Our Last Day

Well, here we are, the last day in Sunnyside. We had a wonderful potluck dinner after church and a lovely farewell. We received a frame with some beautiful scenic pictures of the area. We are also taking home a quilt for us and a quilt for Ben that were hand made by some ladies in church that we have been using all summer.

Yesterday was spent cleaning the house and doing laundry. I got Ben and myself mostly packed up along with a bunch of odds and ends. We have one more service tonight and then will probably scramble to get everything else together. Despite any worries, it always seems to come together when it needs to.

So off we go into the sunrise tomorrow.

Pictures

Looking for shells
















The road less traveled









Ben's first Twins game

I Beg To Differ

So I noticed the little baby monitor thing to the right here says that the baby will mostly sleep this week. I beg to differ. This one is already competing with Ben for activity. I think I may have my hands full with these two...

Our Trip

I realize it's been 2 weeks, yet here I sit with an AWOL camera cord, thus no pictures to post for you even though I'm finally finding time. I thought I should put something up anyway. We took 3 days with Jon's parents and brother and toured Washington. We spent August 4 driving the Columbia Gorge and up to Mt. St. Helens. We stayed on the shore that night and took a leisurely walk on the beach in the morning. We spent August 5 going through Olympic National Park and a road less traveled, i.e., a bridge with 2 steel beams to get across. (We didn't actually cross it, but don't always trust your GPS.) We spent that night on the north shore of the Olympic Peninsula and took a ferry in to Seattle on August 6 for a Twins/Mariners game. We walked many streets of Seattle and through Pike Place Market, where you can buy fresh fish, fresh produce, jewelry, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The Twins pulled off a win to make it a very good day. Ben enjoyed his first cotton candy, the first bite of which he promptly wiped on his grandpa before he figured out it was for eating. We had plenty of room, so he got his own seat and made the most of that. He seemed to have a lot of fun. This was all much more exciting than it sounds, made better with pictures. Hopefully I'll get some up in the next few days.

We are in our final week here in Sunnyside and are preparing to leave next Monday. I'm not sure where the days have gone this summer, but we seem to have filled them up one way or another. So we have another 3-day trip ahead of us. We will be going through the Tetons and Yellowstone on our way home. We're both looking forward to one more nice long trip before we get back to GR and settle back in for a few months. Ben has been such a good traveler this summer and has made our many trips so easy. Just one more to go...

Stairs

Ben has figured out he can actually get up the stairs. Usually when one of us goes up, he will hang around at the bottom and go up one step but won't try to go any farther. Maybe we scared him last time he started up. The other day I went halfway down and sat and coaxed him to come up to me, which he did with absolutely no problem. So yesterday I went up and pretty soon here he was, cruising up the steps. He did it later when Jon and I were both downstairs. The gate promptly went up. I'm happy he can do steps, but he doesn't know how to get down yet, and that's what worries me.

Just for an update, I did finally get my puzzle done yesterday. It's nice when daddy's home during the day.

Puzzles

So I started the Mt. Rainier puzzle a couple of days ago. I got it out and Ben decided he needed to help. So he sat on my lap and tried to eat 2 pieces. Once he figured out that wasn't going to fly, he found a fun game of drop 2 pieces on the floor, pick them up and put them on the table, and get back up to mom's lap. This was a fun, exciting game for him and it went on quite a while. I had a sore back and very slow progress. Once I started getting chunks of the outside together, Ben decided he had to pull them apart. As any good mom would do, I finally gave him a couple of inside pieces and started throwing them a bit farther from the table so it would take him longer. At one point he tried to run away with them. That was enough of that. Yesterday I went back to the puzzle while he was otherwise occupied, but he again found me and had to help. By now I had started on a section inside. This time he had to help by putting the pieces back into the box-the exact ones I was working with. I tried to give him others but he somehow knew exactly which ones I wanted out. When he tried dumping the box, it was time to quit. Needless to say, puzzles just aren't the same with children around.