Washington Trip

Well, I had originally decided not to post any of these pictures, because we came home with over 400 of them! But then I changed my mind today and decided I would post just a FEW of them. Please keep in mind, not every activity and person is represented here! We had so much fun with so many different people, but I didn't get pictures of all of it. So this is my best attempt... (Ever heard the saying, "done is better than perfect?")

My guys and me on an outing to Lake Wenatchee with my parents. It was a lot of fun!

Brothers

Dakota, Grandma Ann, Levi, Adam, Drake & me

Adam and I took an AWESOME trip down to southwestern Washington state to celebrate our 10th anniversary (a few months late!). We spent 3 nights at a cute Bed & Breakfast, and saw the Mt. St. Helens area and some scenic waterfalls in northwestern Oregon. We hiked to the top of Multnomah Falls (where we took this picture of ourselves)! Multnomah Falls itself is very impressive, but I see now that I didn't load any pictures of the actual falls onto this post...oh well. You can Google it if you're interested. It's beautiful! It's the second highest year-round waterfall in North America, or something like that. It was quite a steep hike for a non-hiker like me, but I survived!

This one is Latourell Falls (and these pictures are actually out of order - we went to Latourell Falls first). It was my favorite. A smaller waterfall, but still quite tall and magnificent...and much less crowded!

My sister, Crystal, and me on the fourth of July. (Can you tell we took it ourselves?!)

We spent a 3-day weekend up in the Entiat valley at Adam's dad's house with Adam's sisters and all their kids. (There were a lot of kids!) What fun!

My sisters-in-law and me

(Brenda, left - Suzie, right)

Adam with his two best buddies from elementary through high school, Chuck (center) and Haus (right).

My mom and Drake

My dad and Levi

Drake and Papa Don (Adam's dad)

Levi and Grandma Nancy (Adam's step-mom)

So it was a great trip! Two glaring omissions that have come to mind are the night we spent at Chuck and Liz's house and the Hydro Park day with Grandma Ann...but I don't have any pictures. Oh yeah, and there was swimming, and my mom's birthday party at my grandparents' house, and...a whole lot more. Well,I know these few pictures don't really do a 5-week vacation justice at all, but I wanted to try to get something on here about it. Thank you to all you wonderful Washingtonians who blessed us with such a fun time!

Blog reflections...

So it's been a couple of months!

We just got home from a trip back to Washington State that lasted five weeks. It was wonderful to be back in our old stompin' grounds and see all our family again! I have to say the highlight for me was Adam's and my 4-day trip away to celebrate our 10th anniversary. What a great time we had relaxing and reconnecting, and just being a couple again instead of a daddy and mommy!

Now we're all back home again. Still readjusting a bit, but life is good. God is good! We are incredibly blessed.

I had to step away from blogging for awhile, partly because there just wasn't time when we were on our trip, but also to think a little bit about whether this is something I really want to continue doing, or something that I perhaps should continue doing. Why am I doing this? What do I hope to accomplish?

When I started this blog about a year ago, God was leading me through a time of learning to be real with other people and real with myself. It was a time of looking at myself and what made me tick, of learning to be honest about my faults, and of letting go: letting go of my closest friend as she moved away, and of Drake and his babyhood as I prepared to release him to kindergarten, among other things. My "real life" at that time looked a lot different than it does now! I've come to see my role as a parent in a very different light, and I've seen that miles don't necessarily separate people; failure to communicate does. (And choosing to communicate keeps friends close, even when they're 4,000 miles apart!)

I've also learned a few things about that ideal of transparency that I longed for so much, and in some ways still do. I see that maybe it's really not possible to be transparent with everyone about everything. Because so many parts of our lives and so many things that we think and feel - either for good or for bad - are tied to other people, there is no good way to share a lot of things with everyone. There have been so many topics that I would have liked to blog about, but they were in some way connected to another person, so it was not my information to share.

This has produced a lot of blogger-frustration over the past year! So now I relinquish my ideal of complete transparency. When speaking purely of my own feelings and actions, what's important to me, and what I'm learning, I want to always be real. But I have learned that other people's truth and mine are very often tangled together so tightly that I can't separate them, so they must remain unsaid. And a tongue that's tied in many areas doesn't feel very "real". So - it's complicated! If you've blogged or Facebooked or anything like that, you probably know what I mean.

Not to mention that, like it or not, our lives are changing for the busier. As we ease into home education (which we plan to start full-time at the beginning of next month), we are trying to find a new normal, and trying to figure out how to squeeze a few more hours out of each day. I'm feeling prepared and fairly comfortable with what I expect our days to be like, but I know that I'll be in for a few surprises.

What I think is going to happen with this blog is that I will try to continue posting some pictures and commentary as often as I can, which is probably the most "useful" aspect of this blog for all of you faraway family and friends. In other words, for the most part, this is likely going to turn into your run-of-the-mill "family activities blog" - which is sort of something I was trying to avoid when I started. But I do hold out hope to still be able to really write once in awhile, from my heart, which has been my favorite part of keeping a blog. But doing so on a regular basis, unfortunately, is probably a thing of the past. At least for now.

So, bring on the pictures! Now I just have to get them off the camera and onto the computer first, and there are a zillion of them...a job for another day, because you should take a look at what can happen to a clean house in just three days of living in it!