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| One degree before it hit the big 100 |
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| A little blurry, but yes, that says 100 - just sweltering. |
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| Morgan baked and decorated these all by herself. |
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| The whole clan (minus me, the photographer:) |
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| I did ask mom to take a picture so I had some proof I was there:) |
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| The Bar |
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| Loved this photo of her watching the band, with the flag in her hand - the only thing I'm missing here is the patriotic music the band was playing. |
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| Morgan's Hershey Track Meet. This is a series of 3 pics of her taking her long jump. They turned out kind of cool considering they were taken with my iphone. #1 |
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| #2 |
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| #3 |
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| Captains Macy and Jahnke on Lauderdale Lake |
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| Watching the ski show |
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| What would summer be without catching frogs?! ... |
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| ...and Toads!... |
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| ...and having ice cream with friends (look at Penni drooling:) ... |
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| ...and bright, fun colors (I love my new lanterns by the pool) |
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| These next few pictures were supposed to be first - arg, I still can't figure out how to get them in the order I want. Anyway, they are pics from the last day of school at the Marcy Olympics. A day filled with games and treats. |
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| Macy was my buddy/helper/trooper all day - it was REALLY hot. Break time! - She was finding some shade here in the slide and enjoying some graham crackers. |
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| Brooke with Mrs. Zabel - her best friend;) Do you remember her Beth? I went to high school with her - Kim Rigden |
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| What an evolution. Morgan had a hard time "bonding" with Mrs. Felde at the beginning of the year. By the last day, they both had tears in their eyes as they hugged good-bye and Morgan finished her last day of elementary school! |
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| The month started with Brooke's Ballet recital. It was looong, but very cute. |
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| She was very excited about all of her beautiful flowers |
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| The weekend before this last, we resumed working on the landscaping. Ashley built a walkway from the street where we usually park (will post final pictures after we plant around it). |
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| We finally went to the nursery to get plants - so pretty! |
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| Pretty sedums |
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| We had some sunny weather for planting this weekend (more photos of Ashley working in yard.... :) |
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| Sedums to be planted along the stone wall and fence. |
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| Rockrose along the wall |
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| I picked up Susanne's needlepoint from the framer! So excited. The garden theme is appropriate for all the planting we've been doing. |
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| I made a batch of crema di limoncello from Fritz and Susanne's lemons (from a recipe Susanne gave us). We have several more bottles this size - it should last us a while! |
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| We camped Saturday night and got up early Sunday to start on the hike. Here is our whole group of 8 at the very beginning. We started off on the hike just before 8am and returned to our camp around 5pm. Only 6 made it to the summit. Despite summiting the past 13 years, the wind kept a couple folks from making it to the top. There were a couple other parties headed up that day as well, including a group of high school kids from a Portland school (hence the short bus in the background - that wasn't ours ; ) that were on their graduation trip. We crossed paths with them a couple times - a really neat group of kids learning mountaineering skills. Only a set amount of people are allowed to make the trip per day - you need to reserve and pay for permits in advance to make the trip and sign in and out at the local ranger station. |
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| About 2 miles into the hike when its still just gradually uphill and warm - around 9am. Sunscreening up. Despite several applications of 70 spf and zinc, both Ashley and I had sun and wind burn and are still peeling all over our faces. |
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| Early on the way up, although you can tell we are just about to get above the timberline since the trees are sooo tiny. This is Craig with his telemark skis - he hiked up with them till we hit snow, then skied up, took off the skins and skied back down. I could barely drag myself up this thing, much less carrying a set of skis. |
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| Early on. The whole group in line. Still in short sleeves. |
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| Climbing up one of the lava rock ridges. Its crazy to think this was liquid rock flowing down in our lifetime. At this point you can start to see how far you're coming up and realize how slowly you're moving and how much further there is to go. |
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| Early on. Hiking in the snow but it still feels warm from sun and hiking hard. Still in short sleeves. |
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| Still climbing that rock ridge. Slow going. Mt. Adams in the distance. |
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| Still warm enough for short sleeves. Most of the party is ahead of me at this point (you can see them above us). A couple folks were behind us, but they ended up turning back eventually. Ashley was extremely supportive and stuck it out with me towards the back of the pack. Trudging up that snow is just really slow and as you look up it seems never ending. That is a false summit up ahead of us and there were still many more before we could even see the top. Once you know you are looking at the top it feels much more encouraging. |
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| Starting to get higher and COLD. A VERY windy lunch with a fabulous view of Mt. Hood to the south. |
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| Layering up. We put on our down jackets despite working really hard (the sun and physical work were keeping us warm earlier despite the snow) |
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| Mt Adams zoomed in from our lunch spot. |
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| We arrived at the top around 2:30pm. Here is the view from the top ridge looking down over the edge of the crater at the lava dome inside. The "dome" steadily grows every day and we could smell sulfur (and see smoke puffs? maybe they were just clouds?) |
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| Lava dome and west (?) side of St. Helen's crater. |
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| Mt. Rainer in the far distance and east (?) craggy ridge of St. Helen's crater in foreground. |
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It was so windy I had to hold onto my hat. I can't believe you can't SEE the wind here. We look all relaxed but it was hard just standing up. You can see foot steps in the snow and that is as close as anyone dared get to the edge of the crater.
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| The glissade down! We slid down 3/4 of the way on our butts with contractor grade garbage bags. Seriously the most fun I have had in so so so long. It was AWESOME. You can see how small the rest of the party looks up above me - each slide was really long and we got some really good speed. I have some great videos of us zipping down, but they won't upload for some reason The wind had died down, it was crystal clear blue skies and the views of surrounding peaks were just beautiful. |
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| Do'h - wet camera. 6 of the 7 here made it to the top. There was still a couple miles back to camp from this point but it was all downhill hiking. We made it back to camp around 5pm. |
