Family Photos

Here's the group of us campers!



The Pennington family: (Jeremy, Melanie, Elliot and 4 month old Auden)



Ginger again! (I always thought to call her Daisy first for some reason)




Chad and Nicole's kids, Kelly and Tyler:



The Anderson's and Peterson's (in front of the Anderson's cabin):




Dan, HL and us, in front of our cabin:



Baby Auden- the youngest of the group- Jeremy and Melanie travelled from Chicago to be there for the weekend before heading off to Denver:

More from the hike

Here are some more photos that I took on the hike- starting with a nice family photo:



The Anderson family- Nicole and daughter Kelly (Riley in the backpack) and husband Chad and son Tyler in the background. They took an adventurous route part of the way that was fun for the kids.



Proof that Jon hauled Caed up that "mountain":



Oh, asleep! Caed turned into such the flexible baby!



One of the views:

The forest was so different then East Coast ones! Can you tell that there is moss hanging from the trees?

Camping

This should be more appropriately titled "Kids in backpacks". When we were camping we all took a hike and the young ones fell asleep. The hike ended abruptly when there were a couple of bee stings in the group! We saw a small waterfall and it was nice to do something like that as a group. It was a really popular hike and as the day went on there were lots of people on the trail!

Jonathan and sleeping Caed:




Nicole and sleeping daughter Riley, the youngest kid of their three:



Jeremy and son Elliot (can you see the amazing curls?) the older of their two kids:



Jeremy's sister Jessica and her boxer Ginger (not Daisy!!):



Another of Dan and Heidi Lyn just for the fun of it:

Visiting Friends in Portland

After we landed in Seattle on Wednesday we had plans to take off and drive down to Portland to visit our friends. But once we landed and got to Heidi-Lyn and Dan's home we had second thoughts. So we travelled down to Portland to Brian and Christina's home on Thursday. It turned out to be a good call since Wednesday was a tough travel day!

Brian and Christina have a daughter Ruby who is 1 1/2 years old. She does a lot and Caed loved watching her. In fact, after leaving Ruby, he started giving us hugs when we asked as a new skill. We are really excited! But he learned lots and had fun learning to stick up for himself too! Brian and Christina are friends of ours from DC, Christina and I lead our Bible Study and Brian and Jon were in the same group too. They are also expecting Perron baby #2 in the next couple of weeks! We are really excited for them. We had a great time in Portland- we hung out very low key at their home, but it was wonderful.

Benefit to staying overnight at people's home: Baby falls asleep in his own bed, and parents can stay up and socialize without any worries!

Some photos of the kids when we were playing outside with the big bucket of water:



Playing together: (a feat not easily attained with two under two's!)




The Perron's at their home (still in PJ's on Friday morning!):







The two families:

Trip to Seattle

We thought it would be fun to make a trip to Seattle this year for a semi-regular camping trip that Jon and his former roommates from college make. It was a whirlwind trip, but we had a blast and Caed did really well!

Caed on the plane for his first time: (we had the only empty seat on the ride to Oakland from DC, but that was the only flight we had an extra seat, every other flight was filled to the gills!)




Eating dinner on Heidi-Lyn and Dan's patio we had a great view on Mt. Rainer



And the Olympic mountains on the other side:



The flowers at one of the doors on their home: (they live in the boat house for a property on the water with beautiful view of Puget sound)



Their kayaks sitting on the bulkhead:

This is the only photo I have of just HL and Dan, from our small hike with the roommates- so it's out of order, but I thought it was appropriate here, with pictures from our first day/ night in Seattle.

More roommate's kids

On our way down to Myrtle Beach for the Fourth of July we stayed the night before at my other former roommate's home outside of Richmond. There are about 5 former roommates- so as we get together, it's fun to get pictures of our kids together. (hopefully a bunch of us will be getting together in Oct) Joan and Jesse are now moving from this home- we were lucky to get to stop over there! One of my other roommates who we haven't seen in a long time (Shauna and Ben) and her kids are here on her blog: www.pilgreens.blogspot.com The other roommates are equally as important- just no photos with them yet!

Anyway- here are some patriotic photos of Caed and their daughter Emma Grace.

College roomates expanding families

Before we head over to the other side of the country, I thought I would post a couple of pictures that I have been meaning to post. These are of when Mark and Janet came to visit. Janet is my former roommate at Liberty. We were roommates by chance our freshman year, and chose to stay together for all four. We loved getting to meet cutie Hailey! She's exactly 4 months younger then Caed- so it's fun to watch them together.






We went down to the Awakening Statue together which is our new favorite place to bring visitors!

Football player

I didn't have a football but the bouncy ball worked just as well to show off his budding skills at 13 months. We think he's got some real moves!

The Jersey was a gift from our friend's out in San Fran and I think Caed looks pretty good in it!

He's really interested in that ball!

Delayed Graduation Photos

Here are some well deserved photos from Jon's graduation back in May. After all the hard work he did, I wanted to make sure I got these posted still! He's such a hard worker and it's such a huge accomplishment to go through with a family and every other responsibility we've had over the last few years! Congratulations Jon!!

Shaking someone important's hand...