My parents are here

...and they brought beautiful weather with them!

Child labor at its finest, ha ha. I guess sturdy Dutch kids are good for something :)

We never tire of visiting Washington Park, always so beautiful.

Another day we went up a boardwalk trail at Baker Lake, through a rainforest with beautiful old cedar trees, some around 700 years old. We discovered that rainforests often have very old trees because the climate is so wet that forest fires rarely occur. Also the trees often grow in long straight rows because they are taking advantage of the fertile remains of older fallen trees.

There were lots of blueberries & salmonberries to pick.

Mount Baker in the background!

Fourth of July

We started the day with our annual church picnic... fun as usual (but I wasn't in a picture-taking mood). Then we went to see Josh & Becky's newly-acquired property (gorgeous!). We stayed home just long enough for Holly to get a good nap and then went to Bobby & Chris' place for a wonderful evening. The fireworks were incredible! Then Steve slept in a tent with Emily, Marie & Joel, much to their delight. Holly & I joined them in the morning for breakfast.


Holly repeated her swelling reaction from last year almost exactly to the day, poor thing... This time it was on both her legs not her face, but it was pretty uncomfortable with her and we gave her quite a bit of Benadryl. It went down just in time for the picnic on Friday. We're thinking it might have been from sand fleas at the beach.

At the beach!

Wow, sunshine and warm weather! We enjoyed it at the beach with Jenn & Bobby & their kids.

Sweet little Vieve, who by the end of the day no longer needed to have her mommy in sight while I held her :)

Joel's birthday and a logging show

Steve & I decided to work on planning more day outings for the kids this summer, since we haven't really been able to take a family vacation for quite a few years. On Joel's birthday last Saturday we tried a truly western experience, a logging show! Interesting to attend, once anyway. We all liked the wagon ride the best, with 2 powerful gorgeous draft horses pulling a wagon with dozens of people. There were quite a few old-fashioned logging-related contests, such as hand-sawing, ax-cutting, tree-climbing and obstacle courses.

Can you see the guys climbing the 70 ft. poles below with their logging gear? They were amazingly fast and flew down so quickly too.

Afterwards we stopped by Aimee & Hunter's new place nearby... gorgeous! What a beautiful, park-like place... landscaping, play area, outbuildings, pond and all. The kids ran ahead when we went towards the pond, and Holly didn't stop when she got to the edge; she walked straight into the water with her pants and shoes on.

Back at home, the kids are having fun in their forts again, and THE SUN'S OUT!!!