Well Hello There!!!!

How fabulous to see your smiling face here!  SOOO much has happened since we last met here.  Let see, right after that last post, Tiana flew to Alaska for 3 weeks and I started my summer quarter.  Now, then, we have a 17 year-old in the house and it is officially my summer vacation.  While Tiana was in Alaska, Kent and I took a road trip over to Eastern Washington.  We took in a Western Themed town, did some hiking up to some caves and stuck our feet in Soap Lake.  We went to Meeting with my cousins in Tri-Cities and saw a number of young people at a birthday get together for another cousin.  We drove home by way of Mt. Rainier State Park on the scariest road I've even ridden on!  We are both VERY sure we know why they close that road in the winter!  In case you haven't see them, and if you are at all interested, here are the links to the pictures from that trip:

• Day 1 - Over the North Cascades Highway to Winthrop
• Day 2 - Winthrop, Grand Coulee Dam, Steamboat Rock
• Day 3 - Leftovers from Day 2, Hiking Lenore Caves and Dry Falls
• Day 4 - Heading Home

We also spent one more Saturday on the road where we went to Mima Mounds State Park, the Capitol Forest and stopped at Nisqually for some serious photo ops.  Those pictures are here.

After Tiana got home we went to Oregon and spent the weekend with my parents.  We took a nice hike to Silver Falls and stopped on the way home to pick blueberries and raspberries.  Was SUPER fun and a great day!  Our raspberries sort of smashed so we made freezer jam that was so good!  The rest are in the freezers! ☺

Since being home, now we've done even more berry picking.  There seems to be a bumper crop of blackberries this year and I've picked more than just a few.  Those have an awesome price tag, too!  FREE!!!!  Ivona and co, Tiana and Bug and I all went blueberry picking the other day.  Ivona ended up with 8 pounds and we had 10.  I froze most of them and plan to make a blueberry sour cream pie.  Today I made a blackberry cobbler that was FABULOUS!  I found the recipe at Pioneer Woman.

We've also been to convention and enjoyed good days there.  We got to see some long-time friends of Kent's and so that was fun to catch up with them a bit.

So, I think that's it in a very large nutshell.  Hopefully it won't be so long until we meet again!  Soon it will be time for me to fly away to the East Coast where I will spend a few days with some friends and paper!  Just like a couple of years ago I will go to Pennsylvania to do some scrapbooking.  I'm quite sure that family will be glad not to be there! :)