Food Storage Teamwork!

Today we canned 300 lbs. of dried food to store for future emergencies. At first we parents planned to do it without the kids, but then I realized what a fun, educational family "teamwork" activity we could have.

Our first task was to spread cans out across the table and fill them up. Rychen P and I did this while Elisabeth took her nap, before Dad got home from work.

Rychen P. got to scoop grains from the large 25# bags into the cans, and then put these oxygen absorbers in each one.
...then with Dad, we used the canning machine (borrowed from the LDS facility) to seal the cans and label each one with a permanent marker.

Then Rychen P. got the "super special" job of labeling the boxes!


After boxing up all the cans and labeling the boxes, I had a sudden brilliant idea. Hopefully we won't be opening this box of wheat for another 5-10 years, so I thought Let's put a Time Capsule in it! Nothing fancy, just a hand-written note about where we were that day. We had Rychen P. write on it, since he'll get a kick out of seeing his preschool handwriting (it says "Now I'm 5").

Tennis Tournament

Felt like I was in high school again. Ehhh yeah, not a good thing. I think I'll stick to hitting for fun at the park.

Happy Birthday Rychen P!

Rychen Parker had his 5th birthday July 1st. Wow, time flies!! Here he is opening his presents.

Grandma and Grandpa Jones, Madison, and me enduring the horrid party hats


...and then requested that for his birthday we take a trip to Chuck E Cheese, his favorite place to play!

Take note: Frog is the "new" Lion!! Buzz-the-Birthday-present has replaced Woody!!

The Time Traveler's Wife

Okay everybody, I have a new favorite movie. Seriously, this is the most beautifully written, profound, touching, inspiring, and gospel-symbolic movie I have ever seen. Hands down.

The Time Traveler's Wife touched my soul and really shows the reality of eternal families, the omnipresence of the spirit world, and various events in life being meant-to-be (and also the theme of fate, which I do believe in to a certain extent). Anybody struggling with the loss of a loved one will really be uplifted by this movie. I don't know if the author of this book is familiar with LDS teachings but it's just so beautiful how true the message of this movie actually is.

Seattle Marathon & Half 2010

Rychen's family - it was so awesome to set this goal and prepare for it together, keeping ourselves accountable. Great for me to join in with them (only my second race, they've been doing it for a year now) and be part of this! Landon, Courtney's husband, was also there to support us.

Here's the starting line...


The course was beautiful. Several miles along the lake here.
...and several miles though the city, both on the Express Lane, overpass, and through downtown. Rychen's race went over the long bridge to Mercer Island and further into the city.







Congratulations Rychen on this great achievement! 2 marathons in 22 days! Now it's rest time :)

Transit & Race Expo

Rychen and I at the race expo


...and riding the SoundTransit (my mom is with us, who came in from Las Vegas to take care of the kids while we ran)

Seattle Center

We went to Seattle Friday for the race expo and to see a bit of the city. Here we are having fun at Seattle Center...

Indian Beach

This was a beach at Ecola State Park, which by the way, is so fantastic!!
I want to go back to camp and run along the forest trails. There is also a beautiful grassy overlook area where you can picnic and get a panoramic view of several beaches, all the way to Cannon Beach, the surrounding rocks and wildlife, and the huuuuuge ocean! But I didn't get pictures of any of that....

Here are pictures from Indian Beach.

Elisabeth LOVED walking through the ocean! She was laughing and laughing, as each frigid wave came up and drenched her shorts.....(and then some!) as I held her hand. But she got too cold so we couldn't stay as long as we wanted. Of course she threw a huge tantrum when we had to leave the fun waves even though she was shivering like mad! Also, our camera took a nose dive into the Pacific, making our trip much more expensive than we had planned!