Birthday Weekend

I don't know how Frank will ever top this birthday weekend... not that he has to. This one will last me awhile. It was the absolute best. Here I am with Corina in front of her Buddha with Luke and one of her many dogs. We had a fabulous class - Corina is a great teacher. I really really loved having a private class with her - I learned so much and now I can't wait to get out to my studio to practice and play. I'm also looking forward to the day when we can move to an island and live the island life!



This is Mona, Corina's so-sweet camel. She is really a wonderful animal - full of personality and very friendly. Luke became fast friends with her when he discovered she liked to eat these delicate little yellow flowers - he spent over an hour searching them out for her and feeding them to her. Luke loved their property, he ran around free and climbed trees, played with the dogs, the camel and the horse... went fishing on the lake and pretty much wore Frank out. They both had a great day too.





This is the wonderful bracelet and ring Corina gave me as my "birthday gift" - she is sooo generous. I love these! I also bought her tool to make these squished beads - they are so perfectly comfortable for bracelets - you can even wear them while typing on the computer!



Here we are kayaking. First time in a kayak since before Luke was born, which makes it Luke's first kayaking experience ever. He was a little uncomfortable at first and pretty much wanted to go back after the first five minutes, but after we discovered some floating kelp and brought it aboard - his "treasure" - things improved a lot. We saw one seal and one heron, a couple of bald eagles and many other water birds. I still need to look up what the black birds with the bright orange long beaks were and the black and white ones with the bright red feet...





Luke and Frank trying to catch crabs under the docks. They were too fast though.



Island flowers.



It seemed to me on this trip to San Juan island that every time I turned around I was seeing an angel or a mermaid. They were everywhere. It's really a magical island - full of energy with birds chirping and flying around constantly - the kind of place where you expect to find fairies or mermaids... or even a unicorn (maybe that was just because I looked up once to see a snow white horse outside Corina's studio).



Mount Baker from the Ferry (on the way home actually).



Seagulls from the Ferry.



Getting on the Ferry in the rain. It was no longer raining by the time we got off and the sun was out by the time we got to Roche Harbor for kayaking.