We enjoyed our long weekend camping. We went to the Olympic National Park. It was a bit cold in the evenings and the campsite wasn't as toddler friendly. This made it a little less relaxing to me than our previous trip. The hikes and outings made it fully worth the inconveniences, however, and I came back from the weekend refreshed.

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy.

The Olympics

Can you feel the cloud rolling in over the hill?

Isn't this just too pretty?

Port Angeles

I could not believe how close this deer was letting me get to him.

These Ptarmigan's were incredibly friendly too. They totally look like young chickens to me. They looked almost identical to a pullet (a not yet egg laying chicken) and did the same things as chickens - free ranging, dirt baths.

Abigail is sad here because we were done with our three hour hike and we were getting her down from the backpack! I guess she wanted it to last longer.

Ruby Beach

Abigail was not so thrilled with the Ocean. She wanted to go all the way up to the water, but was not very happy when a wave came in. She loved playing in the sand though.

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Getting Out There With God And Nature

We have been blessed with so much natural beauty around us - directly around us where we live - on our property and closeby. Yet, so often I am so busy with schooling and activities - that I don't get myself outside. Not really. You know, where you go outside long enough and with a mellow enough attitude to really get lost in it.

Yesterday, the older girls and I visited a close by waterfall - climbing on the rocks and throwing rocks into the river. Dad was home and the baby was asleep and we stole away for just a little while. It was sublime.

Today, we went down to the far end of property and meandered around the little man made pond. We found a unique wildflower down there in one of the small streams, right in the water. Here it is.

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Last Weekend

Last weekend we took a trip to Seattle. We didn't tell the girls where we were going. I think they thought we were going camping for a while, since we go camping every year and hadn't been yet. But, we didn't bring a tent. They kept asking us where we were going and we kept telling them things like, "isn't this the way to Mt. Rainier?" When we got to our hotel, they asked where we were and we told them Tukwila, which was true. Of course, Tukwila is just minutes from Seattle.

 
 

Mariah & Abigail

At this point the girls were thinking we took them on this trip to visit the Family Fun Center which was outside the hotel window.

The girls are outside of the Burke Natural History Museum which is a neat museum with lots of artifacts and fossils. Unfortunately, they do not allow you to take pictures in their museum.
 

This is a sheep at the zoo. I don't know why they sheered her this way. I suppose they wanted to show the kids how thick their fur was long, yet they wanted to keep the sheep cool. This was the family farm section of the zoo. It was kind of funny because our kids are around more farm animals than they had there on a daily basis. My husband kept urging us on past that area, since it was nothing our kids haven't seen.
 
 

Girls watching the Flamingos.

The Flamingos were the highlight of the zoo for our girls.

We got to see the Giraffes up close.
 
 

Abigail crashed at the zoo.

Mariah crashed at the hotel the next morning.

 
 

The three older girls on the ferry.

Mariah outside on boat.

 

Rachel outside on ferryboat.
 
 

Coming back into Seattle on the ferry boat.

Mariah looking at a tide pool exhibit at the aquarium.

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Today Dad took the two oldest girls (Bike Rider, 9 and Art Girl, 7) on a nature walk. He taught them to walk quietly and listen to the wind and look around and see nature. They picked up some flowers on their walk and are working on identifying them. Here are the flowers that are new for this week. Natalie got a Northwest Wildflower book for her birthday and she is excited to research these things. It's fun to see her perk an interest in something like this all on her own.


 

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May 18, 2008

This Sunday, after going to early service, we headed to Mt. St. Helens. It was the 28th anniversary of the big Eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

We love going to Mt. St. Helens. The drive is so beautiful and the mountain and its history has God's thumbprint written all over it. We most love to go to the Johnston Ridge visitor's center. It is the closest visitor's center to the crater of the mountain and is an absolutely spectacular view. I highly recommend paying the entrance fee and watching the included movie about Mt. St. Helens. I also recommend listening to the guided talk about the mountain. This is always good and was especially good this last weekend.

Here are some pictures:



This is Abigail on the car ride up. She has been playing with her toes a lot lately, even sucking on them! It is so cute! Abigail is so far, my best car ride baby. She likes to be held a lot at home, but she's mostly content in a car. It's nice.





This is a picture of a very long bridge spanning a big valley on the way up to St. Helens. This picture was taken from inside my van as we were driving. It doesn't really capture the impressiveness of the bridge or the highway.
 



This is a picture of the Toutle Valley on the way up to Mt. St. Helens.




This is a picture of some trees that were knocked over by the blast. You can see they are facing the opposite direction from the mountain.




This is a picture of the mountain with a clear view of the Toutle River flowing away from the mountain.




This is that guided talk. Here is the mountain before the 1980 explosion and after.




This is Jon and Abigail in the foreground, listening to the guided talk.




This is Mariah and Natalie listening to the guided talk.




This is one of the coolest comparisons of the talk because Jon & I have been able to slowly witness this change in the mountain. This is a before the growth of the crater in 2004.




This is the mountain on Sunday, May 18, 2008. You can see how much the bulge in the crater has grown. The size of the growth can, of course, be deceiving because of the distance we are from the crater. During the talk the speaker shared that they bulge grew more than the height of the Empire State Building.

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