Sandy River in August.

We went to the Sandy River so many times in August, and I just put all of the pictures I took from the whole month in this post:

The Stevenson’s came down one afternoon too.

Weird lighting, but so cute of all of the kids.

Reaching up to kiss her Daddy.

I love this picture of Hattie and Brian!

I really love this picture of my three favs!

Two happy girls about to go to the river!

This picture makes me laugh—she’s not a huge fan of actually wearing her life jacket, but she sure loved playing with them.

This face!  I see it way more often than I would like…Elna, being very cute, says, “I have an idea!” to me and Brian one evening as we are playing down at the beach.  She then whispered to Brian “I was thinking we could go to Veggie Grill” in her cutest little voice.  When we said we wouldn’t have time for it, this is what happened.  We’re obviously fans of Veggie Grill! 

We will miss the river when it turns cold!

August hiking.

Hiked Elowah Falls with friends.  I’ve been so impressed with Elna’s ability to hike so well!  She’s so cheerful and fun to watch with her friends.  On the other side of this rail is a very steep death fall.  Luckily, Elna is also a pretty careful hiker.

A view of the Columbia River from our hike.

This is up at the top of the falls.  After this, we headed down to the bottom.

Ella and Elna.  Elna loves these kids and they love her!

Cade and Harriet.

This is at the bottom of the falls.

These next set of pictures aren’t from hiking, but are with the same friends we usually hike with, so I just threw them into this post:

Cody, Hattie, Cade.

The first time Elna went off the diving board.  She LOVED it!

This is Angie’s parents pool—they are so nice to share!

Another hike to Elowah Falls:

Elna’s favorite thing to do on this hike is to slide down this rock.

All of the kids. (Audrey, Cade, Ella, Elna, Cody, Sydney, and Hattie)

Angie was doing these pictures with her kids and Elna wanted to too—I had to help tilt her head back to the right angle, so the pictures are a bit flawed :)

I wish these pictures weren’t so over-exposed, because they are so cute of Hattie and Cade.

Ella and Hattie.  Hattie doesn’t go to very many people, but she’ll let any of these Holwege kids hold her!

A good day turned bad…turned worse.

The second Saturday in August, we planned a little excursion to Rooster Rock State Park to picnic and swim.

While eating lunch, a very aggressive squirrel bit the tip of Brian’s toe.  He then remained around, despite us throwing rocks at it, for the reminder of our picnic.

We then wanted to go swimming, but the beach where we had planned to go (and that Brian had gone to as a kid) was all overgrown and unusable, so, after talking to a park ranger who assured us that the “clothes optional” beach was family friendly, we braved the nude beach with high hopes.

The beach would have been the perfect beach had it not been for all of the nudists that we tried hard not to look at and that we distracted our children from the entire time.  Luckily the girls were completely oblivious and we spent the whole time in the middle of the river (only knee deep for Elna) away from the nudes.

Unfortunately, this was our first and last trip to this beach, because really, it was such a great beach for kids!

On our way home, the worst part of our day happened, when a suburban t-boned our van as they were turning left out of a restaurant on Columbia River Hwy--they didn’t see us coming and got us pretty good. 

It was alarming to us all, but we are so grateful no one was injured- neither us nor them were hurt at all—a miracle when you see the damage our van took.  Harriet, who was sitting next to the sliding damaged door got the brunt of the hit, but she only had a few bruises and scratches from all of the glass.  We were so blessed!

We miss our van!  Their insurance company gave us as much money as we paid for the van a year ago, but we got such an amazing deal on the van then that we can’t find the same kind of van for the price we paid.  We are still looking, and grateful that Brian’s parents have been letting us use their other car while we look.

We ended our evening by going on a little date to the doctor to make sure Brian’s toe was okay.  Apparently there are no recorded cases in the US of squirrel bites causing rabies, so instead of needing a rabies shot, Brian only had to update his tetanus shot.