Back from the Ocean

Last week was our vacation at the beach with family. We arrived home yesterday, and while the beach is lots of fun, it feels good to be home. We stayed at the same beach house that we rented last year and celebrated Daniel's birthday while we were there. It was also a bit colder and cloudier than last year, but it was still lots of fun. Now it's time to sort through and edit all the photos I took during the trip, so I can share many of them here. 

Lavender

The lavender bush in my front yard has been blooming the last week. Every time I go out there, I always find lots of bees buzzing around from flower to flower. They rarely sit for long, which can make it hard to get a close of shot of them.

"Flowers appear on the earth; 

the season of singing has come, 

the cooing of doves is heard in our land."
Song of Solomon 2:12

I Heart Faces - Pets

It was just last week that I shared a photo of our newest neighbor, who happens to be a cat. Since my two cats don't seem to enjoy posing for my camera, I decided I wanted to get a shot of this guy for this weeks I Heart Faces theme, Pets. He enjoys spending time in our yard and gets lots of petting and holding time between all four of us kids. He's also found his way into our house several times, but luckily Koko and Doji don't seem too bugged out about that.

Project 52: Week 32

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Monday we visited the beach with another family. It's one of the best beaches around for finding crabs. My younger brother Daniel and Laura, one of the girls from the other family, spent most of the afternoon searching for the little creatures underneath the rocks. They found a couple dozen small crabs, but also found this larger one as well.

I Heart Faces - Beautiful Eyes

It's been quite a while since I've joined one of the I Heart Faces challenges. For this weeks theme, beautiful eyes, I've decided to enter this photo of my sister Alina that I took back in March.

Project 52: Week 31

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This is our next door neighbors new cat, who's name I have difficulty remember because it's Russian. He's really cute and lots of fun to play with. Our cats have been getting along with him quite well, which is good too.

Today Photoshop CS5 arrived in the mail! Oh yeah! I've been spending the afternoon getting familiar and having lots of fun with it.

Summertime

Saturday we spend the morning doing yard work, but then later in the afternoon Daniel had tons of fun playing with water balloons. He would fill them up, then my dad would try to hit him while Daniel ran around.

Last school year I took a French class at our homeschool co-op. This year we're not doing any co-ops, so I've started teaching myself French. I've checked out all sorts of books on the subject in our library system and have been trying different books out, figuring out what works best for me. I'm really liking the Easy French Reader, that I picked up at Half Price Books (one of my favorite stores). 





Tuesday afternoon we had my friends Carrie and Rose over and we had a fun afternoon walking all around the neighborhood, along with my siblings. Then we went to Starbucks before browsing around Fred Meyer, where we listened to all the birthday cards with music, looked at the toys, and tested out all the furniture.





I'm not usually a big reader, but lately I've really been enjoying some of Agatha Christie's book. We discovered the Poirot movies and TV shows earlier this year and really enjoy them, so I decided to give the books a try. So far I've only read the books with Hercule Poirot, the Belgium detective, and right now I'm currently in the middle of my fifth one, The Mystery of the Blue Train. Christie does a marvelous job of keeping the reader guessing who the murder is throughout the book.

What have you been doing this summer?

Project 52: Week 30

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Thursday evening Daniel and I played a game of Scrabble on the back deck.

Camping at Mt. Rainier

Monday afternoon, we arrived home after spending three days camping at Mt. Rainier. We stayed at a group site in the Cougar Rock campground with two other families. We had stayed at the same site back in 2008 with several different families and we have also visited while staying in one of the other campgrounds in 2006.

We arrived there early on Friday, the first day. I didn't take us too long to set up camp, so we had the rest of the day to enjoy. Everyone had fun playing a game of capture the flag, even though no one found any flags.
Daniel and Rose got caught and were stuck in jail for a long time... Oh, and that rock reminds me of the one in A Bug's Life for some reason.


Behind our campsite was this rocky area, which was perfect for climbing around on.

Some of the kids were playing Mafia and where coming up with a word to use instead of "Dead Body". I suggested "Kentucky Fried Chicken", which we decided  to yell at every car that passed by our campsite. See?

Getting our first campfire of the trip started.


Saturday morning the weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. So we decided to head out early and do some sight seeing. We stopped at one of the viewpoints on the way up to Reflection Lake then to Paradise.
At the viewpoint, we decided to take a group picture with the tripod.


At Reflection Lake, we had to walk around on the snow a bit before we found somewhere with a reflection of Rainier.


On our way back to the campsite, we spotted and dear.


We passed over a bridge while going back as well and I shot this one out the car window.


Later in the afternoon, we all hiked 1.5 miles down to Longmire.



Once we arrived in Longmire, we saw that the mountain had these really neat clouds around it.


We all got an ice cream or a popsicle at the gift shop while we were there. Here we have the awesome Lilly.


And her sister, Mary.


The rest of our trip was spend relaxing and playing games back at the campsite.

I Love Camping

This past weekend my family, along with two other families, spend a wonderful three nights camping at Mt. Rainier. We spent our time playing games, going on hikes, visiting different viewpoints, and enjoying campfires at night. Now that we're home, I have all sorts of pictures to sort through and edit. Hopefully it won't be to long before I'll be sharing them all.