Back to Normal

After having the grandchildren here for 5 days and having 'historic heat' as the weatherman put it, we are back to normal.
The temps hit 106 at our house yesterday and the day before for the first time in recorded history. Seattle has never recorded any temperatures over a 100 degrees. Since our normal for this time of year is 77, we were ill-equipped for the heat - ie. no air conditioning, but we survived and are enjoying having our usual summer weather back again today.

The children are now with their other grandparents until their parents return on Monday, but we had some great summer fun with them while they were here. We went to the ice caves, went blueberry picking, played in a local river, and the local lake.
Here are some pictures of our adventures over the past few days.

Also in preparation for Drew and Sarah's return on Monday, we decided to surprise them by washing their car for them. We all joined in the fun of detailing their car.


Big Four Ice Cave Fields in July


Down the road to pick blueberries


Playing in the Snoqualmie River


Cottage Lake


Washing the car

Music in the Park

Every Thursday evening all summer there is a free concert in our local community park. We went last night for the first time this year. We are hoping to get to the others. It was a great time for everyone. Kids were swimming in the lake, families were having picnics on the lawn and others were just sitting and listening to the music. The weather was perfect for such an event.

New York Times

We are avid fans of the New York Times daily newspaper. We started subscribing about 2 years ago and never fail to learn something new and/or find something interesting when reading it. I especially love the human interest stories not found anywhere else. For instance.........

Today there was a delightful article about two Swedish women who went out looking for blueberries in the remote central part of the country and ended up finding one of the richest gold field if all of Europe. Why don't we hear about this anywhere else? Here's that article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/world/europe/13sweden.html?scp=1&sq=gold%20in%20sweden&st=cse

Note: you may have to copy and paste to open the link.

I will post some more of my favorites on occasion. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

July 4th

What a great July 4th we had! The weather was unusually great, especially for this part of the country. It was in the mid 80's and sunny. We decided to forego our usual visit to the local parade and go hiking the Cascades instead. We were at about the 4000 foot level, where we hiked through patches of snow and beautiful cascading waterfalls. The views were breathtaking, as was the hike (a lot of huffing a puffing on our part). Mark went much farther and higher than we did, since we were maxed out, so he got some of the best pictures, but here is one of mine. If I can get some of Mark's I'll add them later.