Annual Things We Never Seem To Do Annually

But some that we do do annually, that is what is on my mind today.

I was just telling a friend that October seems to be a time that the calendar fills up with lots of potential events to attend. This weekend was the date of the local Greek festival, a favorite with us girls, the Farm Fest in our county at several different locations, and a very cool historical happening.

We took advantage of the cool historical reenactment. No pictures though because not only can you not do flash pictures even the digital camera gave off too bright a light. Sure could have brought my old SLR film camera but then you still wouldn't have seen the pictures.

Last night in spite of some of the family getting over a fever and sinus crud and one person just coming down with a fever, the whole family ended up at the Candle Light Tour at Fort Nisqually in Point Defiance Park. In the dark and in the rain. We have gone as a family several times in the past, always meaning to go every year. But each year that we go we add on a new family or new son as the case may be. It is cool.

Fort Nisqually was the site of a Hudson Bay trading post. Here is a paragraph from their web site:

Travel back in time with us and experience life in Washington Territory during the fur trade era. A Hudson's Bay Company outpost built in 1833, Fort Nisqually was the first European settlement on Puget Sound. With a diverse work force of American, English, French Canadian, Hawaiian, Irish, Native American, and Scottish laborers, Fort Nisqually was a bustling center of trade that expanded into a large scale agricultural enterprise.

On the first weekend in October, in the hours of dark, they host a guided tour through the restored fort which for the two nights is filled with people from 1855. Some of them are camped just outside the gate of the fort, they can be seen cooking their dinner, telling stories, disciplining children, making plans for trapping expeditions or what they are going to be picking up in trade. But they are never caught talking to or acknowledging us, even if they trip over us on their way to and fro doing their duties of day to day living.

As we go on into the fort we come into a small house with men gathered around the table and the women are gathered in a side room spinning and looking over sewing. Just outside of this house there was a new addition of a tent covering an area where some people from 1855 were having fun dancing to a fiddle.

Then we go across the yard of the fort to the Black Smith's shop, where two men were working at a forge, shaping a piece of iron work. On into the warehouse to see more 1855ians the on to the store for more conversation between the shopkeeper and a traveler. On to the Factor's house where they are always entertaining someone important and having a beautiful dinner served from the cook house which is out the back side of the house.

We all had great fun and it fit just perfectly into Kai's recent studies he has been doing with Momma Stephanie see We Interupt This... It was the Bowerman's first trip to the Fort (no new sons yet.) We are sorry that some of our other family members and friends from Friday night gathering couldn't make it. Some people believe in staying home when they are sick! Or need to get up early!

Most likely we won't be getting around to any of those other things this weekend some of us just can't get our act together and some are sick. But we are looking forward to our annual (and this time I mean annual) Leif Erickson day.

When I do Leif Erickson day I reserve the right to pick any ol' weekend in October. Our friend who introduced us to and who has hosted many of our first Leif Erickson Days is up at the Harvest Fest this weekend selling her little sheep. She always tries to aim for the weekend of Columbus Day for their family's Leif Erickson Day because some of us of Scandinavian decent and those of us married to the Lutefisk eaters, like to celebrate the real first European explorer of America. Check it out it is true!

We also include a little Irish food to humor those of us who have heritage ties to the Irish monk who was the actual first European to lay eyes on America, but he didn't stick around so he just gets a dish or two.

When our friends first invited us, my husband cooked their Lutefisk for them. My husband is Swedish (more on his grandma and grandpa on a later post) and they are all Norwegian but they had to admit that inviting Dirt was a very good thing because he makes the absolute best Lutefisk they have ever tasted.

I do believe I have the most accurate description of this foreign food (I am the Scotch-Irish, German, Dutch, Dane in the group) as (cover your ears if your sensitive) boiled snot with white sauce. Oh wait you heard that I shoulda told you to cover your eyes! Uh oh my bad.

Anyway we are having a Leif Erickson party on the eighteenth of October (time TBA) but most likely all day! You are all welcome to come just RSVP please as I would hate to run out of Lutefisk. Or meatballs, real fish, fried chicken, potatoes, beets, cabbage dishes, gelatin's of all sorts, pickled herring, lefse, hard tack, rye bread, Swedish dinner rolls, butter, cream sauce, cookies, cakes, coffee just to name a few of the things.

For fun I think we will be designing our canoes over into Viking ships for our not-quite-annual annual Christmas Viking invasion of the Irish settlement. So bring your ideas, I'll have some plywood and if you have some paint bring it too. We'll see if Dale will let us use his canoe too or his row boat but I think the canoes will look slightly more realistic.

But now I am going to bed because I think the girls have infected me. I'm very achy all over. But hey, it was inevitable. I hope in my pre-illness delirium I have not written too long of sentences and used too many commas or not enough out of fear of using too many.

Good night Gracie.