Country Life

In order to get my ankle back to normal, I took the entire week off from running and went to the chiropractor three times in five days. The lack of running left me with reserves of energy that I pumped into both cross training and yardwork. I did the elliptical machine, rode my mountain bike, hiked, lifted, walked, and even used the rowing machine for the first time ever. All of that different movement made me tired in a different way than running does! Two days on the bike gave me a bruised seat. One rowing session gave me the painful beginnings of blisters on my hands and tired shoulders. And lifting always makes me sore. The lower aerobic effort needed to do these activities left me with extra energy to pour into yardwork, so I hacked and hoed the side flowerbed with extra dedication, further developing the callouses and hotspots on my hands, while also thrashing my forearms and back from the effort. 

Colchuck Lake

For the past six months, Jeff's dad Dan has been working on increasing his fitness so he can do more hiking and enjoy general better health. That type of quest is right up my alley, so I volunteered to be his hiking buddy this summer! His stretch goal hike was the trail to Colchuck Lake in the Enchantments outside of Leavenworth, WA. After our hike to Sourdough Gap a few weeks ago, I told Dan I thought he was ready for Colchuck. So we chose a weekday and invited the family. Three adventurous kids decided to join us on the 9 mile hike: Rose, Amber, and their cousin Tate (age 12). 

Just peachy

The only post titles I seem to be able to think of lately are fruit related. The blackberries slowed down this week, but they are still steadily producing. It's currently more like a river flow of blackberries rather than a fire hydrant spray, so about a half gallon of berries every few days rather than a gallon every day. The blackberry flood was replaced by a peach avalanche this week! The handful of crumpled, crispy, crippled-looking peach trees out front are overflowing with small sweet juicy peaches! The peaches were so small, I wasn't sure if they would taste good, and when I went to check on them, they were pretty rock hard. But we waited too long on the apricots and completely missed their window of ripeness, so I decided to pick some mini peach rocks and see what happened. Rose and I picked a big box of these blushing beauties on Monday, and to my surprise they were soft and ready to eat by Tuesday! 

Blackberry Beginning

Our blackberries are beginning! Last week (July28-August 3rd) we sadly said goodbye to July and rounded the bend into August. It always feels like summer will last forever during July, but when August hits out of nowhere, it feels like the school year and coaching seasons are staring us in the face up close. Am I ready for another school year and cross country season, swim season, and track season? I don't know! It's coming whether I'm ready or not, looming in the near future at the end of August. I enjoy coaching and the school day routine, but the minute school starts, we go pretty much nonstop full steam ahead for the entire school year, evenings and weekends included. Sundays are our only day off. That relentless grind is daunting! Thankfully we have another two-plus weeks before it all begins again. 

Sourdough Gap Hike

On Tuesday, July 29th, we went on a family hike along the Pacific Crest Trail to Sourdough Gap. The central Cascades were in prime summer condition, with bright blue skies, abundant wildflowers, and sweeping mountain skylines. Jeff and Jay were worn out from running earlier in the day, so they only hiked 4 miles roundtrip. Rose, Amber, and I hiked the full 7 miles (roundtrip) with Grampa Dan. The mountains are my happy place, and it was the best kind of quality time to spend with my daughters and father-in-law. Hiking in such a beautiful place with my beautiful daughters was like spraying my eyes with a fire hydrant of beauty! That's a weird comparison, but we had a lovely time together on the trail for 3.5 hours.

Ear spray, girls' camp, bike path, yardwork

 Another week of summer is done, filled with more of our regular summer activities. The two new activities from this week were my trail run and Rose went to stake girls camp. We also had two cloudy days--incredibly rare for Sunnyside in July, but a welcome break from the merciless hot sun. On Tuesday, I also was deaf for a few hours!

A lovely cloudy morning run past fresh mint fields.

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.