Henry & Dad Outing to Bremerton

In April, Dad and Henry go on an outing to Bremerton. It's a beautiful 45-minute ferry ride from Seattle, winding through some islands in the Puget Sound, and we go to a "Museum Ship" - a ship that was active in the Vietnam War and is now sitting in dock as a museum. It's not very crowded so Henry gets to explore around the different areas of the ship. Very fun!

Henry in the captain's chair

On the ferry ride back home - Seattle skyline in the distance

Weekend Trip to Canada

During Spring Break, Dad took Joseph and Henry to Canada for a long weekend (Mary Jo stayed home with Jack who had baseball practices).

We left on Saturday and drove up to Whistler, a skiing mecca about four hours from our house. There's a very nice village there with restaurants and the lifts taking people up the mountain. The Olympics had been held here in 2010 and much of the town is newly constructed for that.

Henry in Whistler Village

The three of us skied on Sunday, with Joseph getting in lots of runs. It was a little foggy but amazing skiing, with really long runs, no real crowds, and good quality snow.

On Monday we drove south from Whistler and stopped in Squamish for an amazing hike. The Squamish Chief is a large rock overlooking the town, valley, and sound - it was a strenuous two mile hike up (about an hour), including some ladders and chains at the top to get over some really large rocks. The view from the top was amazing - it was a clear day and we could see for miles.

Views from the top of Squamish Chief

From there we drove down to Horseshoe Bay, where we took an hour-long ferry to Vancouver Island. There we took another hike along an old wooden railroad trestle that has recently been restored. We stayed that night in Victoria, the largest city on the island.

On Tuesday we headed back home, taking another ferry - this one a three hour ferry that winds its way through the beautiful San Juan Islands. It's just starting to be whale season there, but we didn't get to see any from the boat. We landed in Anacortes, Washington and then drove home from there.

Joseph's High School Track Season

Joseph ran for his high school track team this spring, his first varsity sport he has played in high school. Joseph runs long-distance track, usually competing in the one-mile race. It involves practice nearly every day of the week, many times running 4-6 miles at a time. He's competed in several meets (every Thursday through April and May) and some invitational meets on Saturday. His best time so far is 5 minutes, 5 seconds, which is almost a minute faster than where he was at the start of the season.

Joseph (in second place)

Jack and Henry's Science Fairs

This spring both Jack and Henry did science projects for their school science fairs.

Jack's project was an analysis of web browser speeds. Jack tested four different websites on five different browsers. He timed how long it took for each website (e.g., amazon.com, seashepherd.org) to fully load using Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Maxthon.

He found that Internet Explorer was the fastest loading browser of any of the ones he tested.

Henry's project was on whether soaking seeds before planting them would cause the seeds to grow into plants faster. He tested five different types of seeds - pepper, tomato, cucumber, and green bean. He took some of each type of seed and soaked them for 24 hours, some others he soaked for 2 hours, and some others he didn't soak at all. He found that the seeds that were soaked grew faster and taller than seeds that hadn't been soaked.

Trip to Hawaii

During February break, we all went to the Big Island of Hawaii for a week. We stayed in a house in a town called "Captain Cook", on the bay where the explorer of the same name died, after being the first Westerner to "discover" Hawaii in the 1770s. It was a beautiful spot and our week was filled with lots of fun activities.

After the trip, each of the kids rated how fun each of the activities were. Not surprisingly, they each had a different top 3 list.

Joseph's Top 3:
1. Snorkeling at Kahalu'u Beach - swimming with lots of different kinds of fish amongst a coral reef
2. Volcanoes National Park - seeing steam still coming out of the crater from recent eruptions, and a hike across a crater that last erupted in the 1950s.
3. Parasailing from Kona Harbor - on 1200 feet of rope, we got 500 feet in the air - almost as tall as the tallest building in Seattle. Great views of the island and ocean

Jack's Top 3:
1. Hike along rocks / sea arches - the entire island is made up of lava and is very black - mostly rocky. The day before we left we hiked along the coast and saw cool rock formations and sea arches (where the rock has eroded away and the surf comes pouring through). We also saw humpback whales in the ocean (we saw them 3 times during the trip; this is on their migratory path for this time of year).
2. Boogie Boarding at Kikua Beach
3. Parasailing from Kona Harbor

Henry's Top 3:
1. Parasailing from Kona Harbor
2. Manini Beach - this was our local beach, a 2 minute walk from our house. A very rocky beach, not really swim-able except for a narrow sandy portion where Henry spent hours washing up in a boogie board. Others also went snorkeling out in the bay from there.
3. Boogie Boarding at Kikua Beach

To see the top 25 photos from our trip, click here