Laying down roots

I spent part of Sunday running errands in Seattle. Dropped Jack off at Hunter's, did a Trader Joe's run, Costco, and the Central Market for panko (Japanese breadcrumbs, Marci), and Mitch's Nightwatch beer. I called home to check in from the ferry. Grace got on the phone.

"Hi Grace, have you been having fun with Daddy today?"

"Well, Daddy said he's overhung, so we've just been watching him play the Wii all day."

Nice. I'm just hoping he told his four year-old daughter that he was hungover, rather than overhung. Either way, I'm sure she'll tell everyone at preschool about her weekend.

Yesterday the children flocked to the windows when they woke up. What is that strange bright orb in the sky, they alarmed! Don't be frightened, I told them, it's called Sunshine! As a reward for all their hard work hauling logs and watching Daddy play video games, I took them down to the zoo, and no TV in the car, either. They were damn well going to look out at this beautiful island in all it's sunshiney (Yes, that is a word. Shut up.) glory. We had a fantastic day at the zoo, made perfect by front row viewing of the new baby gorilla, which paralized my children for a good 20 minutes while they watched it roll around. We were all pretty much dying from the cuteness. Henry's favorite thing was a smashed emu egg. He couldn't wrap his head around imagining what an awesome omelette it would make.

Feeding the birds with seed sticks. A couple of birds shit in my hair in this stupid exhibit full of shrieking birds where they shit in your hair.

Why did I take the above picture? Because my big boy is taking my little girl by the hand and taking her to the bathroom while I loaded the car with an orchard, and how cute is that? An orchard, you say? It was such a sunshiney day that I had an urge to garden, but of course it's too early to really garden, but I've been thinking about fruit trees lately. I didn't plant any last year because I didn't want to commit to staying here by planting something that takes a few years to even bear fruit, and of course we'd be long gone by then. So, I guess you could say I'm more or less embracing living here because an orchard did I buy. I was just going to buy one apple tree, but you need two for cross pollination and Henry doesn't like apples he likes pears and emmett kelley sad clown face and you have to have two pear trees for cross pollination and Olivia likes tart apples and Grace likes sweet apples and Olivia doesn't like pears, and guess what! We ended up with a car full of fruit trees.

The sun going down from the car deck on the ferry coming home. The children are oblivious because by this point, I practically superglued the headphones on to their annoying little ears and turned on a movie. That's Jack's sleeping elbow in the lower left corner. He'd been up playing video games with Hunter until 2am, so was a little wiped.