Mackenzie got second place in the corn shucking contest and Joshua got the award for the cleanest corn. We went to the Evergreen Fair on $2 Tuesday. It was the last day before I had to go back to work and the price was right. Mackenzie was also selected as the crowd cheer leader for one of the racing pigs.
28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
We had a great day at the Pilchuck River. We had a bunch of friends and family out for the occasion and most back to our house afterward for some grub. Thanks to everyone for coming. We had a great time. We were busy and only got 5 or 6 pictures. Here are the best 2. If you want to see some other great pics of that day check out grammy dee's farm.
Josh enjoying the river.
Erin and Bella at our house. Thanks for coming! Your welcome to swing by our place anytime.
We went camping in Seaside, Oregon this last weekend. We left on Friday and got home on Tuesday night. It was a great trip, our annual camping trip with the Elenbaas family.
On our way out of town we stopped at a gas station for some ice and saw this car with an interesting license plate. I'll let you decide what it means.
We needed to stop for lunch and to get the kids out around Olympia so we got off at the capitol. Parking was...well interesting with Hank attached to the back of the van. We enjoyed lunch downtown by the lake below the capitol. There was a huge grass lawn adjacent to the path around the lake. Across the street was a cool water park, but we didn't have the time to go enjoy it.
There were little fish in the lake and the kids decided to count them.
Back to the car we go. We stopped shortly in Longview for gas and then made it the rest of the way without incident.
We went swimming 3 or 4 times while we were in Seaside. This is one of the kids favorite activities. Once some kid lost a chunk of doody at the side of the pool and then another kid yacked so we had to get out and come back the next day while they cleaned.
Levi loved the water again and this time enjoyed playing with the kickboard. There were a couple of moments where I thought that he swallowed too much water and was going to ralph; thankfully he did not.
Julie was a much better swimmer than I remember from before. She was chasing me and I could hardly get away. She's turning into quite the little fish.
Solon is getting ready to toss Josh into the air.
OK, so it's not the 4th of July, but the shirts are still clean at this point. There's Hank hanging out in the background. Gabe is all smiles. Levi and Gabe were great boys on the trip.
This playground was a very short walk from our campsite. Levi surprised me the entire time he was here. He climbed all over these structures and ropes like he was a monkey. And, after watching Jacob and Josh, he even slid down the pole.
As you can see, the beach was a little cold on the Saturday. Levi needed to wear his coat because of the wind. This guy was riding a dune buggy skateboard while being pulled by the power of his kite. Levi ended up in the ocean which was his week long dream. Coat and all. Joanna was not pleased with me because she didn't want him to get wet and I was letting him play in the waves. He absolutely loved it, but I ended up having to strip him down, bundle him up in a blanket, and carry him to the van. Our beach trip that day ended a bit early. It was a bit too windy to eat lunch there anyway. Sorry Joanna.
Here is Alyssa being a cutie at the beach.
The boys and girls took turns doing the dishes. The boys were thrilled about this.
On Sunday we went into town. The kids rode the carousel and went on the bumper cars. We ate lunch on the promenade and then found a couple of geocaches at the beach.
Lewis, Clark, Seaman the dog, and the Allinson's
Sara took some family photos at the beach for us and this is the best one Solon got with our camera. I like it. Thanks guys.
Movies at night for the adults. We watched Fool's Gold one night and The Bucket List the next. I went to bed early on the first movie night because I had already seen it and was a bit tired. The boys slept in well every day. We Josh and Kenzie were little we would be up at the crack of dawn with the kids while camping. Well, it was a great trip. Until the next one...
I want to read every book that is on this page. I'm fairly sure there is no one else out there who I know that would also enjoy these titles. Check it out.
This guy is a funny comedian. His homeschool family song sounds like some of the homeschool families we have met. It's worth checking this out. Tim Hawkins.
Josh took apart our old computer for his science fair project. He had a great time taking it apart. We talked about what all the parts were called while he was doing it. Above is the hard drive. This computer had a extra space to slide another one in if you wanted to expand the memory. Below, Josh removes the power from each component.
Below, Josh is pretending to punch the mother board. I'm really not quite sure why, but he is a boy. That board is pretty spiky and I'm sure he would have been sorry should he have punched it.
So, we went camping on Memorial Day Weekend and Hank made his full weekend debut. He treated us well and the weekend was a blast. Levi made a huge transition into crazy man at the pool. He is not afraid to jump off the side right into the pool. I have to make sure I'm watching carefully because he doesn't care if I'm looking or not. He jumps in blind faith. Oh to have the faith of a child.
I do have some pictures to update my blog, however I am working on connecting my network at home with my new laptop. I am able to get on the Internet and I have even printed once wirelessly but it was a fleeting moment and the connection is continually posing an issue. I think it's mostly due to the fact that I'm using Windows Vista on my laptop and Windows XP on my desktop.
Something you may be interested in... I went to the bottom of each person's blog and clicked a link that says subscribe to posts. After I did this on every blog I frequent, there was a list of feeds in Internet Explorer. It's somewhere near where you would find History. Then on my computer I have a section on the right that has live content. I added my feeds and now whenever someone posts a blog it shows up.
Before this, I would occasionally make it to all your blogs for an update on what was going on in all your lives. I would regularly read your blogs, yet I would fail to comment because I couldn't keep up with everyone's latest news. I'm not promising that I will comment on every post, but I will be more likely to.
If this doesn't work for you I think you can add all your blogs to Google reader. This way they would still all be in one place so you don't have to check so many blog's all the time. Pheww time saver.
Once I get my network all connected I will post some pictures. Maybe before if it isn't working.
