End of Summer, August and September part I

Just 3 days out until Dan goes on the week long hike with his brother.  We've been watching the weather and he's in for rain.  There is a storm coming from the Pacific ocean.  If they had gone this week, there would be nothing but sunshine and warmth.  This week has been in the 80's around Issaquah and around 70's near Rainier.  He made sure he got the top of the line items to bring.  Thousands of dollars spent in the name of comfort so hopefully he will be comfortable out there.  We are excited to have Lon stay with us for a couple of days.  The kids are very excited Uncle Lon is coming for a visit!  They kept asking us "how many days 'til Uncle Lon comes?"  Now we could say, "he's coming tomorrow!!!"

 In August I had the opportunity to shine.  My food website got some attention and I was featured in our local newspaper.  In order to show the writer the food, I invited her and her family over for the food demonstration as well as another family.  They all helped made the food and made it more fun for me.

Here is the article in the newspaper.  3rd time on the news, so Dan quoted Snape from Harry Potter "Our own personal celebrity"  So funny

 This month is also our month to shine.  Dan and I celebrated 12 years of marriage, 13 years of knowing each other.  He is good, still good, and I love him more each day.I especially love his love letters to me.  

This is for my record.  I never want to lose this and for my posterity anyway.  Don't read it if it's too much for you.  I'm not one who worries too much about privacy, but you all are families anyway

 

 We didn't do much for our Anniversary this year, except for the usual, at least not yet.  We have plans to visit Niagra Falls in October when we fly out to my brother's mission farewell, which is another news for the month.  Michael finished submitting his papers and got his call 2 weeks later to the Atlanta, Georgia mission. 

These girls started school!!  They had their meet the teacher on August 31st and officially started September 1st.  All summer long it was playing, crafting, shopping, stylin' with these girls and I was nervous they would miss summer as much as I did. But they came home today all SMILES! I missed them while they're at school and their brother tells me all the time that his "sissies at school" so I know he misses them. How blessed I feel to have had these wonderful helpers over the Summer. ‪#‎ilovemygirls‬ ‪#‎blessedtobetheirmom‬

We set off to camp at Mt. Rainier to give Dan an idea how it would be when he's out there.  Of course we had a whole lot more room to pack in stuff for comfort that he won't get to have, like the butane stove and big pot to cook things in

 Guess who started that fire?  Me!  With papers and cardboard and left over firewood from other campers

 Oatmeal, hot chocolate, cup of noodles, and s'mores for breakfast

 We went 1000ft higher this time.  6400 ft elevation and we got to play in the snow! On Labor day weekend!!!

We had so much fun camping and making food in the wild.  We even ended it with hot chocolate in the car after playing in the snow.  That's us. 

 And just to throw in some cute pics, these girls had their picture day at school today and mommy didn't forget this year like she did last year.  Scored! 

August Part I

I'm going to be real brief on this blog post because we have packing to do. We are heading out to Mt. Rainier again, this time for camping overnight to give Dan an idea of camping there before he and his brother Lon goes around Mt. Rainier for a week.

First off, a huge congrats to my hubby who passed the onsite interview with Microsoft on Wednesday and yesterday got an offer to work for them. We are super thrilled that his skills are good that a company like Microsoft wants him. They have another team that they want him to also interview for which will work out perfectly for him as far as timing goes as he is also interviewing with Zillow, Expedia, Tablaue, EnergySavy, and Uber. All of which are bringing him onsite to have interviews with them. Then he will take whichever one offers the most. He is so ready for something else new. 7 years at Amazon! They've been great, but it's time for a new adventure at work and hopefully a bigger raise. And it's healthy for your resume to have several good companies listed.

 

I left you off last time with camping at Engsign Ranch. On that same day we headed to Leavenworth to see if it was worth it to have Dan's family travel 2 hours from Seattle for a retreat in Leavenworth. We've always loved Leavenworth. We still have yet to tube down the Wenatchee River, but one of these days we will. We had some Bavarian food at Gustav for dinner and concluded that although nice, we ought to just stay closer to town as we might not have enough time to do everything on our list in town

 It was a very hot day.  95 degrees

 

On our way home we just had to stop and get some farm fresh peaches. $9 for a 18 lbs box. You just can't beat that, even with us and our own peach tree that did extremely well this year. We loved eating the peaches from our tree and canned/froze the peaches we bought

All sorts of peach dishes

 

Without further writing, I will let the pictures tell the stories

 I think we harvested 3 buckets full, not including all the others we just picked and ate and gave away to neighbors.  So many for such a small tree.  VERY SWEET TOO!!

 We drove all the way to Mercer Island for the blackberries.  Ok it was more for the beach but there were a tons of blackberries on the way

 Reena wanted to pick black berries so we could do blackberry peach pies.  So yum with ice cream!

We got one big cucumber, then came 4 more

 We took advantage of the dollar movie at the theaters twice. We saw Madagascar 3, which was pretty good and Dophin Tale 2 since Reena read the books.

 The girls are enjoying their violin and I had their violin teacher teach them piano as well.  I get too busy running around with Ronin and they don't take lessons quite as well from me.

We went to a Luau birthday party that our new set of friends put on for their son with yummy food, music and dancing and look who we ran into!  These guys are from Phoenix, AZ and they know Dan's parents and cousins! 

 Dan did an 8 mile hike to the top of Mt. Si as part of his training.  The kids and I just went shopping and ate, what we do best, then we helped the Stake run some games at the Stake BBQ

 

 We had a beach picnic day with a bunch of friends from the ward.  Always nice to do some beach hopping in the summer.

 Reena got excited and started writing letters to Santa

 Ro is still happily engaged in his engineering skill of train tracks building

 

Mt. Rainier was so cool.  These pictures say it all.  We did 2 hikes, one was Grove of the Patriarchs and the other one was Paradise.

 

 

 

 

 

 
Grapes starting ripening too and we harvested a lot more than last year

 We put our Captain membership to use and took a 2 hour cruise to the locks and ate at a restaurant near the Big Wheel

 Thanks for visiting our blog.  See you on the next blog entry for August!!!