ABH - Ross Lake!

Every year my bros and I get together to spend a few days together roughing it in the wilderness. Normally we go on a 3 day hike somewhere, but this year we decided to do something a bit different. We spent 3 days canoeing in the beautiful Ross and Diablo Lakes area in northern Washington.

On our first day we had to travel about 14 miles. Since we did not get off until about 10 or 11am that first day I was wondering if we would make it to our desitination before dark (the park ranger had her doubts). We were pleseantly suprised to find that we could travel pretty easily at about 3.5 mph...even faster than we can hike. So we made it to Cat Island in plenty of time to set up camp.

The second day we went on a hike up to one of the mountain peaks in the area. We had a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains and Canada. We also met a guy at the top of the peak who lives up there 10 days at a time to watch for fires. I think he was very glad to have some company. Later that day we found a sweet 45 foot cliff to jump off. When we were at the top looking down it looked like a 100 foot jump! Luckily none of us sustained any permanent damange from the plunge.

The scenery was beautiful and the company was great. I always enjoy haning out with my bros. Besides the mosquitoes it was practically the perfect guys weekend.

Silverwood

Last week I had the opportunity to go to BYU's education week. It was AH-mazing! I left there on such a spiritual high that I was sure I would be the perfect mom for at least a few weeks. And besides one yelling incident today (dang!) i'm doing pretty good. Can I say again how amazing it was?

While I was gone Brent took the kids to The silverwood amusement park. They earned free tickets during the school year for reading. We had never gone and the kids were looking forward to the day I left for my trip, because it meant they were going to play! They had a great time, they spent about 10 hours at the park. Luckily some friends took Claire so there were no 4 year old tantrums involved. I have to admit i'm a little jealous that I didn't get to go...maybe next year. Malia and Jacob rode the big wooden roller coaster. Brent said that Malia was white as a ghost when she got off and Jacob was not feeling quite as brave when HE got off.

Malia on the ferris wheel
Jacob on some elephant thingy
Cole...please don't judge the hair. He always wants a "summer" mohawk. Except he doesn't want to take the time to spike it up...therefore it's a summer big patch of awkward hair on his head. It's coming off tomorrow!
The pool area. I guess the water was freezing, but that didn't slow them down. Again...feeling jealous. My spirituality was more important right?

Baseball

Both of the boys wanted to play baseball this summer. I, being the awesome planner that I am, signed them up for different day so that we wouldn't have any game conflicts. This also meant that we were at the ball field monday through Thursday every night for 6 weeks. Oh, the things we do for our kids. Cole was still playing t-ball, where watching a game is kind of like watching paint dry. BUT, he had fun and i'm sure he learned some pretty awesome ball skills? Jacob was in the next level up, he is really starting to love baseball and is getting pretty good. Looking foward to many more years of ball with these boys.

SUmMeR SoFtBaLl

This year my sis-in-law and her husband were awesome enough to start up a softball team. They were able to get their work to sponsor us (Go Call Realty!) I was really excited, but it had been a good 10 years since I had played on a team, so I was a little rusty. But I can tell you that I looked forward to every single Friday when we had a game, it became the highlight of my week. The team was mostly Brent's family and then some friends. It was a great team and we had a lot of fun together. And can I say that my husband rocks, he's a pretty dang good outfielder! We ended up second in our division. The tournament was this weekend and since we opted NOT to play on Sunday, our two wins yesterday had to be turned in as losses, :( But we still had fun! Hopefully it can become a yearly tradition!

Wildflowers

Planting a lawn has been a challenge to say the least, but one of the things I love most about our property is this patch of wildflowers. Claire loves to go down and pick the flowers and there is nothing she loves more than having her picture taken!

SUNRIVER

This year was our 9th? annual sunriver trip. As usual it was fabulous and we lucked out with some AMAZING weather. Our trip was extended a few days longer due to the death of my uncle Jim from Bend. Jim spent most of his life in a nursing home after he was in a logging accident when he was younger. We grew up visiting him in a nursing home. It was a sad day for my grandpa (jim was his only child) but I imagine Jim is so happy in heaven!

The rest of the trip was amazing. We had perfect weather, we swam everyday, rode bikes and played tennis. Our tennis fun was cut a little short when my brother in law Garrick tore his achilles and was down for the count. He ended up getting surgery and is recovering from that.

According to my sister, when all is said and done he should be better than ever and hopefully will play us again next year!
Claire rode her first "big girl bike" on this trip. She LOVED it and wanted to ride everywhere.
The kids loved playing bingo together. Besides that, i'm not sure what else they did, I hardly ever saw them. (jk...sort of)

I went on my first white water rafting trip. My only complaint was that it was too short!! I loved it though.
Not much I can say about this one...
The boys taking a break from one of their bike rides.
:ast but not least, Brent's solution to not having a bike rack? DUCT TAPE. yes he duct taped

our bikes to the top of the van and it worked beautifully. He's such a macgyver type. It was yet another fun filled trip!

house projects

People often comment on the amount of work required to have some "land." I definately agree, it's a lot of work, but we are loving every minute of it. The last month has been spent trying to get a lawn to grow. Much harder in the idaho panhandle than in Oregon's Willamette valley! Brent has been working on building the kids a playset. This picture was taken in the beginning stages. It's looking pretty good now, we even snagged a free slide from my sis-in-law who happened to have one. Brent and I build a little rock retaining wall by hand and i'm working on a cobblestone path. Every day the kids have to fill me a bucket of rocks and every day or so I try to spend an hour on the path. Im sure it will take me all summer to finish. But that's what's happening around our place right now!