Our Summer In A Nutshell...

I know, I haven't blogged in months, literally.  So here is a REALLY brief view of just a few of the things we've been doing this summer.  These aren't in any particular order, so I will try to give approximates of when they were happening...

National Night Out was last week (Aug 4th) and our Pack was co-hosting the Bike Rodeo.  Kellen was on a road trip around Oregon with Steve's parents, Steve was at a church council meeting, and Madison and I went to National Night Out with Michelle's family.  Madison went through the bike rodeo a couple of times (every time she decided she wanted to ride her bike again) and the rest of the time we kept the trike available for other toddlers to use on the rodeo so they could participate and get the certificate.

These are the tunnels for a play set that Madison got for her birthday (I think two years ago) but she didn't undo all of the ties on them this particular day.  At one point, she even had put one to two My Little Ponies in each of them so that these tunnels looked like caves, or stages, or maybe houses for the ponies.
The last week in July Kellen went to Camp Lutherwood again, and had a blast.  Steve dropped him off on Sunday afternoon (while I went to a Pack Committee budget meeting) and Madison and I picked him up on Friday afternoon.  During the week, while Kellen was gone, Madison and I went to vacation Bible school Mon-Thurs (Madison in the pre-K class, me helping with the 5th graders) so it was a great week all-around.
The week prior to that, we had Day Camp, which deserves a whole post of its own (but I'm not sure I'll get that far).  Since it was a wild west theme this year, the boys were wearing neckerchiefs and in this picture they're panning for (fool's) gold.
The first week in July our den went to cub scout resident camp at Camp Clark Adventure Cove and, being second year Webelos now, they got to spend an entire week!  Kellen, of course, is posing for his picture and looking like a smooth dude over there on the far left.
On the day that we were going to pick up Kellen, the rest of us started out by taking a picnic lunch to the beach in Lincoln City.  It was reasonable weather, but not as much wind as we'd hoped for, since we'd planned on flying kites.  So these next couple of pictures are rather in reverse.  This one of Madison was later in the day when we stopped at a second beach further up the coast when/where there was finally enough breeze for the kites.  Madison was quite excited to actually hold onto her own kite and fly it.
This is the first beach of the day, where we had our lunch (Steve insists on doing that in the car because he doesn't want sand in his food; what kind of beach lunch is THAT anyway?) and I even made a sand castle.  The hardest part was getting Madison to wait on knocking it over until I had at least managed to finish it.  She did like helping me dig, though :)
Right after we arrived and set out the blanket, I pulled out the camera and Madison started running laps around the blanket trying to be faster than the camera so that I couldn't take a picture.  Not quite managed, obviously!  Most of the time, I feel like taking pictures of her is like this, though :)
Here is Kellen riding in the Fourth of July parade and he even got to wear Grandpa's scout uniform in the parade!  So, if the uniform looks a little outdated, it's because it's from the 1950's and Bob wore it when he was about 12 years old!  The reason for the older uniforms in this year's parade was because the them was "Through the Years" or something to that effect.
Another instance of Madison on the fly...
The first weekend in June we had our Pack Crossover where Kellen was officially moved from the Webelos I den and became a Webelos II.  I know I look a little silly in the uniform, but the Committee Chair is supposed to be in uniform at Pack events... I personally could do without that part.
This one was back in May, right after we got our plants put into our garden, which looks MUCH different from this now.  Steve is just barely visible chilling in the chair under the trees while the kids chill themselves under the water.
This is another picture of our garden, still quite early on.  The large, obvious ones are the green beans and there are also tomatoes and broccoli in there.  We planted peas, pickling cucumbers, and artichokes around the other side of the house, too.  Now I just need to post a new picture to showcase how far it has come since then...
Okay, I know this looks really bizarre, but this is one of the rooms in our local children's museum.  It has a motion-sensitive camera on the floor that projects your movements up on the screen, and it had a half-dozen different designs that it rotated through; it was like seeing yourself in a kaleidoscope on some of them!  Very cool!
This is by no means everything we've done this summer, but it shows a little bit here and there of what has kept us busy.  We have three birthdays this month so we will be going up to Bob and Judy's house this weekend to celebrate before they go on a road trip, and then we'll be going into Seattle for a day as a family, too.  And Steve is even on vacation next week so we can relax and do what we want to do with the time...