Washington

It was a little cold for camping, but not too bad inside of a cozy sleeping bag.  We enjoyed watching this blue jay during dinner.  It kept coming back for more chips!  

We enjoyed time with friends - grateful to Julie and Jeff for hosting us!

Another temple visited...

Short and sweet dinner visit - Weston had a blast playing with his new friends!

Oregon

 After Medford, we headed to Bend, via Crater Lake.  I LOVED the pretty blue water - it was such a pretty place!  The kids were excited to see snow, even though it wasn't very cold outside.  

The last picture in the collage below is Weston showing a splinter in his hand.  He did get a pretty good sized splinter from the railing.

I wanted to look at the lake, but the kids just wanted to play in the snow.

 Weston's favorite part of Crater Lake was all the construction vehicles there! 

We stayed in Bend on Saturday night and went to church in the morning.  After that, we explored some of Newberry National Volcanic Monument.

We got to spend a day with some friends in Portland.  We did a hike at Multnomah Falls, had hamburgers for lunch, played at a park, and had pizza and ice cream for dinner.  Owen got along really well with Riley - they started writing a book together!

Before we headed out of Oregon, we went to the Portland Temple.  

On the road again... more singing videos:

Canada Vacation

We took the kids out of school the last 2 days to get a head start on our 32 day vacation.  Our first stop was camping for 2 nights in the Redwoods.  We enjoyed our campsite amidst the tall trees.  The boys discovered pretty quickly that the trees had perfect branches for climbing.  Nathan climbed up pretty high - too high for my comfort.  I took a couple of pictures and then told him to get down!  

This water area was a favorite spot - anywhere they can throw rocks!  Savannah was more interested in making rock piles.  

                                           

Nearly every tree they could climb, the boys scampered up.  No fallen tree left unclimbed...

Our next stop was Crescent City - Alex loves it there!  He has been there before, but it was the rest of the family's first time to see it.  We stopped at the cheese factory on the way out of town. 

The kids loved hanging out at the beach and the park.

We stayed one night in Medford, Oregon.  One of the most favorite parts of our trip was the waterslide at the motel!  It was fun - I tried it a couple of times.  

Alex and I got up early in the morning and went to the Medford Oregon Temple.  (Nathan is now old enough to watch the kids - he did a good job throughout our trip in helping out.)  This was 1 of 8 new temples that we visited on our trip!  We tried to visit all of the ones along our route.  We took advantage of being able to go in the evenings or early mornings of our motel stays - basically instead of crashing in front of the TV or sleeping in at the motel, we went to the temple instead.

On the road again...

Ready for junior high!

We were asked to provide some pictures of our 6th graders from their K-6 years.  I had fun looking back through Nathan's elementary years.  Middle school starts in 7th grade, so Nathan is officially done with elementary and ready for junior high.  

Nathan is an excellent student - he has excelled in many areas.  He recently got his test scores back and scored nearly as high as possible in every area.  I knew he was good at math, but I didn't realize his reading and comprehension are equally as strong.  We are really proud of him!

He still wants to be a pro athlete when he grows up - we better get working on that... 

Here are some of Nathan's friends.  Nathan is an outgoing and well-liked guy, but not one of the "cool" kids.  He said he wasn't in the cool crowd - I actually like his status!  He has a few good friends, but I am guessing he might be more likely to stay out of trouble later on when peer pressure is stronger.

The 6th graders sang 2 songs for graduation - "Best Day of my Life" (by American Authors) and "Count on Me" (by Bruno Mars).  I held it together while they were singing at graduation, but I did get a little emotional the first time I heard Nathan practicing at home.  He's growing up!

Each of the students shared one of their favorite memories during graduation.  Nathan shared the time when he was an astronaut for the wax museum.  We made his costume out of trash bags, so he will always remember being a trash bag astronaut!

School fun

Owen played a sloth in the first grade play, The Great Kapok Tree.  He makes such a cute sloth.

The kids had great teachers again - the first picture below was gifts for teacher appreciation week.  I made bath salt sundaes for end of year gifts.  Jared actually had 2 teachers, but one of them wasn't there on our last day, so we missed her.  

We left for vacation 2 days before school got out, so we had a hard time getting pictures of friends.  Owen got the most pictures because I was waiting outside his classroom when school ended.  I asked if he wanted to take pictures with some of his friends.  He gathered this whole group pretty quickly - "Everyone come take a picture with me!"  

Owen has a lot of friends.  He is very popular with the girls too. 

We only got a couple pictures of Jared's friends - the ones who were at 6th grade graduation.  The cowboy picture was from one of the 4th grade end of year activities.  

I'll post more for Nathan in the next post. 

June fun with friends

Weston and Savannah did a couple of outings with friends right before school got out - play place and a hike/park outing.  

I had to dig out a picture from 3 years ago - they have grown a lot! 

Memorial Day

We had a fun Memorial Day weekend, starting with a visit from Mike, Carrie, Nicholas, and Ryan.  The kids enjoyed hanging out at our house and playing at the beach.  We were especially sad to see them go, because they moved to TX in June.   

On Monday, we went on a hike with friends - it was pretty hot!  After our hike, we stopped to play at the park and enjoyed some ice cream.  

I got enough cute pictures of Savannah to make her own collage!