Summertime!

We're taking a break from our regularly scheduled France posting to talk about summer.  Summer in Seattle (almost) makes all the grey raininess worth it.  At the end of spring I made a bucket list for summer, because after a rainy spring I didn't want to waste one single day.  As of mid-July, I had crushed that list.  The list:
- Concert outdoors!
- Camping!
- Dinner in our backyard!
- Swim in a lake!
- White jeans!
- Hang out at Golden Gardens beach!
Yesssss.  I love me an exclamation point, but I really do think all of those activities are exclamation worthy.  Simple, but exclamation worthy.

We crushed concerts outdoors.  So far I have been to a concert at the Olympic Sculpture Park, one at Chateau St. Michelle and attended Zoo Tunes, all inside a month.  The sculpture park might be the most scenic:

On the right hand side of this photo, you can just barely see the outline of Alexander Calder's "Eagle", with Puget Sound in the background.  What fun!

The company was scenic too!

Nice 'stache, James.  I have no pictures of the music, but that's not really the point, is it?

Camping!  And swimming in lakes!  We've done a couple of camping trips with our lovely Vanagon Brunhilda this year.  Last weekend my husband organized the StHRAP, or the Seattle-to-Hood-River-and-Party, an alternative to the popular Seattle-to-Portland bike ride.  My friends rode bikes, but yours truly drove the support wagon which was a far more fitting task.  We camped at Taklahk lake which was amazing:

 

That's my pink head on the lower left corner.  The swimming was PERFECT.  The water was so clear you can see the bottom 15 feet down.  Mt. Adams looms in back like a postcard.  The water is chilly but not too cold.  We ended the ride at my parents' house in Parkdale and had a hearty frolic through the sprinklers:

Mt. Hood is in the background, making the ride a sea level-to-mountain-back-to-sea-level-back-to-mountain affair, with the Columbia River in the middle.  (This one is sooo happy not to have been biking!)

We've also done a lot of beach-hanging-out in our own home town.  The beach on Mercer Island looks like this on a beautiful day:

  

Isn't it gorgeous?  Almost as gorgeous as these ladies:

OK, that's a horribly backlit photo, but yay for picnics on the beach!  Other picnics on the beach include one at the famed Golden Gardens:

Beautiful.  When you can enjoy that view and have this much fun at the same time:

You know you're having a good summer. 

Last but not least, white jeans!  I found the perfect pair of white denim capris this summer.  Which means that some perfect days end like this:

 

Mojito, backyard, sunshine, yesssssss.  

I know this is just a random smattering of awesome stuff, but isn't that how summer goes?  More summer posts are sure to come (including birthday picnic pedalboating!) but I wanted to take a moment to be grateful for all the fabulous things that have happened so far.  Yay for summer!