Summer Happenings

In between our travels this summer, we've had a few other activities going on:

EFY
Sarah and Rachel got to go to EFY again this summer.  They had a fabulous time!  Sarah came home afterward and talked to me about it nonstop, and Rachel went into her room and didn't come out for two days after so much social time--they are so different--but both claimed it was a wonderful week.

Here is Rachel with some of her friends after I dropped her off.

 Rachel and her friend and roommate, Brooklynn.

 Sarah got to room with one of her friends from last year.  They were so excited to see each other!

Football Camp
While the big girls were at EFY, Ben had football camp.  He loved every minute of it!

Activity Day Camp
Also that same week, Kate had a three-day camp with the girls ages 8-11 from the Stake.  It was amazingly well done, and Kate had such a great time.  The theme for the week was Courage.  She said the worst thing about it was that it had to end! 

Golf Fun
Ben's baseball team had their end-of-the-year party at the Performance Golf Center.   The kids had such a great time hitting balls at the driving range. 

 Then they tried their hand at miniature golfing.  It is one of the few sports that I beat David at, so he conveniently only got balls and clubs for the kids.  Nice...

 Here's Ben's championship baseball team:

Mariner's Game
David, Ben, Sarah, and her friend Ally, and I went to a Mariner's game one night.  It was a busy Saturday for us--we were redoing our bonus room--but we decided to leave the mess and go play.  Rachel stayed home with Kate and William for us (thank you Rachel!).  It was a very exciting game and the Mariners took home the victory!   We stayed up late working hard to finish up the bonus room after the game, but we were still glad we went!

Ragnar
I spent an awesome weekend with a bunch of friends running 200 miles.  Sound crazy?  Definitely!  It is also known as Ragnar.  Ragnar is a relay race with 12 people in 2 vans running about 200 miles nonstop in 2 days.  Each person runs three legs ranging from 2-9 miles.

The race started in Blaine, Washington, at the Peace Arch State Park, right at the border to Canada. 
Here I am at the starting line.

And the runners are off!  There were multiple start times, so this picture doesn't do justice to how many people were actually in the race.

 My friend, Sarah, was the first runner for our team, Harbor Racers.

After we got her started, the next order of business was to decorate our team van.  All of the teams decorated their vans--some were really crazy and lots were very creative. 

I was runner number 6, meaning I ran legs number 6, 18, and 30.  It also meant I was the last one in our van to run before we handed the baton (or rather, the slap bracelet) off to the other six runners in van #2. 

My first leg was 6.5 miles.  I was so ready to go by the time it was my turn, which was about 1:00 p.m.  I ran the best I have ever run, at a pace of 10.25 minutes per mile.

This is Sarah after her run, but it shows how I felt too!

My second leg started at 11:50 p.m.  I started getting sleepy about 10:00, and I had a headache, so I took an Excedrin to help me get through.  This leg was 5.5 miles.  It was a hard run for me.  I was sore from my earlier run, and it was just hard to run in the middle of the night.  But it was nearly a full moon and a very beautiful night.  I had good music and I just got into a zone and ran and ran until I was done.  I still ran pretty well--about a 10 min 45 sec pace, and was proud of myself for pushing on even when it was very hard.  After that, it was time for our van to get some sleep, and let the other van of runners take their turns.  I had a seat in the van to sleep on and was warm and comfortable.  However, I was still wired from my run, and the Excedrin, so I could not fall asleep.  Plus, I was very stiff and sore, and I didn't have much room to stretch.  I eventually got an hour or so of sleep before we were all up for the day.  Our friends that slept on the grass at a school where we parked for the night (one of the exchanges) got a rude awakening about 5:15 when the sprinklers kicked on.  Once again, I was glad I had chosen to sleep in the van. 

However, when I woke up, I was so stiff and sore, I could barely walk.  I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through my third leg.  Stretching and moving around helped some, but I was still in pretty sorry shape.  Thankfully, my third run was my shortest. 

The route wound down through Bellingham, Mt. Vernon and ended on the southern tip of Whidbey Island.  We ran through some beautiful places.  Here are some pictures I snapped along the way. 

Even when we weren't running, we stopped along the way to cheer on the other runners.  It really helped to know that someone was going to be there after a few miles to give me some water and encouragement.  

