Shannon's Birthday

An Ozette October

It was LDS Semi-Annual Conference yesterday, and our daughters all came together to celebrate Shannon's 28th Birthday. She's a wonderful big sister and we love her dearly.

Cassandra and Dave drove up, (they now live in Olympia,) and Francesca came from Marysville, too.

We laughed together a lot and looked at our family pictures posted on Flicker, and videos on YouTube from our Ozette Lake weekend.

The Ozette wood pile is now called, "Josh's Wood Pile", in loving memory of Joshua Stroud, December 12, 1986 - April 24, 2011. We pray this sweet young man may rest in peace until we see each other again.

Josh spent a whole day chopping wood for the cabin and so enjoyed it. He also went fishing with Jory, paddling the canoe all over, and they caught a bunch of Northern Pike Minnows. We'll treasure our fond memories of him.

It was wonderful to have everyone together for a few hours Sunday. As the girls grow older, we treasure our time together. I usually have Sunday off, and we do our best to do something together as a family.

Kathleen is already lobbying for another trip to Ozette soon. She's also hoping we can go during a big rain and wind storm. Amazing.

When I was young, we used to go up to the lake every school holiday, even in winter, and so she's grown up hearing about the exciting storms up at the Lake. She wants to hike the trail to Cape Alava and Sand Point. She's definitely a die-hard camper!

Dad has the last half of his Scouting's Wood Badge training session coming up this weekend. My girls laugh at some of the feeble fire-starting attempts they've watched on "Survivor". These girls are great campers and can easily start a fire, or make a campfire meal, without any trouble.

They may wear pink, paint with pink, or even choose it as a favorite color, but they never, "act pink". You say "tent", and they start packing.

We'll all meet again someday on the shores of Ozette. We still have campfires to light, storms to watch, and more stories to tell.