Yesterday Sara and Mark had their first baby, Galen Mark. Of course we are thrilled. Sara sounded very good and said things went quickly and well and Galen is a healthy, lusty 7+ pounder with apgars of 9. We will meet this wonderful new family member in a few weeks and we are very, very excited. To clarify, we are anxious to see all three of them! This is our wonderful # 9 grandkiddo. We now have six boys and three girls. I have several new empty picture frames for Galen's pictures and am anxious to fill them. Lucky grandparents are we!

4/30/09. Unusually warm day for this time of year. Took boat out fishing but were distracted by a playful grey whale (off Baby Island) in about 30-40 feet of water. (Baby Island is about 5-6 miles from our house as the crow flies.....about 2.5 miles off the west coast of Camano and about 1/2 mile east of Whidby Island.) We watched her (him) breech and spurt dozens of times and we were joyously entertained! We think she was trying to rid her self of barnacles etc... We called the Orca hotline to notify of our sighting and they said they had had several calls with the same info. What a fun time for us. We also watched several bald eagles, a pelican, a few sea lions, grey herrons and on our way to launch this morning, two baby deer crossed in front of us. What an incredible day! By the way, we did not catch anything today so we BBQ'd hamburgers for dinner.

Yesterday our granddaughter Nathalie called to tell us that she and Lewis are engaged! We are thrilled!