Lakehouse: Montalvo Clan visits

Montalvos + Wendls Visit

By the time the Montalvo family came to visit, two weeks after the Kapalkas, Ginger had painted the sunroom yellow. (She later went back to a white ceiling though.)

Montalvo men re-intalling windows to make a second guestroom. Even Bailey pitched into help. He's just become a teenager.

We ate some apples from our tree while surveying the roof.

The first week, the Wendl/Kiehl family joined us with Honey and Rene. So we had fun with our nephews, visiting the car museum.

 

We took a big camping trip to the Olympic National Forest, renting an RV from the military base. 

 

 The boys were allowed to fish without a license, and everyone got to take a turn kayaking.

 

We made a side trip to a special location for Tippy: 

Forks has several Twilight-themed gift stores... and examples of Bella's car in the book and movie.

 

We also saw the outdoor part of the mining museum. (As far as I know, not featured in the books.)

Dehlers Visit

 

We took the Seattle Underground Tour. Seattle raised the streets in the 1890s after devasting flooding and fires, leaving behind a mostly abandoned series of streets and first floors of old businesses.

 Honey and Rene were excited to see the original Starbucks.

We rode the Space Needle elevator to the top (first time!) to dine in the slowly spinning restaurant, SkyCity. The girls ordered "The Lunar Orbitor" for dessert, an ice cream dish with dry ice smoke and sparklers!

Stephen captured the view with his phone.

We drove out to a favorite bridge and a view of Mt. Ranier for a family picnic.

Tacomawa: Tacoma Summer Events + Mt. Ranier WA

When Ginger arrived home from Montana, she found a surprise...

 After our long search for a Mini Cooper last year, Stephen knew exactly what parameters we wanted for a car. It's a 2007 with 56k miles, and a better deal than any of the cars we saw in New Jersey. (We are going to tone down the checkerboard design sometime.) It's only had one owner, and has all our favorite special features (heated seats, sun roof, audio jack, manual drive.) Stephen worked hard to find a car bow!

Stephen took Ginger to a high school parking lot to practice driving stick. (A teen and his dad showed up for the same reason while we were there.) She's learning.

Tacoma has had several fun summer events, like the Taste of Tacoma fair and Fourth of July fireworks show at Puget Sound.

 

For InterVarsity, Ginger visited Tacoma Community College several times to meet students during summer classes and find out how to start a club there. Correy, Sadie and Zach came to a Bible study (left) and Ginger's supervisor Tim is helping her learn about planting. 

 

She's still making cakes at Albertsons. Two favorites are drawing a naval destroyer, and an Under the Sea cake.

We enjoying our back yard! The summer weather is wonderful for grilling and playing with Clementine.

  

Our friends Jason and Julie have returned to WA after several years working on the RI project. Jason is on a different job site than Stephen now, but they live nearby in Puyallup.

Mt. Ranier

Our biggest summer adventure has been our camping trip to a state park near Mt. Ranier.

One of Stephen's coworkers advised us to visit his favorite hiking trail without sharing all the details. We were a little overwhelmed by the 3 mile trail (6 total), 3,000 foot elevation change, about 4 hours going up and 2 hours going down, ranked as a "very difficult" trail. None of this information was posted on the board at the Trailhead. But we made it!

 Google Earth capture after Stephen figured out the trail.

Hiking up had beautiful views facing south, with many mountains and meadows. Then at the top of the ridge, we could see north to Mt. Rainer (very light blue in this image)- a sight that made the climb worthwhile.

Clementine the happy camper.