Wildflowers in Wonderland

How has it been 3 years since my last trail run? I've gone hiking during that time, but not trail running. Probably because trail running is really hard and a little scary! But I can cover so much more ground while running than I can while hiking. Basically, I can see MORE scenery on a five hour trail run than I can on a five hour hike. I forgot about that alluring detail! So I visited an old friend on Wednesday: Mt. Rainier's Wonderland Trail. I volunteered to drive a van of young women to girls camp on Wednesday morning, so once I dropped them off at Clear Lake on the east side of White Pass, I kept driving on Highway 12 another hour west all the way to Mt. Rainier National Park. I chose the first place where the Wonderland Trail crosses Stevens Canyon Road: at Box Canyon. I did this route one other time, five years ago, so I knew what I was getting myself into--mostly.

Summery Sunnyside

Summer is in full swing here in Sunnyside! The fruit is ripening. The sun is blazing. The weeds and fruit are growing. This week, Amber said "So we are basically fruit farmers now, aren't we?" She is not wrong. We are currently in a small lull between fruit harvests: we missed the apricots while we were out of town, and the blackberries, peaches, pears, grapes, and apples are not ripe yet. There is still plenty to do!

One of my projects this week was to tie up some collapsed grape vines. The grapes are flourishing, but that extra fruit-weight caused several vines to slide down the pillars into a heap at the bottom like a slinky. They were so heavy, Jeff had to help hold them up while I tried to tie them not too tight or too loose. Time will tell if my novice grape horticulturist skills are successful!

Brown Family Pictures

 My sister Em is an amazing photographer with her own business (Emily Broadbent Photography). She takes our family pictures every year. These pictures make me so happy! Enjoy:

15 grandkids!

Denver Part 2: Outings

We did several family outings in Denver this year! Journal excerpts:

Monday, July 7th: I ran five miles this morning, then ate half a bagel and ran 1 mile with Rose to the track, where we met up with the fam for our 2nd Annual Brown Family Cousin Olympics! Here's the order of events:

Denver Gathering Part 1: At Home

This year I divided our pictures from the Brown Family Gathering into two parts: time at home and outings. It seemed like a good idea when I divided up the pictures, but as I started writing the words to go with the pictures, I realized that I can't just tell the story chronologically, since we had some outings and some at-home time each day, and this post only has the at-home pictures. Oh well, it seems too hard to reorganize the pictures now, so I'll put some journal excerpts here and some in the second post and call it good. A daily journal makes big blog posts a breeze! I'm not sure I really needed to write all of that here, but there's a little window into my record-keeping brain. It's always a puzzle to figure out how to divide up a huge pile of pictures! 

Our 27 person family: 12 adults and 15 kids! Photo by Emily Broadbent Photography, using a tripod and a timer. Impressive.

Mom!!!

My Mom is the best! June 28th-July 5th was our fourth annual mother daughter week together. When we counted back, we were both surprised to discover that we started doing this four whole years ago! I flew out to Denver a week before our annual family gathering so Mom and I could have our own musical, K-dramatic, lunch-date, artistic quality time together before everyone else arrived. As always, it was the best. The list of what we did each day will seem mundane and bland to the average onlooker, but we had so much fun during our quiet calm relaxing week together.  

Shaina Day

 Shaina Day! Shaina Day was Sunday, June 22nd this year. [Birthday + Mother's Day = Shaina Day] I had to give a talk in church, so it wasn't the full day of pure ease and celebration that I would've preferred, but at least the day was completely my own--no shared birthday, no scrambling to wish all the mothers I know and love happy mother's day. It was a day just for me. Wow, that sounds so selfish, but half the fun is having a day that I can call MY OWN! It's the only day in the whole year where I am allowed to be completely selfish, so I let myself enjoy it.

Church Talk: God With Us

I spoke in church today! I had one week to prepare my talk, so at least the anguish was somewhat limited this time around. The process of writing a talk is intense. I have to struggle through and write something right away to soothe my nerves, but my first draft is never anything like the final draft, so I feel like a failure and hate what I wrote until I manage to redo it the next day. It would be nice to skip that stressful first draft step, but I can't write the final draft without first writing the lame first draft beforehand. Hence the anguish. Thankfully I had my talk finished in plenty of time to fret over minute details like word choice for five days before T-Day. It had been almost 2 years since my last talk, but getting up front never gets easier. The good news is: I survived! 

Beautiful flowers from the funeral I helped at two weeks ago.

Raspberry Central

Hello from raspberry central! We are buried in tender fresh sweet juicy raspberries, and we are not sad about it. Highlights from our week include: raspberries, Father's Day, raspberries, hanging a tree swing, raspberries, running, raspberries, a date, and raspberries, a youth temple trip, and raspberries.

Our 7''x11'' pan was full of raspberries after one quick picking session.

Summer is here!

Early morning runs, long sunny days, bright blue skies, oppressive heat waves, nefariously persistent weeds, lingering glow-y sunsets, sweet abundant fruit, and no school: summer is here! 

An early morning view of our homestead from across the canal, taken during my Friday morning run.

The days that got away

Track season may be officially over as of Monday, but this week was still go, go, go! We just didn't have 2+ hours of track practice in the mix everyday. It felt like every day got away from me and I was just along for the ride, going from one task, location, or event to the next. Thank goodness for my journal, which refuses to allow days to completely get away. Each day this week could have been its own blog post, but instead I matched journal entries with pictures from each day of the week. 

A zoomed-out view from the kitchen of the track awards banquet in our backyard.

The May Sprint Finish

Usually May mellows out after Memorial Day weekend, because high school track season ends, but this year's later sports schedule yanked the state track meet all the way to the bitter end of May. It was only one week longer than usual, but May is crammed to the brim with all the concerts, activities, awards, and parties so extending track season to May 31st was intense. It felt like a sprint finish to the end of May.

Monday was Memorial Day, a day off of school and a day for all the yardwork we could manage. Tuesday was a normal school day, but with back to back concerts at night: Rose's middle school band concert, and Jay's high school orchestra concert. On Wednesday (May 28th), Jeff left for the state track meet, held in Tacoma, WA 3.5 hours away. He was there until Saturday (May 31st). During that time, I attended a mother daughter activity at church with Amber, went to the temple, had my last physical therapy appointment, and did a whole lot of monotonous driving to and from the schools. On Friday night, Rose, had her 8th grade party and Jay had his orchestra awards night. Amber and I stayed home together and watched the Mario movie...or I watched it with her for as long as I could stand the videogame-ish-ness of it, which was about 20 minutes longer than I expected to last. On Saturday, I played the piano, ran, did yardwork, got groceries, and took a nap. Jeff got home from the state track meet at 10pm.