October 14th

Over the long weekend we took a trip to the Island to see my family for Thanksgiving. We hadn’t been there in a long time; I think Taylor had only been to my childhood home once and that was just for an afternoon, Sym not many more times and Gwen not at all. It’s kind of been a combination of things keeping us away: our schedules, the expense ($120 each way for the stupid ferry I COULD NOT believe it! PLUS we had to rent a car), and also a bunch of weird family stuff I’m not even going to get into. I actually always SAY I want to go but when it comes down to planning & paying for it I’m like ughhhhhhh, but this time I was like NOPE WE’RE GOING. Actually thank you to all the people who bought banners during September/the beginning of October because I put every penny towards the cost of this trip!

We went over on Saturday morning and came back Monday morning which gave us a lot of time to hang around on my mom’s nine couches, explore the property with the dogs, look through a dozen family photo albums and even take a walk down the train tracks to the beach. On that last one I learned that if you don’t spend your childhood walking along train tracks and over train bridges it is apparently terrifying as an adult; Taylor was completely paralyzed on the trestle over Bonnell Creek, which is only about 30 feet long and maybe 20 feet high (the trestle not the creek, the creek is actually completely dry right now) and I had to take the dogs across and then go back for him and Gwen.

Originally we planned this trip not because it was Thanksgiving but because it was a long weekend (Taylor’s work schedule makes regular weekend trips kind of impossible), but my mom invited tons relatives over for dinner on Sunday. It was weird because only my younger brother and sister were there so I was the oldest out of our sibling group, but a bunch of my nieces and nephews came, as well as my nephew’s daughter (it’s weird to think that I’m someone’s great aunt, haha). All told there were 20 people for dinner, many I hadn’t seen in years and years and some I hadn’t met at all (there are no pictures of dinner though as we were all too busy stuffing our faces). Sym had a good time hanging out with some of her cousins who are around the same age as her and even Gwen made friends with her cousin-once-removed Sydney, who is almost three years old and so tiny that they are around the same height even though Gwen is a year younger.

Here are a million pictures, no apologies.



Gwen loved being out on the deck on the ferry over; on the way back it was too windy for her.



My mom made a pie using apples from the trees in the front yard.



Explaining how I once slipped and fell while climbing down from the roof of the fort and had to hang from that tree for what felt like one thousand years until I was able to pull myself up.


I found a skull in the woods.






The swing in the bottom garden, unused and covered in lichen.







Taylor said the bleak grey rocky beach at Nanoose Bay reminded him of The Road.