Mt St Helens 2008

We spent all of last week down camping at Mt. St. Helens with another family. We camped on Swift reservoir (our absolutely most favorite campground) and on our way home Saturday we hit the visitors' centers on the north side of the mountain. The views were fantastic.

We left on Monday and got rained on until Wednesday (oh well, whatcha gonna do?) We had to hang tarps everywhere and cover the tables and firepits.

Everything was just drenched!

But once the sun came out on Thursday morning, things were much better and the weather was just gorgeous! We played on the lake, did some hiking to a couple really neat waterfalls, and bummed around the campground.









And on the way home the views of the mountain from the Visitors Centers were breathtaking!





This is coldwater lake, one of the lakes formed by the eruption blocking a creek. It was really calm and soothing. So quiet... then we arrived :)


Can't wait until next year!

Girls' Camp 2008

On Monday, Josh and I went to Girls' camp and helped out with the 4th year girls' overnight hike. We started at Zion's Camp in Belfair, and drove about an hour to Green Mountain. Not really a mountain, but that's what they called it. We hiked about a mile up to the campground and set up camp. Then we did a three mile each direction hike up to a really pretty view of Puget Sound. We could see Seattle, Tacoma, and a whole lot of the sound and islands. The view was amazing. Here are some pics of our hike and camping with the girls.






As we hiked down after our campout, all the gear was loaded into our van and driven back down to the parking lot. It was a lot of stuff and the van was very well loaded :)

Overall it was a lot of fun... and the girls were fun too :)

No more monkeys...

or so we wish. Joshy is quite the little climber. We take him off the dining room table every 30 seconds, it seems. He's great at going up, but not so good at getting back down. He's frequently found "stuck" somewhere that he could easily get down from, but doesn't know it. Here are a couple pictures we took the other day of him screaming on top of the little table in the kitchen. You'd think he was 8 feet up, not 18" up...