Emma saw boats, had a birthday, and Dan took a week off!

This year the city were Dan works hosted OpSail/Harborfest.  Harborfest happens each year, but the last time OpSail was here was 2000.  Sailboats from around the world gathered and opened themselves up for free tours.  There were also free concerts, yummy fair-like food, and various demos, plus historical figures from the time of the war of 1812.

We drove on over and hung out for about 6 hours.  That was much longer than I had anticipated, but Jonah was happy and Kevin and Elena were enjoying themselves, so it worked out.  We stayed and were able to enjoy 3 concerts:  Andy Grammer, Gavin Degraw, and Colbie Callait.  They were all great, but Colbie Caillat was my favorite.  I used to go to a lot of concerts as a teenager and college student, so I was super excited.  I love live music.  The kids had the most energy (and the most room) at the first concert, so they were dancing around and having a lot of fun.  By the time the third concert rolled around at 8:30, we had to buy them lots of snacks to keep the whining down. 

In between concerts, we toured boats and the kids made these pirate bandanas.

This is the actual view from our concert watching spot.  You can see the white cover for the stage on the left.  The sailboat on the far right is from Ecuador and the middle ship is from Colombia.  I don't remember for sure, but I think the one of the left is Indonesian.  I was speaking some Spanish on the Colombian ship and one of the crew members asked where I was from.  I was so excited!  That might mean that my accent was good enough that I sounded as if I come from a Spanish-speaking country.  Or he thought I was crazy.  Whatever.

My birthday was fantastic (See how happy I look?), but the real fun happened during my birthday week.  Dan had the week off starting with the day before my birthday - which he spent shopping with the kids. :)

 We went bowling,

 Jonah became a biker (Dan is holding him and hiding behind),

we played tourist at the beach,

dug holes in the sand,

we went for walks as a family, visited various parks, and we bought a minivan!

How cool is that?!  I can't believe I don't have a picture of the outside.  It's a used silver Honda Odyssey, and it is everything I ever wanted!  I wanted one with automatic side doors, reasonably low mileage, and an 8th seat.  Everything else was just a bonus.  It has a DVD player with cordless headphones so that we can still listen to cds/radio while they watch a movie.  It has leather seats, a sunroof, all weather rubber floor mats, a million airbags, etc.  I love this car!  We found it at a tiny dealership through Craigslist.  I ran over there during nap time one day.  I brought it back to the house during my test drive so Dan could check it out, then I drove it by a mechanic.  I took it back to the dealer that afternoon and told him we would be back to buy it the next day after he had it detailed and changed the oil. 

Dan and I are very cautious consumers.  We "visited" our refrigerator at Sears probably 3 times before we bought it.  We "visited" our TV at Costco so many times that it sold out before we bought it (We later got a similar one at Walmart).  It felt really good to find what we were looking for, at the price that we wanted, and to go for it.