Boys will be Boys

It seems that every day brings some excitement to little boys. Everything from eating fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, sitting in their new "camp chairs," picking blackberries and riding in the stroller brings a new level of fun. Owen has really started playing with Colin, which has been fun (and a little bit leaving us not knowing what to do with the little tidbits of free time we get now!).

The most exciting thing of note is the crane that showed up at our neighbor's house to move a telephone box. The crane moved it from one side of the house to the other. It was quite a show! The boys were jumping up and down and screaming pretty much the whole time - and it was pretty cool, as you can see. Colin hasn't stopped playing with his toy crane ever since.

Owen has also really started playing with diggers. Alas, my hope that this was "just a phase" is now quashed. Both of them are going to be completely into them and there is no escaping it now. Here you can see Owen playing with the digger he took to bed first thing this morning. He likes to point out parts of the digger... the wheel, the smokestack, the digger... the fun never ends.

Diggers!

It seems with little boys that diggers follow us everywhere. Or we seek them out... Our neighbor's misfortune of needing a new septic system has turned into a great source of entertainment for the boys. She needed to cut trees down, dig big holes, install new tanks, fill the dirt in... the fun is endless when you're a boy in love with the dirt! And all this is happening right next door to our house!

Colin has become quite builder when it comes to legos too... as you can see. We also continue to have amazing sunsets!

Crystal Mountain Hike

This weekend I ran a race up near Crystal Mountain, right near Mount Rainier. Benjy decided to bring the boys up for a hike and to enjoy the scenery. They rode up the new gondola at Crystal Mountain, visited the restaurant at the top, and hiked around in the snow at the top of the peak. The peak is about 6,500 feet, and there was still quite a bit of snow on top! Amazing since it's the end of July! The boys had a great time and saw amazing views of Rainier and the surrounding mountains. The weather was perfect and a good time was had by all.

If you want to read about my race, I've started doing an ultrarunning blog about my adventures. You can check it out at ultrarunnerjen.blogspot.com.

Tour de France and Visit from Steve and Jane

We've had a wonderful week! We all enjoyed watching the Tour de France this year (as always) and Owen is now able to wear the jersey that Colin wore years ago. We also had a wonderful visit from our dear friends, Steve and Jane. We did our best to try and impress them with what Washington has to offer, and also had some fun along the way! Benj took them on a hike up Mt. Ellinor in the southern Cascades. The weather was perfect and you can see some shots from their hike. The snow has been persistent around here with the non-summer we're having - so they weren't able to get to the top because of the snow. People making the summit had crampons and ice axes to make the trip! Even without the summit they still had amazing views.

They also were able to do some kayaking while they were here, right out our back yard. The sound was a bit choppy, but I think they enjoyed seeing things from a different perspective. Jane even said she saw a seal!

To compare, here is a picture of Colin wearing the yellow jersey in summer 2008:

Lakefair 2011

Olympia has an annual festival called Lakefair. It's essentially a carnival with rides, carnival food and games that are set up down along the lake in town. The weather hasn't been great, but we took the kids down for some fun on Sunday. Benjy took the boys down on Saturday while I was running and they played in some bounce houses and did a bunch of free stuff that was set up as part of the parade that was going on. Sunday we tackled the rides. You can see Colin enjoying the dragon roller coaster and the flying planes. (of course he had to ride the ORANGE one!) And he really wanted to go on the ferris wheel, so we did that too. Owen is too little to go on anything so he and daddy waited on the ground while we went up high! Colin says he wasn't scared but he was gripping my leg pretty hard the whole time!

(Owen put on my oven mitts the other day and I thought he looked like a lobster - so cute!)

A Day at the Beach

We've had about a week of dreary, cold, rainy weather. Today the sun FINALLY showed itself! We seized the opportunity and took the boys down to the beach to play in the mud. It was a lovely day and fun was had by all! The boys found crabs, worms and squashed plenty of empty shells. We even saw someone waterskiing!

Visit from Grandpa!

This week we've had a wonderful visit from Grandpa Edwards. We all enjoyed having him visit and the boys had a lot of fun showing him all the fun stuff around here during the summer time. Here are some photos (all taken by Grandpa's camera) of the happenings during the visit. We visited the farmer's market, went to the beach, caught worms under rocks, gazed at Mt. Rainier from Olympia, hiked in the woods, went to soccer (where the thoughts going through Colin's head during this picture are up for debate) and visited a local farm where we fed the goats and played with the ducks going down a water slide. It was a great visit and we are looking forward to him coming again soon!