Scenery at Women's Retreat

I got the chance to get away for a day and go to a women's retreat. The location was beautiful. And I even got to get up close to some cows again. I've missed cows...

 
 
 
 

Silly Sisters

Being an only child sometimes I wonder if my girls are missing out on the chance to have ALL the attention of their parents. The bond I had with my parents was incredible and it's something I want with BOTH of my girls.

But other days I see the gift they are to each other and I know that all is right with the world. They really are sweet (and silly!) sisters.

 
 
 
 

Apple Picking

So we found these apple trees on base that were really, really tall. Too tall for picking. Or so I thought. But Andy is an undaunted man. Andy can fix a contraption for any situation and Andy REALLY wanted some homemade applesauce and apple butter and apple pies and apple cake and.... you get the idea.

So he made a picker. A really long picker. And he picked some apples out of the really tall trees. And the girls and I? Well, we just watched mostly. But truly the apple picker is a thing of beauty. And our house is bursting at the gills with apple products these days.

 
 
 
 

PBY Catalina

The "Seaplane Base" is so named because of the PBY Catalinas that used to be based there. A PBY hasn't flown in to the Seaplane Base in over 60 years, but last week that changed. Andy was able to make it to the fly-in ceremony and got some GREAT photos. I watched it fly in from our back porch and bedroom window which was almost as cool. The plane was a lot bigger than I expected and the history involved with it is amazing stuff.


 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Fire Station

During one of Andy's "Mr. Mom" evenings he took the girls to an open house at one of our local fire stations. The girls got to check out the fire engines, an ambulance, and even some boats!

 
 

 
 
 
 

A Tea Party

The girls and I had a rare day with nothing really planned so we decided to have a tea party. We broke out the special dresses and the fine china, loaded up a plate with cookies, and made some peppermint tea. It was a tea party fit for fine society.

 
 

 
 
 
 

The Playground

 
 
 
These are some photos of the dedication of the playground that Andy spearheaded building. Our kiddos love it. Everyone else's kiddos seem to as well. Andy worked SO HARD with quite a bit of assistance from some great people. They did a fantastic job and have made our playground area a really, really fun place for kids.

Summery Odds and Ends

We've been busy with all sorts of bits and pieces of things the last few weeks. We've spent some time at the beach, at the lavender farm, and just enjoyed one another's company at home too.

 
My very favorite photo of my very favorite people.

 

 

 
A Little Crazy!

 

 

 

 

 

 
So stinking cute... Even when she has Stomach Flu and Tonsilitis (and a hex-nut in her tummy!).

 
I'm a fan of watching Sailboats go by from my back yard.

 
 
 

 
 
Fun at the beach!

 
Andy and I on a date.

Lavender

We tried to go to the library today, but ended up at the Lavender farm instead... We certainly got better photos there than we would have at the library!

 

 

 

 

 

 
Irrepressible Abbie dimple!

 

 

 
I kinda like this one. It looks like they're hunting for something mysterious. :)

Look Dear, Strawberries!

After we got back from our vacation, I had only a few days of fruit-eating left (I'm doing South Beach phase 1... Oohhh Fruit....), so we HAD to get some berry picking in. I was surprised to see there were some strawberries left to be picked. We took advantage of that! The kiddos had fun, and we had some delicious strawberry shortcake for dessert!

 

 
My VERY favorite photo at present. I think we'll have to frame it. It's Carolyn all over.

 

 

 

 

 

 
A photo a friend of mine took during the party on the last day of Carolyn's preschool.

Wallowa Lake.

I posted the photos out of order... but such is life.

After Grangeville we were going to head to Hell's Canyon, but Auntie K and Uncle Larry advised us that we would find out why they call it Hell's Canyon if we went this time of year and suggested we check out Wallowa Lake. So we drove some really windy, beautiful mountain roads and headed to Northeast Oregon. We did some hiking there, checked out the town of Joseph, and visited Chief Joseph's gravesite.

 
This is where we stopped on the way to Wallowa Lake... When we realized our brakes were overheating....

