Camping

I ended up taking about 200 pictures on our camping trip and just spent the last half hour trying to choose which one's I'd make you all look at...they're all on flickr right now so when ever you have some spare moments during this oh-so-quickly-ending summer, please, take a look-see.
Here are a few I saved for the blog:We were lucky enough to spend a day at the beach. If you look in the distance you'll notice that the air wasn't super clear. Every year in Eastern Washington they struggle with forest fires. They were fighting to stop one around the lake and we were experiencing the smoke from it all day and into the night.
Ann really was so prepared. She's been camping with her family for as long as she can remember. We had the best experience because she had everything you could imagine you might need.
At one point on the first day Dave tried to open a bottle of beer (he was doing it the right way...using a bottle opener) but some how the bottle top broke and took a huge chunk of skin from his hand (see flickr pics for more details). This is Ann and Dave filtering the beer SO HE COULD DRINK IT ANYWAY!!!!!!
August was very helpful while Trey put the tent together. Our friends from August's school let us use their tent. It was perfect. We all fit nicely and it went up and came down with no problems at all...Thank you John and Jill!
Hazel and Trey rode the Go-Carts in town. Trey had a blast...Hazel...not so much. Yup, that's a mountain in the background and yup it's a bit hazy due to the forest fires.
So enjoy the pictures and let me know what you think of them.

This camp out was brought to you by

John and Jill who let us borrow their wonderful tent
and my mom who is a quilt maker. without all her wonderful quilts we would have surely been ice cubes by the end of the first night!
and Ann-Krestene and all her years of camping knowledge and cook-out fun
and by friendship.

notes from the edge

we're all geared up to go camping with the 3 families tomorrow but i wanted to write some notes and share some pictures before we take off.

i've been listening to the mosaic podcast while the kids were in soccer camp last week. i'm always hit with something when i listen to their services. lately it's been all about our relationship with God and how we go about finding that relationship. the service from 8/13 was all about the search and how when we were young we loved searching for things- think about Easter...hunting for the eggs...the best! playing ghost in the grave yard (night time hide and seek) was so fun! and now? we hate having to find things. i hate, HATE being lost. i hate searching for my keys, paperwork, leash, shoes, a stinking pen for heaven's sake! i want things to be where they should be when i need them to be there! and lately? i hate searching for God. i can come up with a million reasons to just not search Him out- i'm tired, i'm busy, hazel needs me, tank needs a walk, the dishwasher is done, the rug needs to be vacuumed...i could go on and on. and in the mean time i'm not searching. i'm waiting. waiting to be found. and talking at God rather than talking to Him (which was another message that happened to come from mosaic). i'm working on this relationship thing and any day that i *find* time to read and listen and talk to God is a good day.

the past few days have brought some oddities for me:
the family and i made our way to wild waves water park for a day!

rachel and i made our way out to the sloop for a *quick* drink at the sloop with my sister and our friend lauren. we very rarely get out for a late night drink. it was pretty fun but we were quickly reminded why us moms generally don't do this often as we're having to wake up with the kids and play nice the next day...

we all went to a wedding where us gals had a great time dancing together. i think we really looked good sitting together on the fancy couch.
as a side note- greg nyssen can really shake his tail feather and his son is pretty amazing too.

Kindness

The kids are in Soccer camp this week. I drop them off at Greenlake from 9am till noon. It's a great break for me as I walk Tank around for 1/2 hour and then go to the gym for the rest of the time.
This will be Hazel's first year doing this camp. August and I talked her through what the day would look like and I felt confident that she would do just great. The way this camp works is that the parents drop the kids kids off at the athletic field and listen to the coach explain what they will all be doing for the next few hours. Once all the info is given out they then split the kids into age groups. Hazel went with the 5 year olds and August went with the 8 year olds. Hazel noticed that there was a little boy who was VERY upset so I bent down to her ear and whispered, "It would be very kind if you tried to help that boy feel more comfortable." Hazel looked at me and nodded her head and I took my leave.
It poured the entire 3 hours while the kids were kicking the ball around. The coach informed us all that the camp would continue outside unless it starts to thunder (it never thunders here!) so when I picked the kids up they both were SOAKED to the bone. I joined the crowd of parents, coaches and kids in the middle of the field while the head coach went through all the things they learned today and what they should all practice for tomorrow and then he dismissed the kids. I stood there in the middle of the crowd and started to whistle. My kids and I can always find each other through this whistle. It's something I learned from my parents...helps us find family members in stores without sounding like crazy people yelling out random names. So I stood in one place and whistled and turned and whistled and turned and whistled until I saw August's smiling (and awfully wet) face. The two of us then stood in one place and whistled and turned for a while until I started to feel the dreaded panic rise within my chest. My eyes darted from one blond child to the next and didn't recognize any of them. I whistled as my heart began to race. This is a public park with at least 100 kids kicking balls around. I continued to whistle when someones voice started coming to my attention calling my name. I turned with wet eyes and looked at a parent I knew from August's school. I'm pretty sure she recognized the panic on my face because she immediately pointed to another mother from school. I followed her hand and saw my girl standing under an umbrella. I quickly thanked them both and chatted for a few minutes before we had to roam the field to find the water bottles, lunch boxes and random layers of clothing before we left.
On our ride home, after discussing how quickly they were going to take their clothes off and take warm baths we started talking about how they were going to end the camp tomorrow. August said he would find Hazel when they join up together for the end talk. Hazel said she'd look for August. After a few minutes Hazel mentioned that she did talk to the boy in her group and helped him juggle the ball and that in the end she was sure he had a good time. I told her how kind I thought she was for looking out for that boy and she told me that she thought Amy and Melissa (the parents who let her stand under the umbrella) were super kind as well. I agreed whole heartedly.

Sunshine, Sunshine!

We're out enjoying the last days of summer. New pictures are on Flickr but here's a sneak peak:
Hazel in gymnastics
On the day of a soccer session with the Seattle Sounders:At the Edmonds Beach with Ann and Rachel:My girl Hazel:

1000 Words

Proof

that i can do manual labor around the house:
look at that line! so white and smooth and crisp...but that's all i can say right now because i'm watching So You Think I Can Dance and well, i don't want to miss any of Danny's hot moves.

Sick

Man-oh-man! hazel came down with something super yucky last night. she threw everything up from 9pm till 5am. i was so proud of her because this marks the first sickness where she actually made it to the bathroom before she threw up, usually she's vomiting where ever her face points...bed, trey's back, my front...but this time she ran to the bathroom and almost made it in the toilet...it counts!
the weird thing is that she didn't have a fever through the whole night, just vomited until there was nothing but stomach acid left. once she reached the point of no returned she was VERY surprised by a rather nasty shart. she ran to the bathroom and yelled, "mama, can you come here? there's something in my underpants and...ummm...i think i'm puking out of my bottom...it feels like PEE!"
ahhh, the discoveries of a 5 year old...