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  Flower identification is not my thing, I actually had to look up these very common ones to make sure I was right.  The kids are always asking what kind of flowers we see on our walks, I guess it’s time to invest in a Spotter’s Guide so we don’t have to wait until we get back home to look them up.

  We took a field trip with K’s parents to the Mt. St. Helens Visitor’s Center just off of I-5 in Washington.  It was great!  The kids had a great time- we watched a short film about the 1980 eruption, then we looked through several exhibits they had and walked through a model of a volcano.

Outside of the center they have a mile walk around the wildlife sanctuary there.  On a clear day Mt. St. Helens is visible over the ponds, but it wasn’t a clear day and none of the pictures I took of the mountain turned out.  The kids seemed to enjoy reading all of the informational signs posted around the gravel trail, but E3’s favorite part was picking up as many pebbles as she could hold.  Every time I suggested she had enough, her response was, “Just one more rock, Mom.”

  I think I figured out how to make the picture a link so that it can be viewed larger.  Hopefully I did it right, and if you click on the picture you’ll get a separate window to the 800×600 size picture at Imageevent.  It only took me 115 posts or so.

E2 has always been a runner.  (He learned to walk by sitting in a kid’s sized chair, standing up quickly and moving his legs as fast as he could with the momentum to keep himself upright.)  And of course he likes to be first.  He’s discovering now that his younger sister is getting faster.  And smarter- she’ll start running and then say, “Go!”

  I was just playing with my new camera… :)  I liked this one, but boy do I have a lot to learn!

   I got a digital SLR!  It is an Olympus E-500 and it’s sooo nice.  I can’t believe how much I’ve had to compensate for shutter lag, slow auto focus, and slow file writing with my C-2100 (I did love that camera though).  I think I’ll be able to get better people pictures with it’s virtually instant response to the shutter press.  And thanks to Jason’s comment on an earlier photo of mine, I made sure it displays the ISO prominently and has a button so that I can change it on the fly.

Now comes the fun part- becoming familiar with it and taking lots of pictures!

  E2 made a microphone out of Tinkertoys in order to interview everyone on what their favorite patriotic color was: red, white, or blue.  My brother-in-law played along very well, and expounded on the subject quite nicely.

 

  We love this city.  There are so many places you can be standing in the middle of it, surrounded by trees and nature, and not even realize you’re in the middle of a metropolitan area of 2 million people.

  We had an exciting storm here, and I don’t know if it was the barometric pressure or what, but the kids were bouncing off of the walls.  After the rain came down in sheets, it started hailing and the kids wanted to go out in it.  E1 and E2 didn’t stay out- after getting hit with little ice pellets they decided that wasn’t very much fun.  E3 however, thought it was just hilarious.

In just a few minutes, the sidewalks and streets were completely white.  It was too warm to last, however; by the time I got the camera it had already melted quite a bit.

  E4 is finally old enough to ride on my back in the Ergo.  It’s so nice and I can get so much more done.  She looks a bit apathetic about it in the picture because she was getting sleepy, but she really does seem to love it.