 

 

 

 

 
So I'm posting several of these photos. I can't help it. They're some of my favorites from the whole trip.

 

 

 

 

 
Chief Joseph's gravesite. I've been enamored with Chief Joseph since I learned about him near Lewiston in 4th Grade.

 
The Bronze's in Joseph were really neat. Andy liked the wolves.

 
The girls had 'purple cows' at a 'soda shop; in Joseph. The purple cows were good, but the place couldn't make a malt to save it's life. They should definitely stick to coffee. ;)

 

Mt. Rainier National Park

The last leg of our trip was to Mt. Rainier National Park. We stayed at the campground at Ohanapecosh (Which is a delightful word to say. Try it!). We loved our campsite, and the park was just amazing. We hiked. We looked for signs of animals (We saw scratching on a tree and asked Carolyn what she thought made it. She said, very matter of factly, "Maybe a bear. Maybe an elephant."). I think it was the best part of the camping trip for all of us.

 

The girls snuggled up taking a nap in the tent.

 
Carolyn in her Jr. Ranger class.

 
Because I like the name.

 

 

 
Carolyn reading, "Who Pooped in the Park" during a break on our hike. Thank you Todd and Jamie for our field-guide to Skat. It came in handy. :)

 

 
Carolyn talking with a ranger about the work she'd been doing in her Jr. Ranger book.

 
Andy liked the swirlies in the trees. This was coming into "The Grove of the Patriarchs:" A grove of trees that were literally 1000 years old.

 

 
The suspension bridge over to the island where the biggest trees were was the truest suspension bridge I've ever been on. You definitely only wanted ONE person on it at a time (unless one of those people was a four-year old).

 
Who says Republicans can't be tree-huggers?

 
The Douglas Twin Firs were the oldest in the park.

 
Andy and I became completely fascinated by "nurse logs." We'd seen them before even in the old-growth forests here on the island. We'd also seen huge trees that had fallen over or been cut down and we wondered why nobody was using that perfectly good firewood. What we learned was that felled trees serve the forest as the basis of new life. Animals make their homes in them, mosses grow, and eventually new trees form on top of them. The Grove of the Patriarches was, in fact, a forest that grew up upon a forest that had perished long before it began growing. So we were looking at thousands of years of growth that came from thousands of other years of growth.

 

 
Andy and Abbie on the suspension bridge

 
This was the river behind our campsite. We fell asleep to it every night. Good stuff.

 
Home, sweet home.

 
Abbie in her punk-rocker outfit. Eek! I think she's texting!

 
Our first night at the Mt. Rainier national park, we picked up a book so Carolyn could become a Jr. Ranger. When we explained that Park Rangers help take care of animals, and keep the parks beautiful and the people in them safe she decided she had to be a Jr. Ranger. So we filled out the book. We went on our hike(s). She happily colored the pictures, and did her drawings, and answered questions. We worked diligently the whole time we were there. She was SOOO EXCITED when we finally went to turn in her work right before we left. She was a little intimidated by the concept of taking an oath, so Andy kind of did it for her (which reminded me of him saying my vows for me at our wedding. ;)). After she got her badge and certificate though, she stood tall and smiled with delight any time we called her a Jr. Ranger.

 
We're so proud of our Junior Ranger!

 
The moutain wildflowers at Sunrise were gorgeous. Andy and I were both completely enamored by them.

 

 

 

 

 
We finally got to see some good views of Mt. Rainier our last day there. We drove up to Sunrise, the highest place you can drive to in Mt. Rainier park, to see it. It was strange that the mountain that we look at so often on clear days from our back porch turned out to be so difficult to see up close. Between the mountains that are around it (which we never imagined were there from what we've seen from our place and from Seattle), and the clouds consistently socking it in, we weren't sure we'd see it at all. It's pretty formidible up close.

 
Not a bad photo of Mt. Rainier that Andy took from the road.

