Today was a Fun Family Day. We went south, to our Capital city, where we found a mast for out sailboat. Last fall we brought home a 22 ft Catalina sailboat that my uncle gave me. It was a mildewy, soppy mess, a tree had fallen on the mast a few years ago, and the trailer was a rusty hunk of steel. Isaac, the ever amazing refurbisher, completely redid the trailer, sanded the whole thing and painted it with some sort of amazing salt water proof goop. It looks great now! We put a post on craigslist for a wanted: mast. We got exactly what we needed, but we had to pull apart a REALLY yucky boat to get it. We got the mast, the bow pulpit and lots of other good stainless and brass hardware. It was a lot of work, in the cold, but hopefully it will all work. Ahhh, The Good Life: Getting things you need for little or no money, but by the sweat of our brows! Reusing and recycling at it’s best! That wasn’t the fun part of our Family Fun Day. The fun part was our hike. We tried to find a spot where we used to go rock climbing, back in the day. Kaleb LOVES rock climbing, so we’ve been wanting to take him on some real rock. We had to do a bit of searching, it had been about 16 years since we’ve been there. But after about a 4 mile hike, we found it. We had a picnic in the sunshine and all the boys got out their ‘solar panels’ as they call it. Shirtless and soaking up the rays. I kept mine on, by the way!

Yesterday was also a really great outdoor day. It wasn’t near as nice, BUT, I had 6, SIX, of my nephews here! 13, 12, 10, 7, 5, 1 year old boys. Isaac and I took them hiking. We fed them some vegetable soup for lunch and then took off down the road to our secret pond. We played all day, had a camp fire where the boys showed off their scouting skills by making a NW fire in the middle of winter. It was pretty smoky for a while, but eventually it took and we warmed up. It was nice having a baby with us. The little 1 year old felt so cozy and natural on my hip! Made me miss the baby days. Just for a minute.