Day at the Bay

My husband left WA yesterday to fly home and continue his job search. :-( We miss him so much already! On his last day here, we went out with just our little family to a park on the bay and enjoyed a picnic lunch and some digging amongst the rocks along the shore. We are used to fresh water where we live, so finding salt water critters was a whole new experience for the children. Very fun! It was also extremely hot (highest temp on record for this town, EVER, I think it was 97) so dipping our feet in the water really felt good. It was nice and cool along the water and we had a great time being together as a family. Large groups of relatives are awesome, but we needed to re-connect with just us. It was a perfect afternoon!






What's not to love about this view??!! Soooo restful.

Scenes from our Parents' 50th wedding anniversary party

This will be heavy on photos and short on text. I am busy having too much fun and staying up too late talking, to have many brain cells left for blogging at the moment. But my parents' party was fun, exhausting, amazing, beautiful, meaningful, and a big emotional high. How thankful I am for their marriage and how they continually live out their love for each other and their faith in God. I got to see many people that attended church with us girls during our high school years, and it was such a joy to re-connect with so many dear, "old" friends. This first pic was taken after the party, when we were feeling a bit loopy. :-)




Our daughter G with her two girl cousins (both 19 and beautiful girls, inside and out!). These girls had such a great time rooming together for 5 days! (The one on the left is the daughter of my sister on the left in the above photo, and the one on the right is the daughter of my sister on the right).

Leavin' On a Jet Plane......

Sing with me ~

"All our bags are packed, we're ready to go...."


Backpacks for the airplane with color coded ribbons for each child. Check.


Food to eat for dinner to avoid buying on the plane. Check. Friend to drive us to the airport. Check. And we're off!

The children were all WONDERFUL on the flight. They did the activities from their backpacks and looked out the window and just had a marvelous time. Thank you for your prayers. Easiest flight I've had with all 5 by myself. :-) Although by the time we got to bed that night it felt like 5:00 a.m. to our bodies.





Once we arrived there was no time to rest, however. My sisters and I busied ourselves with final preparations for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party, which for me meant spending about 12 hours creating a power point slideshow of their life. My younger sister worked on the script to be read by us couples during the slidehow, and my older sister spent hours and hours doing most of the food prep. My mom fed us all the first two days so we could concentrate all our efforts on the party. Here we are praying around the table on Friday night.



My crazy brothers in law....


....with their spouses, my beautiful sisters!




Having s'mores on the deck.


My parents' party was today and it was truly a great celebration! I'll post about it later, but for now we are all exhausted and going to try and finally catch up from our long day of travel and the excitement of the last couple days. I will probably update my blog a few times during our vacation, but mostly I'm going to enjoy my family and enjoy our vacation time away from our regular routines and the stress of the job search. It is such a blessing to be here ~ it is doing us so much good already!

Weekend at the Cottage

We spent the weekend at my husband's parents' cottage. The children couldn't WAIT to get in the river on Saturday, but it was so cold (water was about 60 degrees and there was a cold wind blowing) that they all lasted about 10 minutes and then had to find creative ways to get warm. I liked Little Man's solution best. :-)





Later in the afternoon we had a couple downpours, which led to this gorgeous and complete rainbow that evening. Isn't it beautiful?!


My father in law, doing what he loves best.


In the little town where the cottage is, there is this small variety store that I just love. There is a whole row of penny candy, videos to rent, lattes and ice cream cones to buy, fish bait and tackle, and a small Sears catalog ordering center in the corner. A true small town general store!


Don't you just love the fine print??? (the green ones too!)


Happy organized chaos at dinner time.



Happy and precious little 4 year old second cousins.


Thankfully Sunday was a much warmer day and the children had a blast on this water trampoline, as well as swimming and boating. Mama pretty much watched them like a hawk all afternoon. :-/

(but had fun doing it)

Nature Walk

A couple weeks ago the children and I went on a lovely nature walk through a state park near us. Nature walk is one of the things on our "fun list of things to do" and though we could have done a totally free nature walk, I really wanted the children to experience this awesome paved trail through a state park, so it cost us $6 for the day. We saw many beautiful and interesting things to appreciate in God's wonderful creation. Periodically we stopped so the children could sketch something in their nature journals. My camera got passed around from child to child, so most of these pictures are ones they took.

Son G with an interesting slug (isn't that an oxymoron?)


Our daughter G found some lovely little flowers. She brought along her flower press, and put these in to press right away in preparation for a craft she's working on for our trip to WA this week.






Everyone found great walking sticks to use!




See the dew drops on this leaf? Aren't they exquisite?










We came upon a playplace tucked deep in the woods. Fun!