Summer Highlights

As these chilly fall days set upon us, we have been reminiscing over the fun and sunny Washington summer.. so many fun memories.. here are some photos that we took over the season....

The Children in our home fellowship!

Ashley and Amanda have fun with their Goldendoodle puppies

Grace works on her baby quilt with mama.. here she is learning how to pin squares together

Ryan and Mandy find a turtle on our road! Ryan kindly escorted it back to the pond

                             

Here Gracie is working through her fear of the sound of frying things.. for some reason it sends her through the roof to hear things sizzling on the burner. Daddy told us that she needed to start cooking with me to desensitize her to it.. it has really helped! Now if only she'll stop screaming when the washer spins and the weather brings heavy showers on the rooftop! :-)

Fun with some wax rope that Nana and Papa brought the children

Giving Gracie's baby a ride

Taking a walk (and obviously talking about something *very* important! :-) )

Grant with his special friend Paul, whose family came to visit for a few days

We are so blessed by our family and the wonderful times that we have.. May we never take for granted the precious days of our lives together... Our prayer is that we all grow closer to the Lord, more and more equipped to serve him, increasing in our love for Him and for others...

Camping Trip!

The final hot days of summer encouraged us to take a last minute camping trip! It was such a blessing to spend time with one another.. even Nana came and joined us camp for a day. The boys enjoyed Taidnapam's great fishing bridge and caught a few 'big ones' (but not until the last day!) Being so late in the season, the campground was pretty much empty so it kinda felt like we had the place to ourselves! :-) We met a lot of very sweet people and even made friends with the camp hosts who let us borrow their 'jungle juice' bug spray! The wife and Grady had a sweet conversation about the Lord and her heart for Africa and her mission trip there. We also met a grandma type who was fishing with the boys and who came over to our campsite to see if she could attend our Sunday meeting with us. Our boys' description of what we believe and how we meet reminded her of how she grew up and really wanted to speak more about what we believe. We were so blessed by conversations and wonderful opportunities to speak of Him, both with non believers and fellow pilgrims.




                            

 

 

Since there were not many other campers, we were able to ride bikes all over and allow even Gracie to have free reign on riding. She had such a great time.. riding with both her brothers and her sisters.

Laura had fun riding with Ash

 

The fishing there wasn't so great.. daddy even took the 4 older kids to the falls down the way to see if there would be a great fishing spot... they enjoyed the beautiful scenery but the fish were unfortuantely hiding that day! :-)

 

 

 

hmm.. dad helps determine potential fishing holes..

 

 

After no fish at the beautiful remote waterfalls, they headed to the old stand-by fishing bridge..

 

Can you tell by the expression how many they caught at the fishing bridge??? :-)

 

Meanwhile, back at camp daddy and I took a nice walk with our 4 girls

Despite the bug spray, we were dive bombed by mosquitos the whole time! Here daddy is trying to get them out of his shirt. It was managable and we still enjoyed the lovely day and forest paths

The dutiful 'mother'

Little blessings