Adventures with Jackson and Aspen: Early Summer Catch up!

Whew! What a whirlwind. I know I am very behind on the blog, but it's been hard to catch a breath. In early June, we attended Jack's Kindergarten music concert, which was very cute. Jack seemed to know about half the words and hand gestures. He likes the music, but he's not much of a performer.

Then, in quick succession, I finished my Ed Leadership Program, graduated, got a new job, and worked hard to wrap up the old one. Then, right after the last day of school, I headed to San Antonio for 4 days to present at the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). We didn't have much time for sightseeing, but here are a few images.

The cathedral across the street from our hotel does a light show on the weekends. We were able to watch from the balcony of our hotel.

The Alamo...

The Riverwalk...

They have their own tower, which they delight in noting is taller than the Space Needle. It wasn't any more interesting...

Before the first of our two presentations...

And before the second:

I started my new job on July 3...So far, it's been pretty boring, with just me and the custodian in the building. It's paperwork and reading this month. I can't wait until the teachers and students come back in the fall and things get interesting. In the meantime, we've got our house on the market and have started looking for new houses.

This past weekend, we took a break and went camping at Kalaloch in the Olympic National Park. It's a beautiful area, and we could have spend far more than the weekend there. We'll have to go back again. We had the dog with us, which meant the National Park trails were off limits, although luckily the beaches were still open to us. Next time, we may have to leave the dog home so we can explore more, but she had a great time this time. The coast was teaming with sea otters out in the waves, but really, really hard to get a picture. We also saw whales spouting water, but they wouldn't surface for a good picture either.

The beaches here are very fun. Jack enjoyed digging and collecting sticks and shells.

My favorite was Ruby beach, which we visited at low tide and were able to see all kinds of cool tide pools full of anemones and star fish.

The first day, Friday, it was very sunny. As you saw from the pics above, Sat and Sunday were overcast and quite cool.

Jackson wrote "Jackson lovs this beche" in the sand. We'll have to work on the spelling.

We also visited this big old cedar tree and took a drive up to the Hoh, but didn't go in because we were short on time and had the dog.

Friday night, we had dinner here at Kalaloch Lodge...

While all of this has been going on, we've also been attending karate twice a week for Jack. He earned his white belt so far...Sam has been coming too. Not sure if the boys will continue, but they've been enjoying it for now.

For the Fourth of July, Jackson again rode in the neighborhood bike parade. Mike and I made the mistake of riding our bikes too. A mistake because there are so many kids and you move so slowly, that we really couldn't get up to speed enough to right...But Jack enjoyed it.

Then, we went to Lesa and Colins for dinner and then down the Seattle to watch fireworks from the deck at Zymogenetics. It stays light so late here that we had a long time to wait...They didn't start until almost 10:30pm.