Gull-able

Here’s a belated entry about the lovely weekend when Laury was here last week.

It started with a dandelion. Apparently only one kind of dandelion grows in Illinois, and Laury was incredulous that the almost-dainty-looking blooms with the small circlet of pedals balancing on tall stems were, indeed, dandelions. We finally convinced her and she rushed along to each of the flowers in our field, eager to see what other treasures the Northwest had to offer. “The Pacific Northwest is like a completely different country!”

“You know,” Marita joked, “We could tell her anything and she’d believe us.”

I grinned. “Yeah, see that, Laury?” I pointed to a pile of rocks. “That’s the rare….umm…Jubjub flower.” Mari and I laughed.

Laury spotted a flower on the other side of the rocks and peered at it. “Really? That white one?”

We laughed harder and she looked around in puzzlement before she realized I was pulling her leg. From then on whenever she asked a question I didn’t know, I would make up a silly answer (typical for me, anyhow ;-) ). And from then on, if Marita or I gave her a true answer, she would say doubtfully, “huh uh.” but if it was a made up answer she would gasp, “Really?!” Kinda backwards…so of course I had to tease her more. And of course she teased me back just as hard. ;-) We pretty much laughed the entire weekend--it was so fun.

Here’s a bunch of random silly pictures and the stories to go along with them:

< Laury and I giggling with our laptops during the sleepover at Marita's house.

>>I'm not singing--really. Mari caught me in action as I was telling a story. And to think, some people believe I'm quiet and shy!

Saturday Mari and Laury and I drove to Seaside, OR. It was a lovely day--not too hot and not too cold. It was the first time Laury had ever seen the ocean. We splashed in the cold waves a bit and then settled down to eat our lunch. As always, seagulls flocked around, eager to find any bit of food. Marita and I pretty much ignored them, but Laury was enjoying them and snapped some pictures. Then...out of the corner of our eyes... Marita and I saw Laury start to toss a bit of bread to a bird. Mari lunged for her, yelling, "No!"

It was too late. The bread fell to the beach and the entire Northwest population of seagulls made a dive. Straight for us. One bird gulped up the bread. The others made a circle around us. The three of us humans in the middle huddled closer together. "Rule number one." Mari and I told Laury. "Never, never, EVER, feed the seagulls."

The circle tightened. The birds didn't make a sound, just stared at us with menacing dark eyes. You could just see the "Mine? Mine? Mine?" thought bubbles hovering over their heads as they watched us eat.

Finally someone else made the fatal mistake and the birds flew to gobble up someone else's lunch. All but one bird, that is. Perhaps it was the one, and only one, who had gotten the piece of bread Laury threw, but it stuck close to us the rest of the day. In fact, Laury started calling it our guard-gull and you can see it in the background of the above picture.




< Two dizzy people trying to hold each other up doesn't work so well. "I'm not dizzy." I tried protesting. "I just...sorta...loose my balance sometimes."

"Hon," Laury patted my arm, "that's called dizzy."

>>Mari and Laury had never heard of drip castles, so of course I had to demonstrate the fine art, as taught to me by my dad. True

to my life as a "kid magnet," I had no sooner started when two little boys rushed over to see what I was doing. I showed them how to scoop up a handful of wet sand and let it dribble through your fingers to form a bumpy, almost-spooky-looking castle. The younger boy discovered that his hands were dirty halfway through the first drip, and rushed off to wash them (doubly funny because I used to do that during mud pie making when I was that age, too), but the older boy and I had fun making our castles.