Saturday With Seth

Todd and Betsy brought Seth over to our house on Saturday morning so he could stay with us while they celebrated their anniversary, which is next weekend. Since it was a nice day, the first thing we did was spend time playing in the sand box.
Later, Ken and Seth washed Ken's car. Seth loved having a spray nozzle on the hose.
He did help Ken scrub the car some...
...and enjoyed getting his sponge soapy.
The most fun though was spraying the soap off the car and spraying Papa in the back with the hose whenever he turned his back to do some scrubbing. He nailed Ken good a couple of times.
Time for a drink after all that hard work!
After they were done washing the car, Seth wanted the hose to be a "spray park". This was totally his idea and he wanted Ken to run around in the "spray park." Since Ken had already gotten wet washing the car, he really didn't want to play "spray park" and get wetter, so he got an umbrella out to try to not get as wet. (It didn't work very well!)
We played lots of other things while he was here, but another game Seth came up with on his own, was playing that he was "Farmer Seth" and we needed to drive the tractor with its trailer to go get some "hay". I drove the tractor with Seth in the trailer around the yard until I saw some branches (that we called the hay) on the ground, then we stopped and picked them up. After we picked them up Seth rode on the "hay" back to the storage area.

It's Blooming!

I bought an orchid a year or so ago when it was blooming. After it was done, I cut it back like the instructions said, and hoped that it would bloom again. It took a long time before it bloomed, and I kept thinking that at least it hadn't died, like the last one I had. Since it wasn't doing anything, I finally decided that maybe the table I had it on in the living room, wasn't getting enough light, so I moved it to the guest room, where it got morning sun and wa-la, buds started to develop! Now it's got one flower open with 2 more about to open! How cool is that!

Pumpkin Hurl and Medieval Faire - Part 2

The pumpkin hurl started at noon and there was 6 different machines. This is one of the smaller ones and it had to be hand cranked.
This was a medium sized one, and...
...this is one of the big ones. I'm really not sure how they work, but this one threw a pumpkin over 1, 500 yards. What I was surprised about was not only how far the pumpkins went, but how high in the air they went also.
After watching the pumpkins being thrown for awhile, it was getting time to look for some lunch. There were lots of food booths there, but since it looked like it was going to start raining again, we decided to leave and look for food on our way home. I took a picture of this guy as we headed to our car. He saw me getting ready to take the picture and gave a yell, along with looking fierce for the picture.
When we were almost to the entrance gate, we saw guys dressed up and getting ready to do a mock battle.
Advancing on the enemy.
Defending themselves.
Some men are down and the battle is almost over.

Pumpkin Hurl and Medieval Faire - Part 1

Saturday morning we decided to go to the pumpkin hurl and medieval fair that was being held between Everett and Snohomish. We were a little concerned over the weather, because it was overcast, but since it seemed to be starting to clear a little at our house, we went ahead and went. When we arrived it started to sprinkle a little, which it did off and on the whole time we were there, but it never lasted very long. There were a lot of tents set up with various displays and people dressed in medieval costumes in what they called a medieval village.. This lady was making some kind of bread rolls and cooking them in this oven.
Putting the dough in the oven.
This guy was talking about the different types of heads on arrows and what they were used for.
There was also some scheduled horse events called "Knights on Horseback". This man seemed to be the 'jack of all trades" and was in charge of setting things up for the horse riding events.
I don't know if this girl was trying to look like "Joan of Arc", but that's who I thought she looked like.
One of the events was trying to get the ring on the spear as the horse galloped by.
Some more knights and miscellaneous medieval people.
Another event was galloping past a pumpkin or cabbage on a pole and trying to slice it with a sword or other weapon. I think this guy gave up on hitting it when galloping past, so he just walked his horse up to it and cut the pumpkin.
I wonder how he keeps his armor so shiny! Looks like a lot of work to me!
This guy became the target for a guy riding by and shooting arrows. He let the crowd choose which shield he could use, the large one with the lion on it or the small round silver one. Predictably, the crowd chose the small one. I think the archer took around 6 shots at him, but only hit him twice.

Flowers in my Yard

These are just a few pictures of one of our flower gardens at the end of the summer. This one was taken a couple of weeks ago.
This one was taken yesterday, I was disappointed that the color didn't turn out very good on the purple asters, but it shows the whole garden. The others are close-ups of some of the flowers shown in this picture or the one above it.
A bee on one of the asters.
Purple and yellow flowers growing together.
Crocosmia
This is a red-hot poker. This pink flower is one we saw growing in Alaska and got the seeds for.
Another type of aster, the bees and butterflies were really attracted to it yesterday. There are 2 butterflies and a bee in this picture.

