June 18, 2015

This morning started with such promise and ended SO badly! Dwight and Janet kept the boys so we could go for a bike ride around the lake at the state park and less than 4 miles in Charlie crashed hard. It definitely put a damper on the next several days and wasn't at all how we expected our outing to end, but thankfully he wasn't more hurt!

August 3, 2014

We made it to the bottom of Hurricane Falls and back! This gorge was impressive, as was the effort put forth by the boys. There we a lot of stairs! And now, on to the vacation house!

Sounds scary!

Unprompted holding hands. Melt my heart : )

 Poor Dylan just wanted me to carry him.

We made it!

July 16, 2014

The Heliotrope Trail up Mt. Baker was amazing. Amazingly difficult, amazingly stressful and amazingly awesome. Roundtrip it was 5.75 miles and took right about 5 hours to complete. All three big boys hiked the whole thing and I carried Dylan on my back for those five hours. There were four glacier stream crossings each direction where we started out trying to devise a plan to cross without getting our feet wet. By the end we had all decided that it was easiest to just walk through the water, even though it was freezing cold. We carried all the boys across all the water crossings and only had one misstep when Toni slipped carrying Eli and they both landed up to their necks in the water. Brrrr! Dylan's paci went overboard too, so he ate about 15 dumdums during the hike, but we all made it to the top for an amazing view and back to the bottom for some celebratory ice cream. Garrett hardly made it out of the parking lot before he fell asleep so we have to make that one up to him : ) This was one for the record books!

Walking sticks and lollipops 

As we approached the top Owen started crying and asked if we could sleep on top of Mt. Baker so we wouldn't have to cross the water again. You can't blame him - I was scared too! We prayed for courage and strength and safety and headed back down with four brave boys. After we crossed one or two of the streams Owen said 'This part is a piece of cake!'