Elle's House

As I have been working hard on our new living quarters, (photo's soon!) Elle has been working hard on her own house. Even has sawdust insulation! Her comment: "I built my house in a day, what's taking you so long?" =)

I asked Elle to help gather the rocks  out of the dirt (preparing it for sod to go down) and she gathered them together and made this.... she said it was me with pig tails! My little artist...

September projects

Anyone who is interested, let me know... I am planning to do the following projects in September and would love for anyone who wants to, to join me.
Make Blackberry Jam
Make butter for the winter (to store in the freezer) from raw jersey milk.
Try out my homemade hand crank ice cream maker
Make a LARGE batch of homemade noodles.

Let me know asap if you want to be a part!

Potholes State Park

The last few weeks have been CRAZY! I am overwhelmed by how many posts I have to get caught up on, so I am going to just start posting things, and it won't be very sequencial, but I figure that's better than not mentioning them at all. I'm not totally sure why I take the time to do this whole "blog thing" anyway, but if nothing else it will be really fun for my kids to look back on and have a record of some of the littler things in our life.
Here are some photo's of our camping trip to Potholes state park (about 30 miles from Vantage, WA). It was a WONDERFUL trip! I was totally "that person" for the trip. It started with me bringing an empty cooler, leaving behind a full fridge of prepared food, and then... closing the door to the van, not realizing that  while I was cleaning up Christian's "mess " he'd made on the grass while I was getting him a diaper out of the tent, he had locked the doors to the van., and when I shut it, it locked the key in there. (SO glad I still had AAA from my annual membership for traveling accross country).  The families we went with were AMAZING! Such beautiful families. The kids were so fun with Elle and Christian. It was so nice to have her with so many kids that were such good influences and such respectful kids. They all had ample food and were so nice to share with the forgetful unorganized me. =)
The park is a great spot. We were in the group camp, which was on the river. There was a lot of great green grass space, a big fire pit, nice shade trees, and clean pit toilets (which doubled as an echo chamber for the kids... yuk!)  The river was perfect. We drove up to a different spot to raft down the river with all the kids- that was so nice, I haven't floated a river in a long time. Elle's favorite were the rapids right there at the camp. (that's what most of the pictures are of) The kids (and adults) would step out on a rock and jump into the rapids and float down to a shallow spot where they had to quickly grab on and make their way to the side (parents always present to "save" any kids who missed the shallow spot and continued down river).

The inner tubes were just as fun off the river, as on the river.

 Elle showing her fresh water clam (at least that's what I think it is) she found.

 Here the kids were playing "monster". =)

 This is the rapid they went in below.

Feels like summer! =)