Time for an Update

I realize it's been over a month since the last update and stuff has been happening in our lives... but our hard drive crashed a few weeks ago and we lost a month's worth of recent pics and I'm not very motivated to update this when I don't have photos to add! But here are a few new ones so...
We took our last camping trip of the summer on Labor Day weekend (lost all those pics). We went with several friends of ours to a river-side camp that distant relatives of ours created at the back of their farm, so it was very nice and private - just our group. The river was very low and very slow so the boys got lots of splash time and even donned life jackets and went tubing.
Dad and Mom Howard visited about two weeks ago -- yes, they drove out just for the weekend!
So of course the boys had a wonderful weekend of attention and candy and Lucky Charms (Papa comes prepared). We all headed out to a corn maze in Lynden and spent a bit of time getting lost there. That's where the pic of Dad, Mom and the boys was taken.
Luke found a nice cozy "house" under this leaning sunflower and hid out there for awhile one day this week.

Fun Stuff happening in our house!!!

Some fun stuff has been happening in our house lately. Elijah has been soooo close to walking for so long, and he's finally beginning to get it! We've been trying bait to get him to walk for a couple weeks to a month, and it's been only half working, but yesterday he took 10 steps on his own accord! Tonight he was walking all over the place in 5-10 step intervals, with some crawling mixed in of course, but yeah, he's finally about there!

A few nights ago, I(Wade) was putting Isaac down to bed for the night, and as is our custom, was reading him a short book. That particular night Isaac chose a book that contains a few short Bible stories. When we got to the one about Jesus' birth, Isaac immediately piped in "Why was there not enough room in the house for them to make a baby?" Flabberghasted, I said "ah, um...because there were too many people there." I guess that was true no matter how you took the question.

Fair Time and Winchester Lookout

On August 14 Wade and I took the boys (minus Elijah) to the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden. They enjoyed seeing lots of animals, climbing on tractors, going on rides, eating Hawaiian Shave Ice (yes, it is different than a typical sno-cone and vastly superior!), going on rides, only eating half of their $3 hotdogs, and going on rides. Did I mention they really enjoyed going on rides? Isaac and Levi loved them all, but at least two rides made Lukey cry, so he repeated an Indiana Jones type obstacle course several times while Isaac and Vi went on the scary rides.
This past weekend Wade and I did another hike, this one only 9 miles round trip. We hiked to the Winchester Fire Lookout on Friday, spent the night in the lookout, and headed back Saturday. The building is an abandoned fire lookout that a local outdoors club maintains for public use. It has a bed and a cot, a campstove and propane, a few dishes, books, some non-perishable food in a mouse-proof box, and duct tape, just in case.There is also a flag that visitors can hoist to let people below know someone is at the top. The toilet is a box with a hole in the top about 30 feet from the cabin -- no walls, no roof, really great view for a potty! The views are incredible -- ridge upon ridge of mountains as far as you can see in all directions. That's Mount Baker you can see in the photos of the flag and Wade and I, and our home sweet home for a night.

a couple more...

Here are a couple more pics just for fun -- Isaac, Levi (left) and Luke (right) showing off their cool shades and matching shirts and Lijah enjoying a popsicle. Note there is another new post below with more newsy stuff.

July Recap

The past few weeks have been busy -- imagine that, it's summer! A few highlights...
Cadet Camp
Wade is the head counselor for our church's Cadet club (kinda like boy scouts) so he and 10 boys and a few other helpers/counselors headed to Cadet camp Thursday evening through Sunday evening. There were about 70 boys total from several local churches, and they learned wilderness survival skills like navigation, rope making and mapping. Wade lead the navigation/direction finding part. Wade (and the Cadet boys) had a good time, but Wade was sure ready to sleep in his own bed again!
We got a swing set! Wade's boss was getting rid of his and offered it to us, much to our boys' delight. They've already worn through the grass beneath the swings (and I've worn through the spot behind the swings where I stand while pushing!). Levi, our little monkey, likes to flip up-side-down on the rings and hang by his knees from the bar -- he's only fallen and landed on his head once!
Last week was HOT so Wade and I filled over 200 water balloons for our Saturday night crew and we had a blast playing water balloon volleyball in the backyard. It's amazing how fast 20 people can go through that many water balloons!