It was only three poles...

I am FREE from the clutches of the deep, dark chemistry that has sucked away practically my entire existence these past four weeks! Ha! I actually thought it would never end, but Friday was my lucky day. 10am final...check. Work the rest of my day...check. Come home, pack my bags, drive off into the sunset with my love, Justin, and Alex...check. And no, my love is not Justin and Alex. There were four people in the car. Do the math. We rode off to a campground up by Baker and spent the weekend doing what Bellingham couples do - camping in the great out of doors. Isaac and I were rather excited because this weekend marked the debut of two recently purchased incredible items. First was our orange beauty of a tent that we purchased earlier this year. Jealous? We pulled into the campsite that Morgan and Tommy had so selflessly been holding for us all the livelong day since they don't have to work anymore and immediately the boys took off again to go russel us girlies up some firewood so we wouldn't freeze, so it was left to Alexandra and me to put up our new tent. Easy enough since it only has three poles and Isaac and I had put it up in our living room right away when we first bought it. However, despite all my incredible skills at life, I still managed to put it up wrong and my knight in shining armor had to redo it all in the dark once they got back with the firewood. It was fine, though, because that just means I need my man to help me survive in the big woods, right? A mere three hours later I was debuting the second (and arguably more incredible) item on our trip. My fleece insert for my sleeping bag. I have never ever been warm when we've camped outside and with the new fleecie, as I affectionately refer to it, I slept like a cat in the sun all night long. The peak of comfort. Isaac had gone out and bought it for me with my birthday money right before we left and, I'll tell you what, I couldn't have picked anything more amazing (thanks, mom and dad!). And don't even think I won't bring it inside once the weather starts turning and our house gets cold, because I will.

Morgs and Tommy are leaving in a week to travel Europe/Asia/Africa for the next nine months, so this trip was our last hurrah for our little group because we will miss them oh, so much. Aren't they cute? Also cute were the boys being manly and chopping up ridiculously huge pieces of tree. We were very impressed. Also cute was how the boys insisted on cooking their food on this sheet of steel that Justin had procured from his work and scoured 'clean.' They actually refused to eat Lex's bread unless they could cook it on the metal like true men. Also cute was the fire that Alex and I built by ourselves! Morgan's been building fires ever since she was a girlscout, but Lex and I haven't necessarily, so you can imagine our pride when we got it flaming on only the second try, just in time for the boys to return and be very impressed with us.

Speaking of impressed, can we please talk about how much we harvested from our garden yesterday? Yes, this was just from yesterday. One day! I mean, it's not like it's been this much fruit since day one, but the last few weeks have been bringing in the bounty. Our poor little cucumbers didn't take the first two times we planted them, so the third time, Isaac laid a ton of them down just to make sure at least a few would come up and, of course, every single last one of them decided to come up. We have cucumbers coming out of our ears, as you can see. Not to mention we'd just given away a dozen cucumbers earlier that day. But we're not complaining, don't worry. We just happen to have a ton of cucumbers growing fatter every day.

Umm, did you notice that our blog looks a little different? Yeah, I was tiring of the same old blog background, so I spent hours searching for a new one that was the perfect blend of artsy without being too girly, but had no luck. Then my artsy husband reminded me that he could easily just make us a background (it's amazing how quickly I forget these types of things), so I contracted his skills and he designed and drew this one up (by hand!) last week. I LOVE it! Simple, but very Isaac and Becky. Thanks, love!