Christmas Season 2023

Traditional Green Friday Hike

Visiting Bruunidun in West Seattle with friends.

 

Visit from Grandpa and Grandma Davis

 

Visiting Point Robinson to watch for whales.  Grandma and Grandpa were here for one of the best whale visits of the season from the J-Pod.

Freshman Homecoming at SAMI

Avery's robotics competition in Tacoma

Halloween 2023

 We went back to Cinebar again this year to visit Huntting Farms.  We had a blast in the corn maze both day and night and going through the haunted forest. 

 

We all looked forward to the cinnamon and sugar elephant ear.  

All ready for trick or treaters while we go downtown.

Alekos, Alia and Rose were FBI agents.

Family Photos

 Since it's been ten years we thought it was time to update our family photos.  My friend Dawn Stief is an amazing professional photographer that captures photos that tell stories.  It was a fun photo session at Misty Isle farms.

Oscar the Bird King

 This summer Thomas Dambo, a recycle art activist from Denmark, travelled around the US building trolls to bring awareness to our waste and its impact on the environment.  "In nature there is no landfill.  Nature is circular, everything has a meaning and everything is recycled" Dambo.  He builds them out of pallets, scrap wood, debris and twigs. For the project, Dambo worked with the local volunteers and Coast Salish tribal communities.  He created 6 trolls in PNW that all tell a story.  The troll on Vashon is called the Bird King and he's at Point Robinson tucked in the woods.  

First Day of School

First Day- Freshman year at Science and Math Institute (SAMI)

in Tacoma on the zoo grounds.  It's a public high school that has a lottery admission.  Alia is likes the way the school is set up.  She has 4 classes a day, 90 minutes each.  The classes run twice a week with a late start on Wednesdays to meet with her mentor group.  In mentor group they work on volunteer projects in the zoo and community and fun electives.  Alia loves having the freedom to roam the zoo during lunch and in between class periods.  The campus is in Point Defiance which is the 2nd largest public park in the US, Central park being the largest.  

The only downside to going to SAMI is the commute by ferry each day.  She has to get up at 6:00 am and be on a 7:10 ferry.  The ferry system is very broken right now with failing boats and lack of crew so it's often delayed or cancelled.  On this day the boats were cancelled until 10:30 and they hung out at a friend's grandma's house eating coffee cake and playing games.  While that was fun, missing high school classes was stressful as it's hard to catch up with an AP class you only have twice a week.

Avery started almost a month later this year because he is doing Running Start at Tacoma Community College for his Junior year.  A few states offer a program that allows high school students to take classes at local community colleges for free.  He has 3 classes this quarter, Math, US History and English.  He commutes to Tacoma 4 days a week since he does Math online.  On Fridays he is still able to work at Burn Design Lab on Vashon.

This summer he bought a Bamboo printer and started a business called A Simple Solution, selling on Etsy.  His first product is actually a fix for the emergency window latch on our RV.  He sold his first latch last week.