mccall 2013

we just got back from our annual trip to mccall with randy's family. and you know what that means... excessive amounts of pictures! they look the same from year to year (hanging out on the beach, playing in the sand, swimming in the lake) because we do the same things every year, but the kids look a little older each year. i love our annual week at mccall and am always sad to leave.





we went to boise first and spent a few days there before heading up to mccall. my mom drove up from salt lake and joined us for a couple days while we were up there, which was really fun for me, and so nice of my mother-in-law.

my mother-in-law is so good at doing fun things with the kids and got this great bubble machine for them to play with. 

 

my niece, calli, was a huge help with the kids all week.

two grandmas with their grandkids.

and then we went to mccall:

 

 

my cute niece, lainey.

jeanie brought her kayak and we all had fun riding around in it. 

my brother-in-law brought this aerobie with him and they had a blast throwing it around in the water.

randy and carsten.

grandpa peck and my father-in-law, bob.

jeanie

diane was giddy dragging my sister-in-law, kim, around in this raft.

jonathan loved being in the water. we don't have a bathtub in our house, so he's not really used to being submerged at all and thought it was pretty great.

on the last evening there, we attempted some family pictures.

this was at the very end. you can tell how cooperative my kids were being. 

and then we all went out to dinner.

already counting down the days until next year.

quiet

i haven't done any book reviews on my blog in a while. not because i haven't been reading, but because i haven't been blogging. but i just finished quiet by susan cain and i can't stop thinking about it.

as the subtitle indicates, it's a book about introverts and some of their underappreciated qualities. i'd heard some great reviews about it around the web and since i'm married to an introvert, i thought it would be an interesting read. i finally got a copy from my library.

i've often thought that it would be fascinating to be able to get inside randy's brain for a day and see how he thinks. i feel like this book completely opened my eyes to how randy's brain works. being married for seven years has taught me a lot, but this put it all into concrete terms and helped me make sense of it. i told randy that it's like a manual for how to be a better wife and mother (although i had already guessed as much, this book made me realize that diane is a major introvert as well). it also made me realize that i'm much more of an introvert than i had realized and gave some great insight into those aspects of my personality.

i'm forcing randy to read it. right from the outset, cain indicates that her main goal in writing this book is to help introverts to feel more confident about their introversion, since the rest of the world often makes them feel inferior because of it. i really think that randy will enjoy reading it. i'm even considering buying a copy, which is high praise indeed coming from me.

i think everyone would benefit from reading this book. if i had a bookclub (it really pains me to write that), it would be my next pick. i'm dying to discuss it.

can you tell i liked this book?

beating the heat

it's  been hot here the last couple weeks. a little too hot for my liking. if you ask most seattlites, they'll tell you that summer doesn't start until the fourth of july. it usually rains the morning of the fourth and hopefully it's burned off by the time you want to barbeque. i like it that way. 

anyway. since it's been hot, we've been spending lots of time in the backyard, playing with the hose, sprinklers, pool, and slip 'n' slide and i actual got out my real camera and got some pictures of it.