The Next Chapter in the Book . . .: Chapter 299

It's been a really busy time at work for me. Not only are we two weeks away from the end of the school year but we have to move out of the building to allow for upgrades. This means all 13 of our training aids, (a.k.a. practice cars), must be moved to another location. By contract with the car manufacturers...and the fact that the cars have all been "studentized" they can't be driven on the roads. Soo after weeks of grumbling and ignoring the situation, the district finally sent car haulers to collect them and move the cars to another secure location to prevent vandalizing if they were stored in our parking lot as they originally planned. The loading operation took all day and was therefore a day-long excuse to be gawking at the action.

The Saturn "cut-away is loaded onto the hauler. The Saturn is our demo vehicle for air bag and lock systems.

Thursday evening we went to "The Hub" restaurant on the Narrows Airport. It was hot and sunny and fun to watch the airplanes come and go. While we were eating, a corporate plane arrived. It most likely held some (rich) folks arriving for the US Open golf tournament at Chambers Bay in University Place. The Narrows were beautiful as we crossed the bridge. You can see Mt. Rainier through the bridge rigging on the left (old) side.

This week Chris' parents were visiting from Maine. Although they were excited to see Chris and Carissa, Reagan was the intended target. Wherever Reagan was, Grammy and Grampy weren't too far away.

Since they were here over Reagan's birthday, (Coincidence? I think not.) we had a little party for Reagan here at the house as the Walkers passed through on their way to the airport.

It's hard to believe that just one year ago, Reagan was this small.

And now she's a quite the little lady.

So, as you all know, I love to let the creative juices flow and nothing gets them flowing like a themed party. So I selected "fish" as my target and away I went. Saturday morning dawned to find me stapling crepe paper kelp to the newly installed garden wall. I went to 3 different stores looking for crepe paper. As it turns out, the new moniker for "crepe paper" is "streamers". It made me feel really old. Once I got my vocabulary updated, all three store immediately had what I wanted!

So the "streamers" became kelp and with the help of Erik and Darla, I had a bunch of little fishies to put on the kelp. I made larger fish out of paper lanterns and the whole combination made for a festive fish theme.

And a sneaky way to cover up the newly installed, undecorated wall.

Although Richard was impressed with the decorations, he was more impressed with the beverage fountain.

I carved a fish themed fruit bowl.

Carissa took a picture of Reagan in the same place, in the same chair each week this year from Week One. Lack of organization prohibits me from showing you Week One, but I did find these two pics.

For Reagan's birthday Carissa made a print of each of the chair pictures and posted them on our patio wall to show us how much she's changed this year and the party was on!

JoAnn supervises playtime with all the girls.

Reagan loves to play in the new water fountain I got for Mother's Day. You could almost see the little green "loading" bar in her head as she experimented with the water and watched it drop from pot to pot.

Kyanne made Reagan the cutest little "1" shirt.

Since it was so hot, I got all of us a pool to dunk our feet and fingers in to stay cool.

Yup. You guessed it. Reagan got completely in with her cute little birthday outfit.

At least Kyanne listened. The purpose of the pool was to cool our feet, not our new birthday dress!

While we were all at the pool, JoAnn was sitting in the middle of the yard Facebooking. Wait! JoAnn doesn't have Facebook!

Grampa came by and so we got a couple of four-generation photos.

Reagan had her first taste of sugar on her banana bread cake.

You can see her "1" shirt that Kyanne made.

Then Reagan opened her gifts.

I made Reagan a monkey growth chart, pre-marked with her previous height measurements. I've had the panel since before Reagan was born and I was busily sewing the binding on it late the night before her birthday. Fortunately I work better under "compressed timelines".