We don't have long to go now.  We actually don't have much of an idea as to how long we have before the baby comes.  By the calendar dates, we're at about 35 weeks and by the ultrasound, we're at about 33 weeks.  Basically, we figure it will be sometime in September.  In the meantime, we're making the most of our weekends.  Last weekend we met Dad and Margo over in Victoria for the annual Splash Concert - about 40,000 people convening on the parliament lawn to watch Victoria's orchestra play on a floating barge in the marina.  We had lots of good food, a couple well-deserved naps, and even managed to fit in a fun pregnancy photo shoot. See all our photos from Victoria, click here.

This past weekend was Katrina and Rich's wedding in Leavenworth.  It was also Miguel and Heather's 1st year anniversary!  One year down everyone.  We don't get together with all of our Bellingham friends nearly enough, so this was a great excuse to hang out and enjoy each other for an evening - and who better to spend our anniversary with but many of the same people that were there with us enduring the rain, clouds and freezing temperatures.  The ceremony was excellent.  This year the sun decided to shine brightly and all the ladies looked so lovely in their strappy summer dresses.  The self-written vows were wonderful and quite tear-jerking for all of us.  We left the wedding photos to the professional - and therefore don't have any, but to see the rest of our Leavenworth pictures, click here.

Since it was an anniversary trip to an outdoor recreation mecca, we invited Sam, Adam, Sean and Lenore to come rock climbing for an afternoon before the wedding.  This being a new experience for Adam, Sean and Lenore, they were quite surprised to find out that it involved hiking away from the car in order to get TO the rock.  For some reason, the rest of us just assumed that everyone knew to bring water, food and a backpack on a climbing trip.  Since these guys didn't get the memo, Sean had to drive back to town for some food while the rest of us hiked on.  We had a nice time and the boys got in a few crack climbs.  I was able to help out with some belay and climbing instruction, so at least I felt useful.  Pretty sure that harness wouldn't fit right now - but I didn't even try it.

The day after the wedding, Miguel and I shared a 10 mile hike to Stuart Lake.  Unbeknownst to us it was not that steep at all, and a very pleasant hike in.  There were only a few people at the lake even though the parking lot was chock full of cars.  We made the round trip in about 4 hours and headed home.  One of our vows is to share adventures in nature with each other, and even at almost 8 months pregnant, we were able to follow through, even on our anniversary.     

Unfortunately I'm writing this from the couch in our living room on Monday - an unintentional day off due to a stomach flu that attacked me at 3am.  I haven't been keeping food down all day and I'm not feeling so hot.  I'm hoping this will pass quickly and I'll be chomping at the bit to get back to normal tomorrow.  It's been about 11 years or more since I've thrown up, so it's been quite a wake up call.  Tho whomever gave this to me: This sucks.  I won't forget, I promise.  Just don't make me go through this again!  

Even though I'm a bit under the weather, it's been fun making the most of our weekends recently and getting out to do stuff.  We're hoping the trend will continue once the baby is here to join us.  Next weekend is the big Spawnfest tournament that Miguel is in charge of.  About 1200 frisbee players - hungry for a gourmet salmon dinner on Saturday, a live band, and teams from all over the world.  It's going to be a blowout.  And the weekend fun continues....

When you're wondering where on earth to go camping next, Yellow Aster Butte is always a good choice.  We're getting down to the wire here on being able to get outside for some real life camping.  I'm 33 weeks into this pregnancy and I'm not getting smaller.  There will be plenty more days of the good outdoors in our future, but probably not for awhile - or the rest of this year, even.  It was time to get out of the house and Miguel offered to take the bulk of the  gear, so what the heck, let's do it! 

For a slideshow of our photos, click here (click on "show info" at the top right of the slideshow to view captions)

It took a bit of convincing to get Lucy and Mocha on board, but by Saturday afternoon, we were packed up and ready to hit the trails - regardless of the looming thunderstorms that were expected to hit the region.  We decided we "might as well" bring the tent fly - but gave the rainjackets a big "negatory".  It only rains on us when we decide NOT to bring our raingear.  You'd think we would learn.  Somehow we still live to tell about our adventures though, so no raingear means less weight and more adventure - right?

Yellow Aster didn't let us down this time - and it never has.  I had to "grin and bear it" on the 5 miles of bumpy gravel road that was knocking my belly all over the place, but other than that it was smooth sailing.  Not without some sweat and shooing away of about 100,000 bugs.  Having the extra 12 pounds of water and food in my little backpack actually made a significant dent in my walking speed - but Miguel is a patient man, and he didn't complain about having to go at a snail's pace up the hill.  Luckily we ran into a couple that offered us some of their bug repellent - as some of the descending hikers told us "This was the worst the bugs have ever been - good luck."

Luck was certainly in our favor this time.  We cruised throught the forest and the flies and came to the meadowlike opening for the last third of the hike when sprinkles of rain started falling.  It was quite refreshing, really, and although it is engrained in both of us not to get wet, we couldn't help but notice that the mosquitoes were all gone.  The dark sky behind us put Miguel in a bit of an uneasy mood, but we trekked on at our nailbiting pace and made it to camp.  Our clothes were just barely wet and it was cool enough to change into pants and long sleeves.  Lightning struck in the distance and thunder cracked and boomed in the distance as Miguel counted seconds between.  The storm was a fair distance from us, so it was an awesome show.

We found a perfect little pond that we had to ourselves and Lucy spent every waking moment either swimming or pushing a stick at our feet to throw in the water.  When the rain eased up, the bugs were horrible, so we were lucky that it kept sprinkling most of the evening.  We all went to bed way to early, about 7pm.  We were wet, but it didn't matter because it was still pretty warm outside.

The natural beauty of Yellow Aster Butte is immeasurable.  People travel great distances to see places like this - and we only had to drive about an hour.  I'll never get tired of visiting this beatuiful place.  

We woke in the morning and had leftovers for breakfast - took down the tent and vacated the area before the mosquitoes drew too much blood from us.  The baby did well overnight and didn't make me too uncomfortable or wake me up too many times.  We took an extra 30 minutest to make it to the top of Yellow Aster Butte with just enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitoes away.  

It was hot back at the car when we were done.  We still had time to fit in a few more tasks on the weekend.  Just in time to make the second chicken slaughtering, we drove by Adam and Lenore's place to gut a few chickens.  Then we headed over to Boxx Berry farms and gladly gave them $12 extra dollars for their blueberry picking efforts (we bought pre-picked berries this time).  And that was it.  Weekend marked "success".

We did have one mishap at home, however.  You may have thought the story was over.  The Chickens.  Argh.  I've already given Ginger away to Adam and Lenore.  She was a pain in the butt.  Now she's getting picked on over at their coop.  Then, they gave us 2 juvenile chickens - "the mean chickens of the group" - as a swap.  When Miguel looked in the coop before we went to bed, he noticed blood.  One of the new chickens' necks was pecked so badly by our "nice" big chickens, that we could see the neckbone.  It was a really sad sight to see.  What misery we'd put this little chicken through.  So, we ended our day by killing one last chicken - the most humane thing we could think of to do with her.  I'd say we sure haven't had much luck with chickens recently.  Lenore is coming to pick up the last little one tonight.  You'd think they'd be more civil to each other - but man, we learned the hard way that chickens aren't always as sweet as they seem, and better off not to force generations to integrate with each other.