Good Times With My Best Girls

Mt. Constitution '09

On July 25th, Tori, Jen, Karen and I went over to Orcas Island and hiked Mt. Constitution. It was a 7.2 mile round trip adventure. It was pretty intense, well at least the last mile and a half up. Those last switch backs went on forever. I think they should have been called long-backs. It felt like they were long and straight up. We made it though, and the view from the top was awesome - well worth all the sweat. We stayed at the top for awhile. We took in the gorgeous views, ate some yummy snacks and took some photos. Then we headed down. We pretty much ran down. It was easier than walking. After the hike we went and walked around Eastsound for awhile then headed back to the ferry. The inter-island ferry provides puzzles to do while the boat is sailing. We pretty much rocked the puzzle. We worked on one going over and then ran to find the same one on the way back. We almost finished it. It was a fun day.

Lake Chelan '09

One of the things I look forward to most about the summer is our annual LC weekend. It never fails to be a good time. This year 9 of us made it (we missed you Kate!). I'm the 5th out of the blogging friends to post pictures of the weekend. You can check out Jen's, Jorden's, Molly's and Reese's to get their point of view. While there, the weather was perfect, the lake was stellar, the tubing was intense - my whole body hurt, even my face from laughing - but the company is why I go. I've truly been blessed with some of the best friends ever. I can't wait for next year!

Out on the lake...

Just call me grace...
Ok, so I had a couple minor incidents. Let me just get this out of the way. I fell. No, I mean I really fell. Big time fall. It was dark. There was a concrete parking divider. I didn't see it. Both of my feet tripped on it. I flew. Then I landed. Then I slid for like a mile. On gravel. It was loud. Someone should have yelled "SAFE" because that's what it felt like - like I was sliding into home. I came up laughing. It was a good time. The next day, while playing paddle ball, I somehow managed to scrape a huge chunk of skin off of my big toe. It bled. A lot. Sean would have told me "No playing paddle ball with flip flops!" But Sean wasn't there to tell me, so I hurt my big toe instead. I put a massive band-aid on it and all was well. Life went on at the lake. Here's me, showing a sad face from my gravel scraped hands to the gi-normous band-aid toe.

I got over it. Moving on...


A night out for dinner at a local winery and then a trip to Lakeview for HUGE ice cream cones...

Hanging out at Walmart, buying matching shirts from Walmart, trying to get jumping pictures at Walmart- we're cool like that at WALMART...

Roasting marshmellows, setting the self-timer to do rapid-fire-shots while shouting out different faces to make for the camera - we're crazy like that...

gangster, thumbs-up, surprised, scale-stretch (??), angry face (Molly, you make me laugh hard in this one), crazy face

It was a great trip. I LOVE my friends.

All images courtesy of - Karen, Liz and Jen. Thanks for the great photos girls!

Lets start at the very beginning, a very good place to start

Was anyone singing after they read that title?? We like the Sound of Music. Anyways, lets get down to the nitty gritty (we like the movie Nacho Libre too)...

Below is a picture of Sean and I. A picture of us from college, young and in love. It cracks me up. First of all, we look like we're 10 years old. Secondly, Sean's hair. Thirdly, Sean's shirt (I won't mention my shirt, I'm pretty sure I snatched it from my roommate). If you look close at Sean's shirt you'll see it says Friday Harbor, and no, I didn't buy it for him. He had actually purchased the shirt himself when he visited Friday Harbor with his family while still in high school. Crazy huh?! I could have walked past him in town or he could have seen me while I was working at the little Mexican restaurant. It's a small world. It's just one of the many reasons why I knew we were meant for each other. Which brings me to...

...a very special day that has now come and gone.

Sean and I celebrated our 9th anniversary last month. Well, actually we didn't celebrate. I told Sean, "Lets just save the money we'd spend on going out to dinner and put it towards our trip to Hawaii for our 10th anniversary." He smiled. Okay, that's not the real reason we didn't celebrate. Although, I do feel it's a good enough reason and one I plan to follow up on. The real reason is because the Bateman family came for a visit. Sean's cousin Jeremy, his wife Kristy and their three children, Kaylee, Maya and their newly adopted son, Israel came all the way up from Hemet, California. It was such a treat to have them in our home town. We have a good time when we're together. I'm thankful they had the courage to come this far ;) (inside joke - Kaylee prayed, the night before they were going to leave, "dear Jesus, thank you for giving us the courage to come to Stella's house..." or something along those lines - so funny!).

The picture below is what our kids looked like the last time they came up to Friday Harbor.

Jonah, Stella, Kaylee and Maya

4 years and a couple more kids later...

Day 1 - A relaxing day at the pond.

They stayed in the water so long they had some major prune hands (which totally makes me think of the Saturday Night Live skit...anyone remember, anyone??)

Day 2 - A trip to Lime Kiln State Park a.k.a. the whale watching park.

We spotted some Orcas. There were probably around 40 to 50 of them. They were really far out at first.

Then this guy started coming in hot from the left.

It was pretty amazing seeing them up close in the wild.

Day 3 - A trip to Eagle Cove

After the beach we came back and had some dinner. For dessert we roasted some s'mores over our new fire pit that was literally built back on day 2.

Please excuse my daughter, she knows not what she wears.

Day 4 - Sunday

We went to church, more swimming in the pond and then ended the night with ice cream in town.

Please excuse my daughter, she knows not what she wears.

It was such a fun time. Come visit us again!

Eagle Cove, With A Touch of Morning Fog

These photos are from back in July when I took the kids to Eagle Cove and met up with some friends. It took awhile for the fog to burn off but the tide was way out which made for some fun beach combing. Stella is starting a collection of sea shells. She even paints them all different colors and they don't even need to be a full-intact-shell. Bits and pieces of shells make her happy. It's great, really. Really really great :) It was a fun day at the beach. I think Ava would be content to stay there all day if I let her.