Day with our Maine Friends

Our friends from Maine, who now live in Oregon were on vacation in our area and we hooked up Friday for some fun. Peter and Bob were roommates in college and Anne and I actually went to high school together. So we have a pretty neat connection. Also Isaiah and there oldest son Caleb were pen pals when we lived in Maine. We never thought they'd ever get the chance to meet. God is pretty neat that way.


Bob found a star fish missing a few limbs.

Searching to shore for creatures, and they sure found a lot.

Purple star fish.

Elijah inspecting the star fish.

Isaiah and Elizabeth exploring.

Caleb and Isaiah aka mini Bob and mini Pete

Elijah balancing on the big log.

Ymmm Gelato in Fairhaven

Kids being kids.

VBS 2 It all comes back to Jesus

Up the street from us a local church was putting on VBS, "the Boomerang Express". Peter works with a guy who is involved there and he had invited the boys to go. I wasn't sure at first because they had already done VBS at CC. But they begged to go, so how could a refuse another week of fun and learning about Jesus. They had a blast. One of the things they enjoyed the most was collecting coins for the"Agape House" in Bellingham. Each day the kids brought in a different coin, penny, nickel..etc. It was a little competition between the boys and the girls. The boys won and my boys were so excited. Just by collecting change the kids managed to collect over $400.


Joey the Kangaroo

Ice cream

Singing at the closing program. Elijah doesn't look to sure in this one. But he did a great job.

Isaiah is in this one, Sort of in the middle. with a yellow shirt on.

Birch Bay Discovery Days

Saturday we went to the Birch Bay Discovery Days event. Basically it was a area set up with different vendors from the community, games, face painting, food, and a parade. The boys loved it. They had so much fun. There is never a shortage of things for them to do here. I think we've done more in the month and half living here than we did 5 summers combined in Maine. The weather has played a huge part because it has been just such an amazing summer. Elijah has made comments that God wanted us to have summer with nice weather because we moved so far away. And that sounds just like God to me, encouraging, comforting, and grace upon grace.


Bean bag tic tac toe.

Sand art. Check out Elijah's sunglasses. He is just too cool.

Waiting for the parade.

Water Slide Park

Up the road from where we live in Birch Bay is a water slide park. Where ever we go we usually drive by it. Of course each time the boys would ask.."when do we get to go there" It's not cheap. But yesterday if you are an employee of BP (like Peter) you and your family got in free. So we couldn't pass up the chance to take them. We brought our friends along with us too. It was a super hot day and it was packed. But the kids had a blast. You'll have to click on the pictures to get a better look.

Peter, Elijah and Emma on the triple tube.

Isaiah and Benjamin on the wide slide.

In the middle slide, Peter and Elijah.

Lego Show and Tell

Today the boys attended a "Lego show and tell" time at one of the libraries. Basically the kids were encouraged to create a lego model and then bring it to share and tell about it with fellow lego creators. They had to name their creation. Isaiah's was called "bumper shooter" and Elijah's was called "lego house". We each got a sticker and were asked to put it on our favorite lego structure and then a "people's choice" would win a prize. There were also door prizes and every kid got a little something. Isaiah got a great book about lizards and Elijah got a Egypt themed reading poster. The best part was when the facilitator asked each kid to come up and tell everyone about what they had made. I made a comment to a lady that Isaiah would do that effortlessly but Elijah probably wouldn't. But to my surprise when she called Elijah (before Isaiah I might add) he went right over to his structure and proceeded to tell everyone about each and every part. He did so great. I got a little teary eyed because he has changed a lot since moving out here. He's become much more social. Isaiah did great too. He really used his imagination to tell everyone about what he made. They loved this. Of course this has sparked a desire for more legos. =)

Not sure who the little girl is but she like Elijah's creation. Elijah's creation is on the left and Isaiah's on the right.

Here is Elijah in front of everyone describing his "lego house"

Isaiah telling the group about his "bumper shooter"

Our Neighbor

In our backyard there has been evidence of a woodpecker. I've heard him and the kids have seen him before, but today I finally saw him and snapped some pictures. It wasn't easy, he was very shy. We looked it up in our Birds Of Washington Field Guide Book and he is a Pileated Woodpecker.

Updated Belly Shot by Isaiah

Isaiah took this of me this morning since so many friends and family back home wanted to see the growing belly. So here it is at 29 weeks.

New Tags

More changes...new plates for the cars or as they are called here "tags" So off with the old and on with the new. It's funny because we've gotten a lot of second looks with our Maine plates out here. People will pull up next to us and look at us. I wonder if they think people from Maine have some special feature, like maybe moose antlers, or lobster claws? But now we'll just look everyone else. Washington State plates have a picture of Mt Rainer...it's' 'biggest mountain. It's really beautiful. OH ps check out the brown grass...it's brown because guess what? We've had only one day of rain since we moved here.



So long chickadee and pine cone "vactionland"

Hello Mt. Rainer and the "evergreen state"

playground fun

Well Good Morning to you

Living in the woods in Maine, my kids were very accustomed to seeing all sorts of wild life. We saw rabbits, wild turkeys, deer, moose, fox, turtles, and yes even the famous bobcat. So living in a more populated area I didn't think we would see much. This morning the kids were eating breakfast and starting yelling, "Mom there are two raccoons in our yard" And sure enough there were two bandits walking through the yard. We had actually never seen one of those in our woods in Maine. I grabbed the camera and only captured one. As you could see he wasn't too happy to have his picture taken.

4th of July Celebration

When we lived in Maine the 4th of July was pretty "ho hum" we lived too far to go to the fireworks and there wasn't too much to do worth the driving distance. So we usually just went to the lake for a day of swimming. Nothing wrong with that but I love my childhood memories of the 4th of July with fireworks. So now living here in Washington we discovered we actually had a choice of things to do. First we could go to Blaine, or we second we could go to Bellingham. We tried to first hit Blaine for the parade, but we got stuck in traffic and didn't make it. (note to self...leave much earlier next year) So we were disappointed but decided to head to Bellingham. There they had lots of stuff for the kids and vendors for me =). They had 3 huge jumpy houses, face painting, music, and food. The kids had a blast. After that we headed home for some r and r and then headed back for the fireworks. They were really amazing. The best I've ever seen. I felt like a kid again. I "ohhhhh, awwwwwwed" right along with the boys. It was a great day.


Elijah isn't looking too trusting of the lady doing his spider.

But in the end was happy with the result.

At first I thought she was going to paint his whole face green and I was not too happy.

But she turned his nose into the head of a dinosaur. Pretty cool.

Everybody was KungFu fighting. This KungFu panda needed to eat a few more bowls of noodles.

They had huge chalkboards that they invited people to do sort of a "chalk by number"

Cotten Candy of course.
The big flag. God bless America...better yet show us mercy!

Finally dark at 10:30.