The Post In Which...

This is the post in which I try to convince all my non-local friends and family to move to the Seattle area (or at least have a summer home here)!

I make no secret of the fact that I love it here.  Sure, we have a few dreary winter months, and more cloudy, gray days than I prefer, but our summers?  Oh! The summers!  

Sometimes, on perfect summer days, I think to myself, "how many bleak days is this one perfect day worth?"  So far, the perfect days are firmly in the lead.  

In addition to lovely summers, the scenery here is gorgeous.  I know some prefer the rugged beauty of the desert, but I'll take trees and green every single time.  I've blogged before about hiking at Mt. Rainier, but this is my view driving down the street in our small city (never ceases to amaze me):

This summer we did our best to take advantage of the beauty around us.  We hiked...

...sometimes even in the pouring rain.  

We went to beaches and parks and discovered a fabulous spot on the river just a couple miles from our home.  After finding this particular area, I returned at least once a week for the remainder of the summer.

It provides the perfect combination of shallow, slow-moving water, dirt, rocks, and mud.  Also known as "little kid heaven."

Did I mention the water is cold.  Brrrr!  Graham thought Finley was completely hilarious.  

Should you choose to move here, hopefully you will be blessed to find friends who are generous enough to invite you to spend a couple days with them at their parent's vacation home on a nearby island.  If you are, you'll see much more of the natural beauty this area has to offer.  Parks and lakes abound (and are especially helpful for passing the time if by chance you read the ferry schedule incorrectly and cause your friends to miss the ferry by 2 minutes, forcing them to wait another 2 hours - oops!).

We had an amazing two days playing on the island.  Once our friends joined us, we spent the afternoon at the "swimming hole."  Two moms, eight kids, and lots of fun.

Aubree and Bethelle swam out to the further docks and enjoyed being little fish.  

The younger kids enjoyed the shallows, the water slide, and the sand.  

At one point, Bryce came over to me, slightly upset and claiming that a bee had stung him on the bottom of his foot.  Bryce tends to be a little on the theatrical side when he gets hurt, yet this time he was remarkably calm.  So calm, that at first I didn't believe him!  

He recovered quickly, and soon was trying to swim in the deeper water.  

While swimming and playing in the sand is always fun, the same cannot be said for the cleanup process.  It seemed like we would get one kid cleaned off and start on the second, only to have kid one head back into the dirt forcing us to start all over!  Finally, we required all cleaned children to stay sitting on a blanket and gave them snacks to encourage compliance.  

It was a special treat to spend the night at the cabin with our friends.  These eight kids get along fantastically well.  Certainly there are moments of quarreling, but for the most part they are always deep in complicated imaginative scenarios and enjoying every moment they're together.  

The next morning we were up and out the door determined to pick blackberries.  We'd seen a great berry picking spot behind an old one-room schoolhouse that is now used as a fitness center.  Besides lots of berry bushes, this location also boasted a playground, which made it a double winner.  

Elke and I spent an hour and a half picking berries while the kids played nearby.  Occasionally, one or another of them would wander over to "help," but once their bellies were satisfied, they'd head back over to play.  

Towards the end of our berry picking adventure, a lady came out from the fitness center.  "Excuse me," she called to Elke and me, "are these your children?"

"Uh oh," I thought, "are we not supposed to have them here?  Were they being too loud?..."

"I just had to tell you," she continued, "that we are so impressed with your kids!  We've been having an exercise class for the last hour and we were watching them. We can't believe how well they play together and watch out for one another.  You're doing a good job, Momma's!"

I do believe I can live off of that compliment for a month!

After we finished berry picking, we set off on a short hike.  On this hike, we discovered huckleberry bushes.  The kids were hooked.  At the end of the hike we went back to the cabin for lunch and while the two little boys napped, the big kids hunted around the property for their own huckleberry stashes.

What a great crew!

When Graham and his buddy woke up, they went out to the sun room to watch the big kids in the backyard.  When they got bored of that, they made their own fun.  It's a true friend who will lick a window with you.

We had just enough time before we had to catch the ferry to head home to visit one last park and go swimming in another lake.  Glorious, right?

As you can see, summers here are practically perfect in every way.  The only thing that could make them even better is if YOU were here.  Yes, You.  So, start saving for that summer home now!