Summer….sniffle, sniffle
Four more days of summer vacation. Four. That isn’t even a whole hand. Boo on that. I’ve been spending time getting my classroom ready and I even met some of my students last night. They are so young. Most of them seemed pumped up to be coming back to school. A few were apprehensive and nervous, of course. I have great memories of my elementary school teachers. I often think about them this time of year and reflect on what I liked about them and how special they made me feel. 
After discovering that Sydney had destroyed a potpourri doll her first day back from CJ (Camp Janet), I decided it was best to take her to school with me. Of course, she was a lazy dog all day making the choice to stay in her crate and snore…except for the glue stick, permanant marker, unifix cube, basket, and even books that she “tasted.”
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Mount Dickerman
The honeymoon is officially over. How long can you really wait before claiming that? At any rate, Hannah and I came back from hiking around Mt. Ranier last Wednesday and decided to go our separate ways for the weekend. Hannah went up the Anacortes to get Sydney and I attended Mischa’s Annual Guys Hike. I think this was the 12th Annual Event which started as a bachelor party when he got married. I can’t remember when I was first invited to attend (version 7 or 8 I believe), but they’re always memorable. Mostly because the group of guys are always great to be around and the hike never fails to be some sort of crazy scramble to the top of a mountain. Past hikes have involved walking across snowfields and climbing up tree roots in what seemed like a nearly vertical ascent.
This year’s version didn’t disappoint. Mischa decided Mt. Dickerson outside of Granite Falls would be our target (sorry I couldn’t find an actual map of the trail). It was a little over 4 miles each way and ended up being about 3000 ft in elevation gain (really tempting to make the uphill both ways joke here). Let’s just say going down was faster than going up, but the views from the top were amazing. To the north was Mt. Baker, west the Puget Sound, and south Mt. Ranier. We were able to camp in a meadow just below the summit, so we got a great view of both the sunset and sunrise. As an added bonus there were a couple black bears in the neighboring valley that we could see from the summit. They’re agile climbers indeed and I enjoyed watching them climb the cliffs in search of food and shelter for the night.
friends , Getting Outside , travel
Impromptu Dinner
Yesterday Kara called and said that Brian Ashbach dropped off four fresh, clean crabs at the library where she works. He had just caught them off of Guemes Island! In all my life nobody has ever dropped of crab at my job….ever. Maybe I’m in the wrong field of work. 
When Kara offered to bring it over to eat I found myself almost saying no. I know, what was I thinking? Once I got my head on straight I invited Chaya and Jeff over as well. Such fun. The best part (besides the crab, obviously) was that we got to play CRANIUM!!! I bought the new version last October and last night was the first night people were willing to play. I was not let down.
Sydney came back from Camp Janet and was working hard to make sure she was on somebody’s lap. Apparently, her bed two feet away was too far away from the action. Kara was sweet and held her for a long time.
Thanks Kara for sharing the delicious crab!
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