Labor Day - 2011

Laser sword fight, first on the agenda.
Next, a bike ride or run on Centennial Trail from Bryant all the way to Arlington. Unfortunately, about halfway to Arlington, Ken's had a tire blow out and he had to walk the rest of the way.
We discovered that the salmon were spawning and lots of people were out trying to catch them. I've never seen so many fish jumping and swimming upstream as we did on Monday, not many were being caught from what we could see though.
After the bike ride, the kids were thirsty and Kari got them their first Slurpee. Saben said, it was the best thing he'd ever tasted.
Then we head out to a soccer field to launch rockets. We launched 3 rockets and had a problem with each of them. The first one came back down with a hole burned in the parachute. The second one, the one Annika is holding, blew the top it's off and the last one "Big Bertha" went the highest, but landed in a tree where it couldn't be reached. (Ken went back later with a long pole and was able to get it down.) All 3 rockets are ones that Kari and Todd made when they were kids, so we've had them quite awhile, luckily none of them were permanently damaged.
Watching the rocket launches.

Sunday Stroll in the Woods

Kyle is on a business trip, so Kari and the kids came to our house for the weekend. We invited Todd, Betsy, & Seth to go for a hike with us on Sunday to the Ice Caves by Big Four. We are just getting started on our 1 mile hike to the ice caves.
To keep Annika and Seth motivated to keep walking, they would run a little ahead and hide somewhere, then jump out and yell "Boo!" to scare the adults. Over all they did very well, it was a mile each way, and Seth only had to be carried a short time.
Since it hasn't been a very warm summer, there weren't many caves this year. The one in the background was the biggest one in this section, there was one more that was a little bigger a little farther up, and a couple that were barely started forming. Even though there weren't many caves, there was a lot of people going up the trail, and a lot of them had dogs with them, luckily most of them were well behaved. It's been quite awhile since we've gone up there, but I don't remember there being so many people the other times we've gone. The other thing all of us had forgotten was how cold it is when you get up to the snow. Kari brought jackets for Saben and Annika, but the rest of us didn't bring anything. When it's so warm when you start up the trail, you don't think about needing something warm to wear when you get up to the snow.
Posing in front of the ice cave.
5 very cold people and 2 slightly warmer ones.
Even though they were cold, all the kids wanted to throw snowballs at the adults. Seth has a chunk in his hand that he threw at his mom.
Time to rest, eat a snack and enjoy the scenery.
Seth enjoying sitting on Papa's lap.

A Military Funeral

Wednesday morning, I took my mom to her only brother's graveside service at a military cemetery. I hadn't realized that my uncle, Wendell, had been in the army and had served as a radio operator in Korea during the Korean war. Because of this he was entitled to be buried in a military cemetery. I had never been to a military funeral before and it was quite different. Our cars were lined up at the entrance to the cemetery, and when it was time, we were told to follow the hearse to where the ceremony would be held. There was an enclosed area with a few chairs and several veterans were standing at attention and saluting as we drove up. We were told to go sit or stand in the enclosed area, then 3 guys in uniform, rolled his casket which was draped with a flag to the front. It was all done with military precision and saluting. There was a big glass window behind the coffin, where several veterans stood at attention with rifles in hand. A couple of times they were told to go to attention which is a different position for their rifles, then told to go the rest position. A veteran read a part of the service, then the guys with the rifles shot them 3 times each, and taps was played right before they took the flag off the coffin, folded it up and presented it to my aunt. The soldier that presented it to Wilma, went down on one knee and said they were giving it to her in appreciation of Wendell's service to his country. The presentation of the flag and the playing of taps was the most moving part of the ceremony to me. After the flag was given to Wilma, a chaplain said a few words, but there wasn't much said in a religious vein, so that was disappointing. Later in the day there was a gathering at my cousin, Gary's house, where we visited with family and shared memories of Wendell. Mom did pretty well, even though it had only been 9 months since my dad had died.

Trip to Mt. Rainier - Part 3

A last view of our hotel and the southern side of Mt. Rainier.
We proceeded to drive around the mountain to the eastern side of the mountain. On the way we saw this box canyon. It's very, very narrow and you can see a little bit of the river at the bottom of the canyon.
A bridge over another creek that led to the Grove of the Patriarchs. It was a bouncy bridge that only 1 person was supposed to walk on at a time.
Two of the huge trees in the Grove of the Patriarchs.
The northeast section of Mt. Rainier is called Sunrise. We were told that the wildflowers at Sunrise were at their peak along this trail.
Ken looking at the mountain through a telescope.
Wildflowers and the mountain.
It was really hard to get a good picture of us and the mountain.
A pretty butterfly along the trail.
A glacier valley.
One last shot of wildflowers growing beside the road on the way down. It was sunny the whole time we were on the mountain, but shortly after we headed home, it started getting cloudy, so we were extremely lucky to get such great views.