The first day it was pretty warm, up into the 80s.  It cooled off considerably that evening, down into the low 50s and stayed cool through early afternoon.  My third run was around 11:00 a.m. and the temperature was just right.  I took this picture as I ran my third leg.  It was my shortest leg at only 2.4 miles.

It was so great to be done!  Such an awesome feeling!  Here's a link to a video of me at the end of my third leg.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201697949877634

Here we are at the finish line. 

 It was an amazing weekend!  I can't wait to do it again!

Other summer fun
We've stayed pretty busy this summer so far.  But we've had a few lazy summer days with time for playdates and lemonade stands.  Check out the poster Kate and her friend Noah made for their lemonade stand last week:

The best part is the poster, which is a little hard to read.  It sells tickets for a puppet show to be held the following day ("tumoraw").  The prices are as follows:  1 child = 25 cents, 2 children = $1.00, 3 children = $2.00.  The prices keep going up exponentially from there.

I love the comments section as well:  "Awesome!"  "So cool!" "So not scary!"  "Over 1,000 pepol have come!" 

I'm not sure how many tickets they actually sold, but they did sell lots of lemonade.  We have such great neighbors!

Camping on Blake Island

A view of Blake Island

We spent a fun weekend camping on Blake Island with some friends.  It was beautiful.  Not only is the island beautiful, but you can see the Seattle skyline across the water.

Blake Island is only accessible by boat, so we had to take all our gear across the water in our boat and then haul it to our campsite.

The wildlife were obviously accustomed to people--they weren't scared of us at all.

The raccoons were brazen--they would come right into camp and take anything they could get their little paws on.  We weren't allowed to sleep with anything in the tent that had any sort of scent--including toothpaste, lip balm, sunscreen, etc. 

Tillicum Village is on Blake Island.  They do fancy boat tours and salmon dinners from Seattle.  Maybe we'll do that another time. 

We had a great time hanging out with lots of friends.

We ate really well!

It was lots of fun!

We had to leave much earlier the second day than we anticipated since David was on call and ended up having to go into the hospital (after being paged all night long).  Everyone else stayed to boat and play, but we headed home.  I snapped this picture of my girls waiting as we were loading the boat.  It made me laugh that they each picked their own picnic table at which to sit and read.  They weren't mad at each other, but I guess we had had enough together time the rest of the weekend and they needed some space. 

Lake Powell Part 3

On our last full day at Lake Powell,we hiked to Rainbow Bridge, which is the largest natural arch in the world.  It was only about a mile hike each way, but we got there in the heat of the day, so it was tough to do in 115 degrees. 

 The view was amazing. 

As we got farther away from the marina where we started, the terrain changed somewhat and reminded me more of Bryce and Zion Canyons.  So beautiful.

Hannah introduced us to a new treat to make over the campfire:  scones.  We used crescent roll dough and wrapped it around some foil and then cooked it over the fire.  We filled them with jam, nutella, or whip cream, or all of the above.  Very delicious!

 William loved fishing!

 I love this cool picture of Ben water skiing.

This was the view the last evening at Lake Powell. 

This was my view when I woke up the next morning.  Sleeping on top of the house boat that last night was glorious!  An amazing view of the stars to go to sleep under, no dew or bugs, and then a clear blue sky in the morning. 

 Good morning!

A favorite place we went was a narrow canyon known as Cathedral in the Desert.  We went early in the morning on the last morning we were there.  It was still and quiet and we had it all to ourselves. 

 We stopped the boat and enjoyed the serenity of that place. 

 We had gotten permission to have church while we were there.  We had our own little church meeting on Sunday morning with Kate, Ben, and Sarah all giving talks.

Then it was time to head home.  Even Kate got to drive the houseboat for a while.  Good thing Hannah was there to keep things safe. 

 These kids had a great time playing games together as we motored along. 

Thanks Steve and Jennifer for such a fabulous trip!  As William looked through these pictures with me, he got a grumpy look on his face, and said, "Why did we leave that place anyway?  It was so much fun!"  Yes, William, we certainly had a great time!  And none of us wanted to leave.  We're all hoping it won't be too long before we can go back!