Summer Recap

We had a great summer including a lot of growing between our somewhat prosperous garden and developing baby Gunther!

Here is a recap of some of our summer adventures:

In June, we helped with the "Amazing Wonders Aviation" Vacation Bible School at our church.  There was a great turn-out of kids this year that increased each day.  Caleb led the music and I taught the 1st/2nd grade class.

For July 4th, we hosted Caleb's family at our house for a picnic gathering and then played in our church's "As American as Apple Pie" concert.  Caleb sang a solo as Johnny Appleseed.

In late July, Caleb drove some of the youth group members over to Rathdrum, Idaho each day for a week while they helped teach the same aviation VBS at a church there. 

My brothers Sam and Tim came over for a visit for about 10 days at the end of July/beginning of August.  We went camping up near Canada, toured Boundary Dam and Gardner Cave, attempted to bushwack our way to a waterfall, swam alot at the city pool, picked raspberries and made jam, and weeded the garden.

In August, Caleb and I performed in the first ever classical orchestra concert in the city of Deer Park (if I am remembering the correct description), which was a fundraiser concert for a church-sponsored community back-to-school fair which we helped put on at the end of the month.   

Also in August, we spent a week as program staffers at Odyssey Kids' Camp, an overnight camp at Waitt's Lake sponsored by our association of churches.  Caleb played on the worship team, co-led the silly songs, and taught the 5th/6th grade boy's Bible study, among other things.  I operated the sound/video systems and taught the 5th grade girls Bible study.  We both led a track time for 6th graders where we taught them basic camping skills such as how to build fires and set up tents.  

We got away on some quick one-night camping trips ourselves close to home several times throughout the summer.  Most of them were car camping, but we did go on one canoe camping trip to Horseshoe Lake.  When we camp, we like to do two main things: explore the area and read books at the (hopefully) quiet and scenic camp site.  It's our way of getting away from reality for a little while to relax.  On our camping trip to No Name Lake in the Colville National Forest, we had a rather hair-raising experience during the middle of the night when we heard what we thought was a bear growl, much too close for comfort.  We never saw a bear, but needless to say it took us a while to go back to sleep!  This was in an area with both black and grizzly bear sightings - one of us contemplated staying a second night, but the other was grateful to go home without an opportunity to repeat the experience! 

And now it is officially fall, the season of our baby's expected arrival!