Ocean Shores

June really began with a bang around here, what with our epic Montana adventure the first week and then a trip to the ocean the next. And it had all of the things a weekend at the seashore should have, too: a cozy beach house, 6 good friends, one adorable baby, enormous ice cream cones, a round of miniature golf, an hour or two on the beach with a kite, and lots of fun games. We're on the fast track to being spoiled with so much vacation taking these days :)


Goodness gracious, he makes me weak in the knees. I try to keep the mush to a minimum on here, but sometimes it's just no use.









Only loons go swimming in the ocean on a day like this, but we love them anyway :)

Another sneak peak

I'm hesitant to post too many pictures of our grand expedition because we're working on a slideshow for the family, and don't want to give away too much before the world premiere. For now, a quick representation of the wind we encountered on Monday morning at Holland Lake:



Aren't the little details that make an experience even more memorable the best? Oh, the stories we have to tell!

Montana adventure

Lots, lots more to come!

Living the dream

Thanks to the funniest Taco Bell drive-thru guy the world has ever seen, Jan Michael, Derek, Sara and I have declared 2009 the year of living the dream. We began living it with four days of serious family fun: a midnight ride in Capitol Forest, canoeing, Danish Rounders, cruising all over tarnation on the finks and the bicycle built for two, more mountain biking, and immense amounts of good food. Fantastic, every single bit.

Living it, part II

Oh, Henry!

There's a new baby in our midst! Henry Sigurd was born at the end of April to our dear, old friends Mike and Kristin, and we met him for the first time just yesterday. He's sweet and cuddly, has beautiful blue eyes, and is already working on rolling over. We'll see him again in June, and I plan to swoop him up and refuse to let anyone else hold him :)

Birthday boy!

Since this is one of the most important days of the whole year, a video was in order:

Of boys and puppies

Our Saturday with Brent, Danny and the boys was sunny and happy and fun, fun, fun.











We spent this afternoon with my sis, my brother & my parents. We ate lunch outside, languished in the sun and were entertained by the antics of Gus.

Gus belongs to Shannon, the lucky duck. He likes sunning himself on the deck, chewing on flip-flops and squeaky bones...

and Jan Michael.
He really, really likes Jan Michael :)



Oops, I need to work on my cinematography skills.

Woe is us.

Our canoe adventure with Derek and Sara has been unceremoniously scrapped. AT&T is expecting its union employees to strike any day now, and until all of that is straightened out, Jan Michael must be able to get to work within 12 hours of said strike. Now, if we had planned to canoe down the Skookumchuck, we'd be good to go, but the Upper Missouri is just too far away. We are gnashing our teeth and booing to beat the band, but consoling ourselves with the following: we have countless other things to be thankful for and joyful about, and there are a ton of fun camping places within Washington that we can visit on weekends until this work hoopla is resolved. We'll use those new sleeping bags no matter what!

We present....

the story of our 11th anniversary, which was yesterday, and which means that we have now been married 33% of our entire lives. We had planned to play a round of miniature golf and visit the Japanese gardens, but my poor husband had a mid-air collision last weekend at basketball and hasn't been able to move much (or breathe very well, for that matter) ever since. We decided a trip to Urgent Care would be a better choice, so off we went. The doctor prescribed a muscle relaxer that begin to work fairly quickly (and for $102, it should, dadgummit), so we were able to have a fun lunch later in the afternoon at a sushi restaurant. The place we ate at was neat because we were seated around a huge circular conveyer belt and whenever something sailed by that looked tasty, we would just reach out and grab it. The rest of the day involved a lot of lying around and being together, which was perfect; we like being together :)

We did venture across the lake to the gardens this afternoon, and just as we suspected, it was beautiful. It was also overflowing with lots of people, so next year I think we'll go on a week day and avoid the throng.









And before I forget, we also did some shopping for our camping adventure with Derek and Sara, and we model our purchases for you below:

Happy Mother's Day!

"If the whole world would put into one scale, and my mother in the other, the whole world would kick the beam."

Jason McElway

This is fairly old, so you may have seen it before, but it's worth seeing again.

I laugh and laugh

One of my very favorite Jan Michael quotes from this week:

Me: "Sweetie, do you want to go for a hike? It's very nice outside."

My husband: "But I just want to take a rest! Why don't we hike in our heads?!"

Spreading the swine

Tee hee hee!