Dave climbed Mt. St. Helens last week and our trip could definitely be considered an "epic adventure". The trip to the campground should have taken us at the most 8 hrs (Dave's parent brought their fifth wheel for us to stay in - THANKS MOM AND DAD!) but with all the mishaps, it took 17 hours! We ran into bridges that were out, snowed over passes, flat tires, and dead batteries. AND THEN the next day, Dave and the group he hiked with left at 7am and did not return to camp until 8 pm. They got a bit off course on their way down the mountain but they were saved by a patrolman that was looking for another person that was reported missing. Dave said that the hike was the hardest thing he had ever done.

Tobin carried this spoon around with him everywhere. He did awesome on this trip.



Mt. Rainier - Dave's parents and I never actually saw Mt. St. Helens.



After spending an hour driving up this dirt road (which was our second attempt at getting to the campground - the first road had a bridge out) we were stopped by too much snow. Dave's Dad Mike had to back this fifth wheel down this narrow road and get it turned around. My goodness.




Dave's Mom Beth with Tobin at one of our many stops.



And just when we thought we might finally make it to the campground, Dave's Dad discovered that the fifth wheel had a flat time and then the truck's battery needed a jump. Everyone somehow stayed in good spirits through all of this.

My, have we been busy! Tobin is already almost a year old. These photos are from the 4th of June so they are officially his 11 month photos. I am just a little late getting them up!

Tobin is all over the place. Crawling, exploring, grabbing, laughing, clapping, standing, bouncing, chatting, high five-ing, hugging, kissing, growing, rolling, and pointing.

He has learned so much this month we can hardly keep up. My favorite is his new kisses. He leans forward with his mouth wide open and waits to be kissed.

It is so cool to see him point at things too. He wants us to look at everything.

He also loves to look at our open cupboards. Hilarious.












Funny face thanks to the angle of the camera.

This is Tobin's new trick! He doesn't crawl yet but this move shows us that he might be doing a little more than sleeping in that crib at night.

They say yoga's good for your Chi Tobin!

Yep, you guessed it, we have been out and about again. Dave, Tobin and I all went to Turnbull NWR for a little hike on Sunday. Our little hike turned into 4.75 miles! We only live about 5 miles away but this is the first time either one of us (I guess this is Tobin's first time too!) have ever been hiking in this area. I kept saying as we were driving there "why have we never been to Turnbull before?". It is so beautiful there - and we saw it on an overcast day.

We we were not lucky enough to see a moose or deer but we did see some interesting birds, a couple of chipmunks and--not to be confused with the previous examples--about 12 nasty, disgusting, horrific, grotesque, ticks. I guess it is the season for ticks and we were without our bug spray. Yuck.

Again, I have taken way too many photos but luckily we have this great blog to share a few of them with you.




One of the coolest things to see (at least for a geek like me) are of formations in the photo below. It is a photo of a mima mound. If you haven't already checked the link, a quick description from Wikipedia:

Mima mounds (pronounced /ˈmaɪmə/ "MEE-mah"), also known as Hogwallows, are uniformly distributed mounds of soil some 1-3 meters tall that occur in various places in the world. Their age or origin is still unknown. Various theories have been proposed: that they are Amerindian or pre-historic peoples' burial mounds, remnants of glacial activity, interactions of the soil with earthquake vibrations, or the cumulative action of gophers or other burrowing animals over a long period of time.^[1]

Here's a link to a creepy aerial photo of mima mounds.



The rocks below are an example of what accumulates around the base of the mima mounds. The soil and rocks are sorted into piles - by what, they don't really know.














I know it looks small but below is a panoramic of about 32 photos stitched together by Photoshop. If you click on it you will be able to see more detail. This view was very lovely.