Kino growing

Christmas week at the Inn was quiet - Washington - our side of the state was hit by an unusual amount of snow that lasted for weeks and kept piling up with storm after storm. Fun at first, but combined with the city of Seattle policy to not use salt on the roads became a long nightmare of washboard iced roads with cars, buses and SUV's strewn on the sides as people had to abandon them. We are not set up for snow and it becomes very clear during this type of crisis. NOw that it is over all the finger pointing has began which is almost as much fun.

At any rate...

Kino and I hit the beach daily for a dose of giant waves and wind and several times driving rain. He is such a trooper though, while I felt rather miserable with the rain pelting my face and glasses, he focused on the lincoln logs that had been tossed on the beach and climbed and rolled over and generally acted like the explorer he is. One day the sun was shining as we drove up and I saw waves crashing on and over the jetty - the waves were magnifient, coupled with extreme high tides and the barmetric pressure low caused the marina district of Westport to flood, tossed boulders over the jetty onto the road and stirred up a great deal of excitement in a certain three year old who delighted with all the adults and photographers who oohed and aahhed from the top of the observation tower as the waves threw spray at us up 3 stories - I admit to being a tad obsessed with capturing the essence of waves.

Janet and Jeff managed to crawl through the snow and come out on the 27th for a night as seen in the earlier post with the active balloon baseball game video clip.

But the biggest news of the end of the year besides Steve and Kino making it to cousin Kellan's 4th birthday party is that he has grown 1/2 inch in less than a month! Must be those Flintstone one a days, or the weather...

Holiday fun

Thought I'd try to add a video clip from last night of cafe balloon baseball featuring "Gadi", Kino, uncle Jeff and Auntie Janet...

More seasonal inn scapes...

Two story cottage (and horseshoe pit!).



Pre-snow.

Hosting the historic homes tour!

Weather threatened to disrupt this debut event. In the end it provided an exciting backdrop to the gathering that numbered about 40.






The performers captivated one audience member in particular.




This same audience member was magnetized also by some of the unusual items of apparel adorned in the group...




But first to coax them in to his grasp. This muff was a trophy. There was also some exquisite jewelry he enjoyed examining, to such a degree that he felt compelled to don one of his own swatch watches and parade accordingly.

Help arrives from Germany!

The festivities were enlivened with Ann's visit from Germany. Here Kino is providing quick indoctrination on the rigors of the inn decking process.






Signing the guest book required some close guidance.




The results were nevertheless satisfying.



Another of Kino's favorite sorts of exertion. He seems to have a running gene.

Hall decking, cont.

Floral embellishment from a San Franciscan elf!






The fourth one's Yogi's, of course.







Can you pick out the ornament that Kino made in pre-school crafts?





Hall decking's not all about the physical activity.







Dreaming of sugar plums...

Kino's motorcycle ride, Daddy's pine needle cleanup job.

With the need to wait for or assist gearing up and
mounting processes, time accounting for projects
around the inn acquires new degrees
of complexity.

Decking the halls

23 December 08

I never liked the marshmellos so much in mine, perhaps because of the sugary overload achieved with the cinnamon toast side course to hot chocolate that was part of the Irving ritual as I recall it. A satisfying slathering of the confectionary ingredient of course required a solid build-up of the butter layer, sufficiently applied to develop the desired final slurry effect.

Wonder what kinds of reverie Kino will take from his first westernized encounter of this holiday season. The stage couldn’t be set in much grander form at the inn where we’ve initiated a decking-the-halls protocol that seems in keeping with the stature of the property as the community’s premier heritage home. (That element of marketing spin is carry-over from our recently developed promotional brochures.) The decorating activity was prompted particularly by the hosting role we played to the historical society’s seasonal home tour. Many other efforts accompanied this ramp-up to the event including the completion of the downstairs bathroom, the repair of a fireplace and loading up of a good supply of firewood to stoke our primary heat source, the design and printing of brochures and business cards, the production of a Glenacres Inn line of picture stationery, and some major cleaning. Thank goodness for the resources and continuing support of all you Neills in advancing the cause in all this! Thank you also mother nature for providing the dramatic winter setting to embellish the decorative affects that contributed to big success of this latest hosting event. We are revved by it in entertaining prospects for the new year.

In this push to bring the blog better up to date Les and I will try to piece together a bit of a chronology of activity through picture posts. Doing this is of course challenged—enlivened!—by the ever-present squirm of 3 year old energy in the midst

Kino @ Westport beach 12/21/08

First day of winter

Remember real hot chocolate?

Perhaps it’s the unusual overabundance of frozen water that has fallen on Seattle this week, or the fact that Steve and I now approach life through the eyes of a 3 year old, or the season and frozen pipes. Hard to say, but the other day I hiked to the grocery store to fetch a few supplies in my backpack – temp 19 F pre wind chill, and as I tiptoed over the ice skating rink that they were pretending was a lot for parking cars, I suddenly smelled what I thought was hot chocolate – brilliant I mumbled through my iced lips as I sniffed through every aisle for one of those ladies with hair nets giving out samples and coupons.

An olfactory hallucination brought on by frost seared brain cells, or a memory triggered by the crunchiness of the snow under my boots, the sensory thrill of sliding on the road – all somehow tossed me back to the side of my mother’s stove anxiously watching a pot of milk heat while my sibs and I snuck more powered Nestles Quik into our mugs lined on the counter. The unopened bag of marshmallows torturing us.

I took a running start to better my speed as I skated down the alley behind our house, my senses overwhelmed as I flashbacked to those long northern Michigan winters and the aspects that made them livable. Deep snow drifts for burrowing, ice skating and sucking ones sodden mittens when thirsty, falling into the not quite frozen enough frog pond or bay and freaking out mom when walking in wet/frozen and of course hot chocolate.

Mom brushed us kids away like so many flies at a picnic as she poured the hot milk slowly into our mugs half filled (if I had my way and Mom hadn’t noticed) with powdered chocolate. Moms giving each mug a quick stir to mix, plopping in several white pillows and leaving a spoon in each mug. (“Nestles makes the very best… Chocolate”)

Then the real torture began, because in this era before microwaves and immediate melting, we had to wait for the ultimate satisfaction. The marshmallows became a sweet thick blanket over the hot chocolate milk, which was best eaten spoonful by spoonful, using a finger to clean up every drip and drop in the bottom of the mug.

Real hot chocolate.