His dazed look was gone when he realized we were holding out a cake to him and he could touch it! 
Eating the cake and then ice cream was - from what we could tell - his favorite part. 
Opening and playing with the presents came a close second - even though most of the toys he received were quickly taken over by his big sisters. 
The last days of summer have been beautiful here in Cathlamet. We took a walk the other night on the wildlife reserve and had to take some pictures of God's beautiful creation. 
Today we took the youth group out to the beach for some swimming and tubing out on the river. The girls were quite enthused to find blackberries growing on the beach we were at. They spent at least an hour picking as many berries as they could reach. They ate quite a few as well. 
We didn't have anything to put the berries in so we used some paper plates left over from our lunch. We did have a few casualties on the boat ride back but I think enough survived to make some jam and maybe even a pie! 
Here's some pics of the newest tugboat crew out of Cathlamet. Their tug is docked outside the elementary school and leaves port every once in awhile when their mom drives them over there. They have fun shouting orders and heave-ho-ing things. 
I'm not sure the position of "captain" has been assigned yet. All four members of the crew seem to think they have inherited the position. 
I am biased of course, but I'd have the say they are the cutest bunch of sailors I have ever seen!
We made it safely home from another great summer vacation with our fellow WACKers. You may be wondering why we call our summer vacation WACK. It was an acronym made up by my dear husband and stands for Water And Cooking with Kevin. Water because our vacations are always on the water and involve water sports. Cooking because we share the responsibilities of cooking all the meals and there is always plenty of food. Kevin is an imaginary character created mainly to make the acronym really cool but also so we would have someone to blame things on since we usually manage to have some minor mishap each year. The minor mishap for our family this year would be the stomach bug that hit Alaina the third day, Lila the last day, and Rylan as we made it back to Longview. (Thanks a lot Kevin). That minor mishap could not outweigh all the fun we had with our friends. Our week at a beautiful cabin in Donnelly, Idaho consisted of:
time at the beach playing in the sand and splashing in the water
and relaxing at the cabin with friends.
One thing that made this years WACK different from past years is that the kids now outnumber the adults. Everyone's having babies! It was great to meet all the newest additions to the families and watch them play together. It was a great week!
We had a visit from John, Amy, and sweet cousin Grace this week. While they were here we took Uncle John out on the boat and pulled him around on the tube for awhile. He was a little sore the next day. The girls and Rylan and I hung out on the beach while the big boys played on the water. I really wanted to post a picture of John on the tube but both of the pictures I got were from pretty far away. So these pics of the beach bums will have to do!
