Joseph

Our good friend Cindy is a music teacher and an over achiever. Instead of having a relaxing summer off, she decided it would be great fun to do a summer production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat". Here you see Jeremy (Joseph) and Cindy (Director) showcasing one of the plays posters.

Laura, Cindy's daughter, was the narrator for the production. This was quite a role as she had to tell the story in song. She will be telling us about a person who is a dreamer and can interpret dreams of others.
In biblical times there was a man named Jacob. He had 12 sons, but his favorite was Joseph. He gave him a beautiful coat of many colors.

The other brothers were very jealous and were going to throw Joseph in a pit and leave him there to die. While they were doing this they saw some Ishmaelites approaching. They quicky changed their minds and sold Joseph off to slavery in Egypt.

In Egypt Joseph worked for Potiphar and was a good and faithful servant.

However, Potiphar's wife wanted to seduce Joseph. He tried to get away from her, but they were caught and Joseph was thrown in prison.
The narrator continues the story telling us how Joseph interprets the dreams of two other prisoners - the Pharaoh's butler and baker.

During this time the Pharaoh is also having strange dreams. The butler, now free, tells him about Joseph.

Joseph interprets the Pharaoh's dreams and tells him there will be a time of plenty followed by famine. The Pharaoh is so impressed that he makes Joseph his second in command.

Back in Canaan, Jacob's family is having a hard time. They decide to go to Egypt to ask for food. They appear before Joseph, but they do not recognize him.

Joseph does not make it easy for his brother's. Remember, they were going to put him in a pit to die and then sold him as a slave to get money. Joseph eventually accuses his brother Benjamin of stealing his precious golden cup. The brothers defend him and Joseph eventually sees that they have changed their ways and are now good men.

Joseph reveals himself to his brother's and everyone rejoices to be back together again. Jacob is happy to have his son back and once again gives Joseph a beautiful coat.

We thought the play was fabulous. We enjoyed it so much that we are going back to see it again on Sunday. It makes it even more special for us in that many of our friends are in the production, or helped in some way to make it great. Of course there is Cindy, Laura and Jeremy. Bruce, Cindy's husband/Laura's dad, was in charge of set design and construction. Wilma was the light and sound operator. Then we had Rick, Bonnie and Doug on Keyboards. Doug also added a little tuba. Eric was on percussion and Matt played base. A couple Lutheran pastors, Joel and Lydia, were also in the play. Char made his coat. Isn't it perfect? Ron and I made the sheep and camel. We didn't paint them, but we did cut them out. I always think of us as the "groupies" for our talented friends.

Laura and Jeremy, our stars in many ways.

Lynne and Dick

We went to see Lynne and Dick this afternoon. They moved here from Montana 10 years ago when Lynne became the Principal at my school. She retired this June after accomplishing many wonderful things at IRPS. She will be greatly missed. As part of their retirement they planned to move back to Montana. They put their house up for sale and it sold quickly, which is unusual considering the current market. Dick had a stoke in May, and though he is doing better, there are still things he can't do, like get up on a ladder. We went over today to help Lynne with a few things that needed doing. We have enjoyed their company over the years and will miss them both. We are looking forward to visiting them in Montana.

Photo by Karen Mullen

Keith and Sheral

Keith and Sheral are the friends we met in Arizona. We couldn't have parked next to better people. They are truly amazing! Right away Ron noticed Keith reading a "Salmon, Trout, Steelheader" magazine. From then on it was non-stop talk about fishing. Since they both fish the Cowlits River they had plenty to talk about, which brings us to this adventure. Keith and Sheral have 3 lots on the Cowlitz River. We have been trying to get down to see them since we got back from Arizona in March. Boy, have they ever got a busy schedule. This first picture was taken from their lot, which is right on the river. It's relaxing to just watch the river run by and quite fun to see the fishing boats.

This is Keith and Sheral's lot. They leave their fifth wheel here all summer as they come down to the river quite often.

This is their 3rd lot, which is right across from them, and the one we camped on. Keith put the gravel in this summer, so we would have a nice spot to pull in. I told you these were wonderful people.

Of course Ron and Keith did a little fishing. That's the whole reason for being here, right? They got 3 one day and 0 the next. If you have been reading the posts about this fishing trip you will remember me saying that the fishing has not been great this time. In this picture the boys are running up river and just about to pull into the bank where Keith will tie up the boat.

