Mother's Day With Mother Nature

I decided to drag my family on a day trip up to the mountain for some nature site seeing this year for Mother's Day. We drove the big truck up towards Mt. St. Helens and stopped at several places along the way, including a couple of the visitors centers, several viewpoints and at the end of the road near the observatory (which was still closed for the season) we went to Coldwater Lake (that is where we are in the photo above). The kids weren't excited about the day trip to begin with, but they did alright the first half of the trip, then got grumpy and whiny the second half of the trip. 

The views were amazing and the weather was perfect!

On the way home, we stopped at the new McMenamins in Kalama to eat then the kids played at the park afterwards. We took another detour through Woodland and Armando showed the kids where he used to work and live when he was a kid. 

Puppy Party

Geneva brought some puppies for us to play with. The kids and I were in love and we spent the entire day being lazy and playing with puppies. These are three of ten pups born to Maya on April 1. While we aren't adopting any puppies this time, but it sure was therapeutic to snuggle with puppies for the day. 

 

 

 

Bottle Rocket Launch At ACE

One of the ACE moms brought a bottle rocket launcher this past week. She and her husband built the launcher for another event and then brought it to share with the kids at ACE. 

Ezra was a skeptic. We got there first and as soon as the mom heard him and his interest in the launcher, she let him launch a bottle right away. It shot up so fast and and high it took him by complete surprise. I'm pretty sure he was impressed!

Tons of kids showed up and everyone had a lot of fun! The kids made their bottle rockets inside the building then took turns, 4 at a time, launching them from the launch pad outside. Some of the rockets went up really high! By the end of the day, the mom who brought and helped with the launcher was drenched and Ezra's bottle rocket was stuck high up in the tree. It was a success!