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Bye Bye Just Married Paint

A Clean Element

I finally broke down and scrubbed the paint proclaiming us “Just Married” off of the car.  I kept hoping the rain would do the work for me, but it just didn’t seem like it was going to happen.  Two weeks of some pretty good rain and we were still left with “Ju   Mar  d”.  It was starting to get a little wierd when I showed up to the commuter parking lot by myself or when I gave other people rides.  Sure it was entertaining to volunteer to drive and then wait for my passengers to find out they were cruising in the Bride on Board mobile, but you can only use the same material for so long right?  Anyway, about an hour of scrubbing later, we are now back to a normal Element paint job.

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Summer….sniffle, sniffle

Four  more days of summer vacation. Four. That isn’t even a whole hand. Boo on that. I’ve been spending time getting my classroom ready and I even met some of my students last night. They are so young. Most of them seemed pumped up to be coming back to school. A few were apprehensive and nervous, of course. I have great memories of my  elementary school teachers. I often think about them this time of year and reflect on what I liked about them and how special they made me feel.

After discovering that Sydney had destroyed a potpourri doll her first day back from CJ (Camp Janet), I decided it was best to take her to school with me.  Of course, she was a lazy dog all day making the choice to stay in her crate and snore…except for the glue stick, permanant marker, unifix cube, basket, and even books that she “tasted.”

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Mount Dickerman

View from atop Mt. Dickerson

The honeymoon is officially over. How long can you really wait before claiming that? At any rate, Hannah and I came back from hiking around Mt. Ranier last Wednesday and decided to go our separate ways for the weekend. Hannah went up the Anacortes to get Sydney and I attended Mischa’s Annual Guys Hike. I think this was the 12th Annual Event which started as a bachelor party when he got married. I can’t remember when I was first invited to attend (version 7 or 8 I believe), but they’re always memorable. Mostly because the group of guys are always great to be around and the hike never fails to be some sort of crazy scramble to the top of a mountain. Past hikes have involved walking across snowfields and climbing up tree roots in what seemed like a nearly vertical ascent.

This year’s version didn’t disappoint. Mischa decided Mt. Dickerson outside of Granite Falls would be our target (sorry I couldn’t find an actual map of the trail). It was a little over 4 miles each way and ended up being about 3000 ft in elevation gain (really tempting to make the uphill both ways joke here). Let’s just say going down was faster than going up, but the views from the top were amazing. To the north was Mt. Baker, west the Puget Sound, and south Mt. Ranier. We were able to camp in a meadow just below the summit, so we got a great view of both the sunset and sunrise. As an added bonus there were a couple black bears in the neighboring valley that we could see from the summit. They’re agile climbers indeed and I enjoyed watching them climb the cliffs in search of food and shelter for the night.