Having the Time of My Life!: We bought a boat!

Last weekend when we were packing to go to the lake for our ward campout, we called our friend up to see if we could borrow his canoe again. He had offered it last year and we were glad that we had borrowed it because we were able to fill it with camping supplies (sleeping bags, tent, etc), tie down the supplies so they wouldn't fall out, then flip the canoe upside down and strap it to the top of our minivan. It was like a car topper, only bigger. As it was we had the van filled with food and clothes (and us), so it was nice to have the canoe to fill all the other camping gear. When we picked up the canoe our friend told us that his neighbor was selling a 17ft aluminum canoe for $200. We took the hint (was he tired of us always borrowing his canoe?) and bought ourselves a canoe. We priced it first and comparable canoes on craigslist were going for over $800. Car toppers would be over $500, and it wouldn't be very fun to paddle those in a lake.

Everyone had to take turns with the different poses.

We ordered real paddles from Walmart.com, but Marianne is modeling a plastic paddle we found washed up on shore at the lake last weekend. The lake was low and we founds several things. Makalya found a nice red cap.

Everyone had the opportunity this summer to use their spending money to buy a container of ice-cream of their choosing. For the older kids it coincided with a friend sleeping over, so their ice-cream didn't last too long. This week it was Ben and Marianne's turn to buy their ice-cream. Here they are diving in!

For the past two years, a field of sunflowers was planted on the side of the highway halfway from Chewelah to Spokane. I wanted to take pictues of the kids in front of the flowers, but missed my chance last year. This year I never made it down with the kids on other business, so I set aside a morning for the purpose of picture taking. Imagine my disapointment after driving 30 minutes and finding that I was too late again!