There is a lot of wildlife along the river. This eagle must live near by as we saw him several times. There was another eagle also and they were not happy about being so close to each other. They definitely are beautiful and huge! We had doves in camp, which was new for us. They were cooing all the time. Keith and Sheral said they don't usually see them either, so maybe they are just traveling through.
It was great to see our friends Sheral and Keith, but once again had to say "Good-Bye", at least for right now. We hope to see them again this fall for another fishing trip and then again in Arizona.

Hand and Foot

We are visiting our friends Keith and Sheral who we met last winter in Arizona. We decided to play a friendly game of Hand and Foot. For those of you that know the game you know the idea is to make books with your cards. You need three dirty books and two clean ones and then you can go out. Notice that Keith and Ron are pretty happy at this point and Sheral is giving a thumbs down on this game. If you look closely at the picture, maybe enlarge it by clicking on it, you will see that Keith and Ron have gone out and Sheral and I have not put down ANY cards. That means we had to subtract the points for ALL the cards in our hand as well as ALL the cards in our foot from our total score. We had never seen a game like this. Since this was the last hand we just figured the boys had won. Oh, by the way, I had 3 red threes in my foot. That's minus 900 points. Yikes!

Happy Birthday

Fishing always gets a little crazy on the weekends. Ron said there were about 75 boat trailers at the launch this morning. However, it's his birthday today and he was pretty pleased that he did catch a "Birthday Fish" even with all the competition. Rosemary made Ron a lemon meringue pie for his birthday. It was yummy! She makes such GOOD pies.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RON!

Randy's Visit

Randy, in the middle, loves to fish. He has joined us on a few fishing trips now. He came and spent the day fishing with Ron and Norm today. Unfortunately the fishing wasn't any better today than it has been the last few days. They did have a great time and caught one fish, so Randy was able to take fresh fish home for dinner.

First Fish

The boys are having a great time fishing, or maybe I should say going for boat rides. They are only catching a fish a day and that is very unusual for them. However, they are not seeing other people catching fish either, so maybe there just aren't many fish in the river right now. Here is Norm with the first catch. It's a very nice steelhead.

Cabela's

What would a trip south be like without a stop at Cabela's. The guys could spend hours here just looking around. It's like a museum for sportsman.

Becker's BBQ

It was a beautiful evening so Amber and Jerad had a few friends over for a barbecue. Everyone brought their own meat and Amber and Jodie made snacks and salads. Amber is visiting with her guests as she waits for her dinner to be cooked.

This is our niece Jodie and her boyfriend Rich.

Jen K brought the makings for bananas Florentine, which we cooked on the BBQ and then poured over ice cream.

Yummy!!!!

4th of July

We spent the 4th of July weekend at Keystone on Whidbey Island. It's one of our favorite places to go. Saturday was sunny so we headed to the Coupeville Farmers Market and then explored the town. Jennie got her flowers at the market. Some beautiful and fragrant Mock Orange growing in downtown Coupeville.

We took advantage of the nice weather and did a little geocaching. Lexi had never done it before, so we thought it would be a fun activity for her. I'm not going to tell you where this one is located just in case you might want to find it yourself.

Ron has always wanted to do a "Clambake in a Pot", so he decided the 4th was a good day for it. They layered everything in a big pot. It had to go in a certain order depending on how the food cooked. They started with onions, garlic, beer and then added a layer of seaweed, potatoes and chorizo. Now comes the sea food in this order, crab, clams and corn, then mussels and shrimp. It looked beautiful and tasted delicious, but they decided it needed to cook a little longer than the recipe said.

We did go for a walk on the beach and found a few agates, but it was cold and very windy! Around dinner time the cruise ships start leaving Seattle and we like to watch them go by. We are amazed at the number that leave each week. There used to be 3 that left on Saturday and 3 on Sunday. Now there seem to be that many that leave on Thursday, Friday and Monday as well. Maybe there are even more on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I don't know.
Here we have Dave, Abby the dog, Amy, Jennie, Jerad, Amber, Robin and Lexi trying to keep warm. The wind blew and it was cold, so we put up the canopy with wind blocks on 3 sides. We put the propane fire pit in the center and huddle around it to keep warm. Ah, where is summer?

4th of July fireworks! It was so cold and windy that we did not go up on the bluff to watch the Port Townsend fireworks this year. It's the first time we have missed since we started watching them years ago. Jodie and Rich brought fireworks for us to share in camp, so we had a great time and enjoyed them.

Some of Robin's decorations in the canopy.