Border Days 2009

Last year we attended our first Border Days in Grangeville, Idaho with Aunt Kathy and Uncle Larry. This year we decided to continue the tradition, and we had SUCH a good time. We attended two parades, ate scones (which are really pippens) and strawberry shortcake, attended the cowboy breakfast, and of course participated in the egg toss. We also got some good quality time in with Auntie K and Uncle Larry.

 
On the way to Grangeville we stopped at a really cool park in Kennewick, WA. It had all kinds of antique tractors and farm implements, AND, it was in a beautiful location. The perfect place for a picnic!

 
Farmer Carolyn.

 
Farmer Abbie.

 
The girls meet a ferret.

 
Abbie cleaning up at the toy scramble.

 
Abbie enjoying a scone.

 
Abbie loved waving at everyone in the parade.

 

 
So loud!

 

 
My cowgirls and their loot after the first parade we attended (which was actually the 2nd of 3).

 
Sherlock acted as though he merely tolerated the girls... But I secretly think he enjoyed their company.... mostly.

 
Carolyn and Uncle Larry on the way to the cowboy breakfast.

 

 
The girls and I after our egg toss defeat. For the record, tossing an egg under your leg while wearing a skirt and policing two children with a raw egg of their own is not easy. And I DID it. Dear Husband SHOULD have received it, don't you think? ;) (He blames me... doesn't seem fair.)

 
Hundreds of eggs lofted into mid-air at once. Really. Click on this one and blow it up full size.

 
Ewww! Egg! Touch it!

 
Auntie K, Me, Uncle Larry, and Abber-doo.

 
The end of the parade is all antique tractors. Andy was in heaven.

 
The fire department did their part to make sure no one in the parade over-heated.

It Finally Happened...

I knew it would happen sooner or later. Andy and I *thought* the kids were busy in their playroom upstairs. Instead, Carolyn found a haphazardly placed pair of scissors and decided to play beauty-parlor. The result was pretty disastrous. You can't really even tell in the first photo just how much she cut off. Trust me when I say it was A LOT.

So... we went out today and Carolyn got a very short bob haircut. She came home and told her Daddy that she looked like a boy. I keep telling her she looks like a pixie. All I know is, she better steer clear of the scissors from now on or the kid will have to have her head shaved!!!

 

 

 

 

Sprinkler

We've had a few days that were warm enough for the kidlets to play in the sprinkler. Carolyn LOVES it. She runs and giggles and squeals and does all the normal kids-in-a-sprinkler things. Abbie is not so sure about it. She mostly just suns herself on her towel .

 

 

 

 

 

Playground

Andy had some fun taking photos of the girls at the playground the other day. He got some neat shots, I thought. (Almost typed thougts, I shot. ;)) The slides, for the record, go down a super-long hill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stuff on a Walk

 
Mama and baby deer we saw

While Carolyn was in preschool, Abbie and I got into the habit of taking a walk around 'the loop,' in town. We saw lots of neat things there. This particular day was one where I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I took the camera along to get my perspective back in line. I see things differently when I'm looking for photos. None of these turned out the way I hoped they would, but taking the camera had the intended effect.

 
I really liked this gnarly old tree. I'd walked by it many, many times and not really noticed it.

 

 

 

 
Abbie, a balloon, and a peanut butter sandwich. How could I not take a picture of that?

Carolyn's First Kiss

A very dear friend of mine, whom the Navy sent to the other side of the country, came to visit this weekend. My friend's son and Carolyn were best buddies and Carolyn cried as much as I did when they moved. We were SO HAPPY to have them come visit us this weekend.

Here we have Carolyn and her very, very special buddy. They picked up right where they left off. They played, they giggled. They even fought like brother and sister. It's clear that they have a special connection.

In fact, they shared their very first kiss this weekend. With tongue.

Apparently (my very dear friend was the one to witness the event as Andy and I were both elsewhere for whatever reason), both kiddos had the wild idea to find out what touching one's tongue to another's is truly all about. So they stuck out their tongues and met in the middle. Three times.

And of course, the event has gone down in history and will always be remembered as Carolyn and her very special friend's first kiss(es).


 
Can't you just tell they are very special friends?

Abbie Cuteness