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TERMINAL TOUR: Friday morning, we headed to a familiar destination - Fishermen's Terminal. It's at the foot of the hill where we live, at the north end. A Port of Seattle property, it's primarily a moorage for working boats. 

The tour was part of Seattle Maritime 101, the city's largest maritime industry celebration 

Here's CJ to tell you a bit about the experience.

Recently, we took a short walking tour at the Fishermen's Terminal in Magnolia, where we learned about the terminal and its history. One of the focuses of the tour was what made the Fishermen's Terminal different from other, more recreational fishing places, while the Fishermen's Terminal was more commercial. For most of the terminal's history (88 years), only commercial boats were allowed in. To this day, commercial boats are still given priority during the fishing season*. We spent some time (read: about a third of the trip) inside a hallway, where we got to see some pictures relating to the terminal's history.

Our tour guide made quite a bit of the tour about himself, and emphasized the fact that he ran the terminal's boat parking lot, or its slips.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the tour, and maybe someday we can take a more informative tour.

*During the non-fishing season, smaller boats which take up less real estate are desired.

So, yeah, not exactly a 5-star review of our tour. Personally, I was hoping for a behind-the-scenes type tour. Maybe let us peek into one of the fishing net buildings, or climb on board a fishing vessel or do *something* other than walk the wall (and the hallway to the bathrooms) where the public can go 365 days of the year? If one had never visited the terminal before, it would have been a good introductory tour. For those of us who are there a couple of times a month, it wasn't an eye opener. Oh well, it was a lovely morning and a good chance to get a little stroll in.

SITTING PRETTY: Saturday night we dashed over to the Fred Meyer in Ballard, and as we were exiting the parking lot (something we've done hundreds upon hundreds of time before), as I glanced to the left to make sure it was clear something caught my eye. 

"Is that a park down there?" I asked of the dead end on the north shore of the ship canal. The shoreline in the area is industrial, but I saw brilliantly colored flowers and the sun was glinting off the water. We took a left instead of our usual right, and sure enough, it *was* a lovely little waterfront pocket park.

I was super surprised that the park wasn't full of "city campers," as that particular neighborhood is absolutely overrun with them. However, the park was clean and all ours for that moment. The kids enjoyed dessert while we sat and listened to the end of the Mariners' game, which the Ms won in extra innings.

ART EXPERIMENT: An art class Annabelle takes recently took a tour of the Chihuly Garden and Glass at Seattle Center. Now, the class is going to take on a Chihuly-inspired art project of their own. It was inspired by a tutorial showing how to turn a certain type of plastic cups (recyclables with a #6 stamp) into what looks a lot like melted glass.

It's a pretty simple process: Decorate the cup with Sharpies/permanent markers, and then melt it with a heat gun.

It only takes about 15 seconds for the cup to turn into a blobby bowl.

It might not look like much on its own, but if you had a bunch of them artfully arranged together, I think it would look cool. Stay tuned for photos of the larger project.

PRE-TEST:  The annual standardized testing state of Washington students have to take is coming up quickly for the kids.

Since our educational 'model' is a little, shall we say, unorthodox, I always fret a bit about how the kids will do on the test. And then they always do really well. But that doesn't stop me from worrying a bit, and so we're in the pre-test fretting stage.

To help get ready, we are going through the practice tests on the Superintendent of Public Instruction's Web site. Unfortunately, to actually *find* the right practice tests and then the answer keys (what's the point in taking the practice test if you can't get results/feedback), it takes a PhD in figuring out horribly, terribly 'organized' Web sites. I mean, how hard would it be to have a page on the SPI's Web site where each test was listed by grade, and right next to each test link, was the link to the answers? 

But I digress.

So far, the kids have taken a couple of the language arts tests. No real surprises, including the fact that a number of the questions are poorly written and could definitely contribute to test takers getting the wrong answer as a result. 

If you're curious, you can see the actual practice test by going here: https://login2.cloud2.tds.airast.org/student/V151/Pages/LoginShell.aspx?a=Student&c=Washington_PT&logout=true and logging in (leaving all the fields as GUEST), and then selecting the grade (5, in Annabelle's case). The first pretest she took was the ELA Practice Test. The answers to that test are here: http://www.smarterbalanced.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/G5_Practice_Test_Scoring_Guide_ELA.pdf

I think CJ's recreational reading might be good prep for the test. (The book is "How to Survive Anything.")