This weekend it was a camping trip to Chelan, Wa.  This town is very nice, reminds me of McCall in Idaho a bit, minus the ski hill.  It's nestled around Lake Chelan in a picturesque way.  We pulled in Friday early evening after a late start out of Duvall.  Saturday came and with it was rain.  This put a bit of a damper on the day, it let up enough for a trip to the park and the lake side, but not for very long.  Sunday was a much sunnier/dry day, but the wind was pretty strong.  This didn't stop us from going to the beach and hanging out though.  Kids seemed to really enjoy themselves.  I think this will be a reoccuring location, but just schedule it for a month later.

Here are some pics:

Not normally do I get to do field trips with the Girls, but I had taken this day off since we were going camping.  I was excited to see all the animals, we are members at Woodland but still do not go as often as we should.  So we loaded all the kids up and headed out for the zoo.  When we got there we noticed that there were school buses dropping off kids.  Not sure why I was suprised, but I was that we were going to have to share the Zoo with other students.  What I didn't realize is that it was going to be EVERY schoole bus in the next 2 counties.  Wow, that was a crowd, and it started before we could even get into the Zoo.  I bet we sat in the "Member" line for about 20 minutes.  Thats quite a wait considering we have 4 kids to keep entertained that long.  Once we made it through then we had to wait for the rest of the class to find each other and then we were off. 

Even though it was crowded, it was still fun to see the girls' eyes light up when they saw the animals.  Being tall I was the official child picker up'er.  Everyone wanted to see at a good height.  I was ok with it, saves me from having to go to the gym.

Here are a few pictures from the event!

Kids sure love a parade.  Last weekend was Duvall days which is a day long set of events here in Duvall.  Not sure what to liken it to from my past since it is a pretty small event, but fun for the kids.  It starts with a 5k/15k run/walk then jumps into a kiddie Parade and then the adult parade.  After the parade is the car show and down to the park for all of the booths and food + live music.  Kids enjoy the petting zoo and the kids bouncy toys.  Here are a few pictures of the kids and Denise during the events.

Gabi Madi and Sami wait for the parade to start:

Lexi was hanging out on Momma's Back:

This is the third year in a row that we have camped out right in front of City hall and hooked up with alot of our friends.  Here is kind of a group shot of us waiting:

Neighbor riding his motorcycle in the parade:

Pretty cool old time tractor:

The next morning we had breakfast at the Duvall firemans Pancake Breakfast.  This is an annual event and the kids seem to enjoy themselves.  After the breakfast the kids enjoyed putting out fires and playing on the fire trucks.

Wow, who here is wow'ed by any of the candidates that are out there?  I like Rudy because he seems to be the most plain spoken person of the hunt, but there are issues I have with him.  I have been hoping that someone like Fred Thompson would get in the race, and now it appears he is destined to get in the race.  I like the fact that he speaks his mind and doesn't always pander to the popular answers.  He seems to have conviction and the right morale direction for a simple guy like me.  If you too are looking for someone who just tells it like it is, then check out http://www.imwithfred.com.

Good luck Fred!  I am with you,

-Jon

So you know that we have 4 daughters 5 and younger.  But what you don't probably know is we are masochists and we wanted to add more work and stress to our lives by getting a puppy!.  After we lost of 2 Cocker Spaniels 2 years ago we have been without a dog and ended up getting cats(one still with us).  Agreeing to wait on the puppy till the kids were older I just figured I would settle with dealing with the cats and try him to be more like a dog.  Which of course is no easy chore.  I think Denise must have taken pity on me because one day she said she would like to get a puppy for the girls to play with, I was stunned. 

We set off to figure out what breed we wanted.  I was really pushing for a Bernese Mountain Dog, but the life expectancy of them is only 7 years right now.  Having lost 5 animals in the last 3 years I didn't feel that was a good breed to bring into our home, considering our kids know way too much about death already.  So in our pursuit of a breed we came across the Golden retrievers which I have always thought were beautiful breeds.  Turns out they are also excellent with children and other animals.  So we went down the path of looking at breeders and found the puppy for us.  We did look for a couple of months for a 1-2 year old dog so we didn't have to worry about house breaking and chewing of kids toys and clothing, but had no luck finding one.

Introducing Tinkerbelle (Belle) Beck (she was born 3/28/07)