Aunt Jeanie and Kellen

My Aunt Jeanie is my mom's sister and Kellen is my cousin. They live in Escondido, CA (near San Diego). They come up once a year to visit and we so look forward to seeing them! My mom came down from WA and spent the couple days with us and then drove Aunt Jeanie and Kellen up to her house. It worked out quite well!

Sadie and Aunt Jeanie

Watching the dog parade at Tuesday Market!

Every year we have to get a pic of Kellen and the kids on these steps!

At the zoo

Me and my auntie!

Kellen and Zack having fun with the castle

Watching the kiddos play

Sisters (the song from "White Christmas" comes to mind, heehee!)

Goofy Kellen!

SVCC Camping Trip

This past weekend we had the pleasure of going on a camping trip with a big group of our church friends. The church we attend is Covenant, and our denomination owns an amazingly beautiful and huge camp in Yelm, WA. It is called Cascades Camp and I actually grew up going to this camp every summer! We went last summer as a church as well, and man, it brings back so many awesome memories when I am there. I cannot wait until my kids are able to go as campers and have the experiences I had!

You can't have camp fires, so the kids roasted marshmallows by the propane heater! Whatever works!

I have a friend, Michele, who I met at our church when we first started going there and then she and her husband, Eric, moved up to Washington 5 years ago. Well, they also attend a Covenant church, and their oldest daughter, Madison, was randomly at Cascades the week before we were there with her camp ending the Saturday we were there. So Michele, Eric, and their four beautiful daughters came over to our camp after they picked up Madi and spent a good part of the day with us!

Sadie and Madi (and next to her, another red-headed Maddie, can you believe it?)

Eric and Michele's twins, Audrey and Alyssa, and second oldest, Katelyn

Angie, making some yummy food!

The kids also got to ride horses!

Drew fortunately did not remember that he fell off a horse here last year!

Then it was time to play in the lake.

Sweet Zack

Drew and his pal, Ireland. Moments before he pushes her off the dock. Sweet.

Madi, Sadie and Eric in a canoe

Me and my sweeties

Mmmmm

It is HOT!!

Sadie and Lucy

S'mores again!

Drew getting his baby fix with Baby Boston

Tony and Aaron played a rambunctious game of football with the boys. They LOVED it!

Still smiling... at 8:30AM after very quickly packing up camp in the pouring rain. :)

All-Comer's Track Meet

Every Wednesday in July, there is a track meet here in Hillsboro for anyone who wants to come. We didn't know about it until last summer right before the very last meet. The kids had a blast, so we were excited to go this year. Last Wednesday we headed off to the meet. They have 5 different field events at different times for each age group and a bunch of track events, also run by age. It is a little crazy being there by myself with 3 kids trying to race around and catch as many events as we could. But they had SO much fun!

A little pre-meet warm-up

Sadie's first event...long jump!

The kids had never tried hurdles before and they all were really excited to give it a try. Drew's age (3 and under) went first on the 50M hurdles.

I know it's blurry, but I think this is the cutest pic ever of Drew's little 3 year old body jumping over hurdles! :)

He got 2nd place!

Zack was next. He did really well for his first time having to run and jump over things at the same time!

They raised the hurdles nice and high for Sadie's age group. She did great and loved it also!

Zack doing the softball throw (in place of the javelin)

And Drew. This was right up his alley, he loves to throw balls!

Long jump is so hard! It must take a lot of training to get the technique down...

Sadie doing the turbo-jav (kid friendly javelin, kind of soft, like NERF)

Getting ready for the 50M dash. Drew got 1st place!

Zack ran so fast, he got 2nd place in the 50M dash!

Sadie running the 100M. I think she got 4th place!

4th of July

The 4th was SUCH a fun day! It started with us heading off to downtown Hillsboro for the annual 4th of July parade. Hillsboro is not a huge town nor a small one. But the parade is actually pretty big and quite fun. It lasted over 2 1/2 hours, which means a LOT of candy went home. Nice. The weather was great, not too hot until right at the end and we were in shade much of the time. Needless to say, the kids had a blast!

The Hillsboro motorcycle police started things off with some awesome (and kind of scary) maneuvers in the road.

Drew loved the motorcycles!

Zack and his buddy, Gavin

Most of the vehicles were "too loud" for Drew!

The BEAR (not sure what it stands for, but it belongs to Washington County Sheriff Department

Then in the afternoon, we had a bunch of friends over for the Second Annual Bastinelli 4th of July BBQ! It was SUPER hot out, but we had canopies up and water activities out back for the kids. Everyone who came stayed until dark for fireworks and other than a few (okay, many) scraped knees, I think everyone had a great time!

H-O-T!!!

Look at that yummy food and Jamie's awesome flag cake!

Horseshoes

Playing with the BIG boys!

Sparklers!

Thank goodness for earplugs

Sadie and Chris

Our friend Jamie and the youngest guest at the party, 2 week old Boston