The Crazy Places I Find Them

Kyle is on his way home from Canada.
He left Sunday morning headed to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
The purpose of his trip was to meet up with the Olympic Bible Project team and tell some people about Jesus. I am excited that he had the chance to go. Can't wait to hear the stories that he has to tell. I made sure that he took his camera so that I could share some pictures with all of you out there in blog land. Even though he is only a few hours away he is in another country so we haven't spent the extra money to talk on the phone...just settled for the text messages. So today I got a text that he was at an Olympic Hockey Game!

As for me and the boys...we've been holding down the fort here in DuPont....they don't have a clue what the Olympics are all about but we've been doing enough "pirating" that if "pirating" ever becomes and Olympic sport I know some sure fire gold medal contenders.
Just look at this practice...






Kade has even gotten good at letting Ryne "train" with him to be the best pirate ever!

And lately when Kade isn't playing pirates with his own eyepatch and sword or playing with his pirate ship and pirate figures (which, by the way, he thanks Jesus for every night when we pray) he has taken to drawing pirates...


So "pirating" seems to be the sport of choice in the Lewallen household for now.
Seriously, even Ryne brings us an eyepatch to put on him and he runs for his sword and starts swinging it while belting out the biggest and loudest "AARRGG" he can muster up. I must get video of that for you sometime, you will crack up!

And if they take a break from "pirating" here are the places I'm likely to find them...



Yep, he got right in but couldn't quite manage to get himself out of that dryer.

And only moments later I hear Kade call out, "Momma, I think I'm stuck, can you help me?"


What makes a kid even want to crawl into a laundry basket that he obviously cannot fit into?
At least they do make me laugh!

A Sunny Day in the Rainforest

The boys have been a bit sick. Snotty noses and coughs...nothing major. Just sick enough to keep us from getting out of the house much because we don't want to expose everyone else to their snot and coughs. The weather here has been amazing for the past week. Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine and temperatures in the mid 50s. I keep trying to remind myself that it is still February and I don't to be getting spring fever just yet.
On Friday, we decided that we just couldn't stay in and waste the pretty day so we loaded up our snotty nosed boys and went on a road trip. We went around the Olympic Mountains and up to the Hoh Rain Forest. Yes, I said rain forest! Obviously not a tropical rain forest being that we live in Washington state and all, but a rain forest nonetheless. We thought the fresh air might just do us all some good.

Here is our journey in pictures:

We drove up the west coast for some of our trip and got a few nice views of the Pacific Ocean.

Look at that blue sky!

Within a few hours we arrived at our destination:

Hoh Rain Forest!

First we checked out the visitor's center....

Ryne wanted to see everything.


Kade found the display with stairs pretty quickly.


Didn't take Ryne long to make his way up the stairs to join his brother.

Then it was picnic time....

They had some really neat picnicking spots.


Kyle and Kade searched us out a spot in the sun.


Check out the cool stuff growing on our table.


I thought it was so cool how things were sprouting from the surface of our picnic table.

If I could describe our trip to the rain forest in one word it would be:

MOSSY

Seriously just look at these pictures...



Kade had to explore some...




And Ryne had to have his turn exploring...



More moss....



After our picnic we loaded the boys up in their backpacks and headed out for some hiking.




Sorry that this picture is fuzzy but I had to include it. Kade made Kyle stop and read every sign that we came across. He would spot them from several yards away and get Kyle prepped to stop and read. If you have any questions about the Hoh Rain Forest, just ask Kade, I'm sure he learned the answers during all the sign readings on our hike.


Honestly, Kade could probably tell you what kind of tress and moss and ferns you see in this picture here. I do at least know that he recognizes moss and ferns for what they are now.

Along our hike we came to a river...

The ranger told us that there was a family of otters that lived in the river and we might get to see them.


Here's Kade looking for those otters. We didn't ever see them and Kade just matter-of-factly stated, "Whelp, no otters today."
And I was worried that he might be upset if we couldn't find them.

We found a cool picture spot...



And saw lots of cool nature things like this:

These trees are all growing in a row and if you look you can see that they have grown over a fallen tree called a "nursing log". Pretty cool, and we saw where this happened several different times on our hike.

Check out these two trees that fell side by side....


The trees in this forest average 220 feet in height...that is the average....some are over 300 feet tall. You almost have to do a back bend to look up to the top of them.

Here are some pictures from one of my favorite spots on the hike...




I thought this bench looked so peaceful and inviting....
Oh no, we didn't stop and take a break there, there is no taking breaks when you are carrying a three year old and one year old. Ha!

We finished up our hike just as the sun was going down and decided we'd like to try to make it to the ocean to see a bit of the sunset.

Our trip out of the park got slowed down a bit by these guys....



Herds of Roosevelt Elk wander wild through this part of the National Park and we were in the right place at the right time to get to see LOTS of them. Super cool!

Since we stopped to watch the elk for a bit we only made it to the Pacific in time to see this:


We might have missed most of the sunset but what we saw was still amazing!
A great big thank you to our Creator for being so creative and making things that show us His glory! It was a great day for us getting to enjoy His creation.

You guys come see us sometime and we will take you there!