On July 23rd...

We celebrated our fourth anniversary with a trip to Orcas Island.

Where we had a good time exploring, eating tasty seafood and being reminded of God's covenant promises.


We visited the incredible Antony Howe kinetic sculpture garden. It wasn't a particularly windy day, but there was just enough to appreciate the design and intricacy of most of the pieces. This one was mesmerizing.





We went out to an intertidal mound at low tide to clamber around and look through the tide pools.


There were lots of different colors of sea stars--including a couple of sun stars (the kind with lots of extra legs). We also saw several kinds of crabs, shrimp, juvenile fish and anemones.

We felt lucky enough to find this brilliantly colored sea cucumber as well.

There is just no substitute for taking your socks off and walking around on the rocks and through the water. However, a wrong move at the wrong time, can cost you--as Jonathan found. His slip lost him a toenail and caused an impromptu trip to the Orcas Island medical center.

Eddie was glad to see us--and even more glad to play in the fishy-smelling tote bag.


We also learned that we are going to be parents in the spring--April 1st, if all goes well.


It was a very special day.


*Actually, the pregnancy test came first. We took the injunction to take the test first thing in the morning very seriously. So, when I had to get up at 5:30 (well before we had planned to arise), we figured that this was our best chance. When you are that groggy, even news like this is a bit anticlimactic. Jonathan snapped the picture and I went back to bed to pray and try to sleep and the excitement didn't really hit us until later. Not nearly as romantic a moment as we had envisioned--but finding out that we were expecting our first child on our anniversary will still be a special memory.