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Other than feasting your eyes on all our Jan adventures (in the Album above), it’s been a bit of a dry week on the newsworthiness scale, compared to last week. (Thankfully! We were all worn out after our trips to the Big Island and camping!) The wind is still gusting up to 50mph. I am amazed our tiny house hasn’t sailed off over the bay. Also – you can see my mom’s kayak tie-off skills in action in the picture above. She had seen someone tie their kayak down by sending the strap through the car (vs just to the roof rack) – I guess that person suspected that their roof rack itself wasn’t secure? Who knows. Anyway, she tied off the front end that way while I tied off in a somewhat more conventional way in the rear and followed her home to help unload and stow. Of course I had to snap this picture of her trying to get out – she’d unwittingly tied her door closed. 🙂 Thanks for playing along and smiling so nicely, mom! ha ha!

In other news, life with an NR rep (Naval Reactors) proves to be challenging. Dave frequently asks questions as he comes and goes – it seems it’s always at the door he’s got a query for me, usually early in the morning before I’ve had coffee, or as he’s coming home and I’m trying to make dinner. The other day at 6am he asked if the little side table by our door had moved a bit. Puzzled, I said I guess it must have moved while I was trying to pick up something the wind had blown down. Upon later reflection, I developed a new strategy for handling these surprise queries. I think I’ll just make stuff up. Like perhaps I should have said, “You know, I saw a parrot over there flipping through our guest book. I guess he must have bumped it when he landed up there since the winds were so strong.” I don’t get any relief from these queries because he’s home every night. No deployments any more, so I don’t have lengthy periods when I’m solely in charge. Alas, it’s wonderful to have him home and see him play with Sam.

Oh – Sam surprised us all the other day by finishing just about every sentence in his Thomas the Tank Engine book! It’s a high level book – not a board book – that Dave, Mom and I have been reading for about a year. We never guessed he’d pick up on all those long words and sentences, but I guess he had been listening after all! He did the same thing with his Noah’s Ark book yesterday, one we hadn’t read in several weeks. We were astounded. Nice going, Sam! Last night he said “too hot” about his food. He’s really starting to talk to us! WOW!