all the firetrucks, bands, nurses marching with bed-pans....also known as "The Bedpan Brigade", more tractors, etc. etc.

Afterwards, we went to Christianson's Nursery for their annual rose festival. This was our first time, and as you can see, we really enjoyed the beauty of the place! Warning, this will be a bit of an "Elizabeth overload" since there were so many great photo opps!

My Dad, Visiting from Texas

It's been busy around here as my dad was just visiting from Texas. We hadn't seen each other since Ryan's and my wedding close to two years ago. It was nice for him to be able to come for Father's Day weekend. In the above picture, we are at my brother and sister-in-law's house (Don & Mandy) for a BBQ with all the dads.

During the weekend, we all began working on a puzzle since it was a nice indoor activity with all the rain this past weekend.

Tommy & Dad left the party (in the kitchen) and took a nice, long nap!

A little update....Ryan's last day of active duty Navy was last Tuesday. He is now on terminal leave. That means that he has 30 days of leave (that he had saved up) until his last official day in the Navy on July 13th. He entered the civilian world as a full-time student at the college on Monday. There were MANY challenges that first day with classes, etc. With a few schedule/class changes, I think things will be going better now.

We are still praying about him doing the reserves. As of March 14, the Navy put out an "official" (I'm not sure how much is actually ever official in the Navy, but at least it's in black & white) document saying that someone just coming out of active duty and entering the reserves would not be deployed for 2 years. We're thinking about Ryan going into the reserves for just those two years. He could go to school full-time and then only go over to the base for 6 days a month. It's hard to find another part-time job that will work out time-wise and financially like that.

In the meantime, I just began teaching again for the summer on Monday. I have only 4 students registered right now. There are only two other day ESL teachers at the college. Two of us have very low numbers right now. If we don't get more students, they could cut our classes. Yikes! It is common that we have less students in the summers, but please pray for more to come!!

Fort Ebey

Ryan had a special liberty day on Tuesday (that's a day off for doing something good in civilian terms). He had a doctor's appointment at the base for his final physical before getting out of the Navy. Since we were going all the way to Oak Harbor for his appointment, we decided to enjoy something in that area since we don't usually go to Oak Harbor area much together. We decided to go to Fort Ebey to walk around a bit. Even though we didn't have much time to hike, it was nice to see the ocean, a pond, and many wild, pink rhododendrons all at one place.

Wild rhodies growing on either side of the trail.

Drift wood.

More natural rhododendrons. It was sprinkling a bit so there's a raindrop blurring the picture on the bottom right corner of this shot.

Fishing

Ryan, Tommy, our friend Wayne, and a guy that Ryan works with all went fishing on Saturday. Ryan taught Tommy and Wayne how to fly fish. They went to the Samish River and had a great time. These pictures are mostly of Tommy and Wayne since Ryan was the photographer, and he didn't get them to take any pictures of him. He brought home a trout that we'll probably be sauteing up tonight. Tommy and Wayne wanted to stay out longer, but Ryan and I wanted some time together too. Plus, Ryan got a little burnt even with his spf 30 on. So it was time to come home.

Tommy fly fishing and wild yellow irises

Tommy's catch and Wayne

Wallace Falls Hike

Last Saturday, Ryan, my brother, and I went hiking at Wallace Falls State Park. It is a beautiful hike along the falls!! I recommend it to everyone. The problem is that the mile sign markers lie! There are two trails to follow. One is the Woody Trail along the falls (which I recommend taking in and then back out), or doing a loop along the DNR old logging trail at the end of the Woody Trail.

Ryan wanted to hike to the lake to take a couple casts for fish, which would mean we'd do the loop hike. We expected to hike a total of 7 miles doing the loop, but it ended up being around 11. Our feet and knees were aching. We stopped at the nearest restaurant to chow down. After over 5 hours of hiking and burning probably 1,000 calories, I ordered something I usually never do, a burger and fries!!

Here is a slideshow of our hike. I figured that this would be the best way since there are so many pics I'd like to share!