Our Summer

Here is a brief review of our summer, mostly in photos with a few notes. We started off with Father's Day and Kirk's birthday.
He enjoyed his cakes (and ate them, too).
We saw family and spent time with them.
We celebrated the 4th of July with even more family. We hiked the Y. Even Lucy walked all the way up.
We attended the parade--a highlight for the kids and sort of a tedious, stressful event for the adults.
The children loved spending time with their father.
Then Lucy cut and broke her toe.
We planted and grew a garden.
I just bottled 7 quarts of tomatoes from the 6-foot-high tomato bushes in our backyard. The yard encourages all kinds of nasty creepy things, like this large slug.
We try to get rid of them, of course.
We took a family trip to Washington state, stopping at Mount Rainier National Park. We went on some hikes, with Kirk carrying Lucy in the backpack (remember the broken toe?) and I had Henry in a backpack.
We saw big trees and neat scenery.
Henry was almost always happy.
Half of the trails were closed because there was about 8 feet of snow.
We spent the week in Sequim at a Hawkins family reunion. Notice the coats we are wearing at the end of July. We all agreed this is a great place to visit in the summer.
We spent some time sightseeing.
Of course we went to the rain forest, the beach, and the tide pools.
We all love the tide pools.
The creatures are amazing.
We gently touch and hold some of them.
Even Lucy agreed to hold a tiny starfish.
Kirk's father made treasure boxes for each of the children. Kirk sanded, stained, and finished them while we were in Washington.
We thought it was a neat family project.
The children spent lots of time playing with cousins and were sad to leave.
Later in the summer we got to see my parents, Marcelaine, and Heidi at various times.
And, just before school started, Andrew lost his first tooth of natural causes.
Andrew started school this past week and Edward starts kindergarten this coming week. Maybe we will get into a better routine.