Busy Week Off.

It was a good week to take off of boat work, the weather was great and there was so many events happening around the island it was impossible to fit it all in.

When we lived at the log house it was hard to teach the kids to ride bikes on the gravel driveway so we didn't get very far in the lessons before enough bruised knees and not enough progress had us all giving up. But with a week to do nothing and a big parking lot to practice in I figured it was time to try again, but that meant going out and buying everyone new bikes since they had out grown their other ones.

Riki tiki tavi the mongoose.

Within 20 minutes Ash and Mac were riding without training wheels and loving it.

Another lazy day around the boat and I used some of the left over wood I had lying around to finally make two shelves I've been wanting.

One in the head to get the air purifier off of the floor, it was taking up precious floor space.

And a little shelf upfront in the v berth to put the dehumidifier.

This weekend on Whidbey was packed with things going on, there was the Highland Games at Greenbank farm. We attended with some friends but were sadly disappointed in the festivities. It was windy down there and everyone was freezing, and the event was pretty small in scale. Coming from Nova Scotia we do have pretty high standards when it comes to our Scottish games.

There was a long and boring opening ceremonies that we shivered through, the pipe music was nice though and the singing of 'O Canada' was appreciated.

If it had been just us grown ups we would have stayed and watched the games but the kids were not entertained with giant men throwing bales of hay over a pole with a pitch fork,

After an hour or so we decided to cut our loses and recoup some of the day. Ash went with her friend to their house for a play date and the boys, Mark and I headed back up island to Coupeville for the Arts and Crafts fair. We went last year and it was so much fun, it is really well done and always packed.

This year at the festival they had two tall ships in town giving tours and battle sails where they would  fire cannons at each other, fake cannons of course.

And the highlight of the day for me was finally finding my snowball lady. There is a woman who, last summer was at all the farmers markets on the island with her stand and she would sell New Orleans snowballs. She had a pear flavour which no one seems to like but me and I would order it every time. Unfortunately this year she hasn't been around and I was afraid I would go all summer without my pear snowball, but when I went up to her at the fair she immediately recognized me and with a flourish pulled out her bottle of pear flavour saying she had made it up just for me incase I happened to show up.

The Hawaiian Chief and My Lady Washington battling it out.

The food court area, we stuffed ourselves on gyros, hot dogs, ice cream, chips and snowballs, I had to waddle back to the truck.

The look down just one street they had closed off for the craft vendors, packed! There are two other streets the same, to say the least parking was a nightmare.

Baskets from Oz. Last year at the fair my mom bought us two of her baskets, they are great, super sturdy and can hold five pounds of potatoes, I have two hanging in my galley.

A stop at our favourite ice cream place downtown Coupeville.

Sunday after church we went back out to the fair because I needed to have one more snowball before the lady disappeared again and the kids got a closer look at the tall ships while they were docked.

It was such a gorgeous day we decided to head home and go for a sail town to Coupeville to watch the tall ships while they sailed. We had some decent wind sporadically through the afternoon, I hate turning the bend out of Oak Harbor and into Penn Cove, the wind just dies and your left bobbing around, so we didn't get too close to the ships but we could watch them from a distance.

Greenbank and Coupeville were busy with their events so of course Oak Harbor couldn't be outdone, the annual Pigfest and BBQ competition, we didn't actually attend.

Mac spotting the tall ships in the distance.

Our new lazy jack system, they worked, not perfect but it was easier than it was before without them, some more tweaking with the height and spacing of and we should be able to have them working smoothly.

Overall a good week of just relaxing and having some family time but the boat projects are beckoning, time to get back at it, finish up the rear trampolines, install radar and wind up the mast, fix another soft spot in the deck, the list is smaller but still these are extensive projects and we have to get work done while the weather is still good.