Before Tami and I were married, she showed me a picture of her all dressed up in hunting clothes holding a pistol with a scope. Without asking much about it, I assumed (and we know what that makes out of you and me) that she enjoyed the outdoors. After our first September camping trip just over a month and half after being married, I started to ask her questions about her outdoorsiness. It actually started out as a pretty big argument because we camped when it froze outside. Anyway, she told me that in the picture all she was really doing was modeling because she didn't really like doing that kind of stuff.
I have to say that I am really proud of Tami right now. She was completely out of her element this summer but was willing to do it because she knew how much it would mean to the boys. Instead of just putting up with it for the summer, she actually learned to really like it and ended up having a great time. The boys got to see and do things that they would never be able to do in the city. For one, the suburban broke down and we had to get towed into a small town in Eastern Washington. They didn't know vehicles broke down. They got to be stranded in the middle of the lake when the boat broke down. They hauled drinking water from the marina, hauled garbage out to the park, fixed the boat motor, put a new garage door opener on the boat house, lit fires, caught fish, cleaned fish and ate fish, learned to wake board, ski on two and slalom, hauled, split and stacked wood, drove boats, learned to dive, worked at a gun show, went to Silverwood, road fourwheelers, played with cousins and aunts and uncles, went to church at a small branch and most importantly, spent a lot of time with grandparents.
After all the things the boys did, you would expect that they grew the most. The crazy thing is that Tami seems to have grown more than all of them. She became very indepedent and helped the boys with just about everything. Before this summer, she knew boys and the types of things they liked but I think she now understands boys and is willing to do whatever it takes to teach them and challenge them in new areas. I better post this before she gets a chance to read and then delete this. We will be posting more pictures soon.
