oops sorry this video never loaded. I'll find it later. Happy Solstice!

I over heard Esther reading to Kobi during a playdate. It was very sweet and the dialog is hilarious. Turn the volume waaaay up.

Photos

House Remodel

Halloween Stardust Ball

We have been watching a little too much Cirque du Sul

Inspecting a Discovery

We went on an amazing walk Sunday and came across a small discovery. Kobi is explaining it in the video.
We also had a once in a lifetime wildlife experience. We witnessed the new journey of 11 Common Mergansers chicks leaving their nest for the first time. Merganser mothers do not bring food to her chicks. Therefore the babies have to leave the nest about a day after they hatch to feed themselves. The interesting part about this is, Mergansers often times nest in cliffs and old hawk nests many feet off the ground. In this case it was about 150-200 feet up a cliff in the gorge below Blue Lake damn. The mother flew out of the nest calling her young, and we watched all 11 of them tumble, fall, bounce and crash down the side of the cliff to meet mom in a small pond below. It was incredible. From the height of the cliff, and treacherous rock and other obstacles along the way we thought we were observing carnage. They all made it and scuttled over to mom ready to eat. Of course I didn't bring the camera, so the only documenting of our observation is in our brains & hearts.

Picture Post

Campers at Brents Beach


Pre-Triathlon Family
no Post Triathlon Family Picture
Available



Last Day of Preschool Beach Picnic

Annan Turns One!

Annan at the Beach

Birthday Boy


Mini Cupcakes from Big Brother

Picture Post

Here are some recent photos of our family. I
haven't posted for a while, but it seems we are
slacking on our end of the Weiland picture share.
Thanks for all the photos everyone has sent our
way. We love seeing everyone in pictures and
sharing them with Kobi. He always says, "I want
to go to their house. Can we go right now?"

Mother's Day Quilt Show


Annan exploring the yard, almost walking.


Kobi's new Birthday Bike



At Brent's Beach Camping with Aunt Bethy & Uncle Kevin



Last Day of Preschool
...with Uncle

This is many short videos spliced together from the last
herring opening. We were flying over the coast of Kruzof
Island looking for herring. Frank found a nice spot
(Shoals Beach I later discovered) to beach comb,
so we landed for 1/2 hour and browsed for glass balls.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and slightly warm. We found
washed up trash instead of glass balls and that the opener was
called while we were scouting. Whoops!
Off we flew to find fish and look out for other planes.

Herring Spotting & Plane Watching

Fishing for Herring at 3,000 ft.

It's hard to tell, but this is the herring fishery in action.
Boats, Nets, Skiffs & Tenders

Manna Manna

One more, my favorite.

Bort Bort Bort

We've recently rediscovered The Muppet Show. Yipee! It's great for movie night because of the adult humor mixed in with kid craziness. It cracks us all up. I highly recommend watching it again as an adult, and with children if possible.

Turn the volume waaaay up to hear it.

Fiona Turns 4

Kobi, Pete & I made Birthday balloons for Fiona's Birthday. We put small gifts inside for her to discover upon opening. They are made out of tissue paper and watered down glue. After drying, removing the balloon and inserting the gift, we added to pull cords. It was fun for us to make them and fun for Fiona and Jeremiah to open them.

Kobi and I also made dress-up wrist bands. They are perfect decoration for Fairies and Ballerinas. (as you can see on Fiona here) It was a great match with her dance shoes from her Grandma & Grandpa.

One of the first things Kobi does at Fiona's house and Esther's house is dress with them. This was his second outfit during the Birthday party.

If you look closely, Randy is wearing a short, skin tight wet suit for the occasion. He and Uncle Bill came dancing out to the living room half way through present opening. The kids sat there stunned and mouthes open for quite some time. Hilarious!

The Day Annan Learned to Crawl

This video is a little old, but we're learning how to embed video to this site. It's our test video. He learned to crawl about a month and half ago, I think. Anyway it's pretty cute. Enjoy.

Esther & Kobi after eating a bowl of blueberries.

Larus Occidentalis - Western Gull

We have so much snow, the gulls and other birds are desperately looking for food.
Pete has watched two Eagles attack and then fly away with gulls in their mouths.
Last Sunday morning after smoking some fish, gulls started to appear in our yard. There were a few, then many, and then at one time I counted almost 40 gulls.

Pete and Kobi started feeding them bread and quickly dwindled the supply. Pete remembered we had old herring in our freezer. The gulls are waiting for the herring to spawn this spring which seems to be delayed because of the cold weather. He decided to help them out and put the frozen block of herring on our sidewalk. The gulls pecked at it, pecked at each other, including their eyes, and eventually it thawed enough to eat. Unfortuatelly, they pulled the bits of herring into the road to fight over it and two got ran over by a speeding teenage girl. Kobi, Pete, the neighbor and his girlfriend watched in horror. The neighbor with his girlfriend tracked down a license plate number and description to report it to police and Fish & Wildlife. Ultimately they and we were told, Sea Gulls have no protection and just throw them in the trash. Ugh! So unfair!

In addition to the sad life of a gull.
Kobi and I saw a gull lazily electrocute himself by landing on a transformer
and then fall 25 feet to his death. After calling the Raptor Center, F & W, and the police, we were told to contact the City Electric Dept. to see if the wires were okay.
No one cared about the gull. We were crushed. Poor guy.

After having 40 gulls within inches of our feet we discovered they are really beautiful birds.

He can wave!

Budding Picasso

Some friends of ours gave us an easel they had made for their kids years ago. Very sweet. Kobi has been painting off and on. It's fun to watch him create master pieces. Maybe he has a little of his Nana in him.