Pretty heroic, don't you think? I thought so...lol:) It was a fierce battle to the death, but I...i mean, Ms. Draino prevailed again! Muahahahaha! Then, I...Ms. Draino caught up with the Fisherboys and there counterpart, M.O.M. as they went fishing in lake...well, I don't really know what lake it was because I wasn't really there, but it was at William O'Brien Park near Marine on St. Croix. 
Here they are looking very suspiciously into the water(^). Ben had said that there were probably Noragaiters in these waters, so no one got to close:) Noah, being the oldest and toughest, decided to try and catch one of these mystical Noragaiters...
When suddenly, Elliott, the youngest and smallest of the boys, caught the monster! As you can see by the look on his face, it was an amazing find! 
During this episode of danger, Ben was able to hook himself a mermaid...well, not really...there was a bunch of teens there and he accidentaly hooked one:)lol! Then it was back to the trail for us girls... 
Stephanie and I were the protectors of our fine mother and dear sister in the Wilderness for a Memorial Day Weekend at the O'Brien. It was really interesting...I had never dressed up like that before so it was fun and weird. Then, my pardner Bailey and I caught ourselves a couple of painted turtles for a race...which neither of us one...:)
So, after all this adventuresome ploys that have been playing out over the past few weeks, we now deserve some down time...while getting ready for graduation this weekend! Oi Vey! Pray for us! ~ Hopie:)
But with friends (especially the Minnesotans:), there will always a water fight of some sort. It always seems that it starts because of a Forsman...hmmm...I wonder if that is a coincidence?
Then, when we thought all the fights were over, we were attacked be bandido's!! AI! It was quite interesting. 
...then, we Stephanie and Ben got into a huge fight about who wanted to wipe down the grill and pulled out there shotguns!!! Oi Vey! Luckily, it ended peaceably...well, almost peaceably. 
But then it came to this...Which I thought looked a little to much like Alfalfa from the little rascals. :)
But, not to worry, we did give him the full buzz cut. :) And here is our dear friend/adopted brother in a way Ben Wilson. We had gotten cookie dough mix (yes, i know...we didn't make this from scratch...but it was good!) and Ben, who didn't really make cookies to often, wanted to help us out by making them. Then, he got this idea to make a pizza cookie...and this is how it turned out...
well, we did put frosting on it...and Ben pressed his hand into the center of it...But it was still good! 
Here are some of them at the table eating pancakes. It was amazing how we were able to fit them all around it! I couldn't even fit them all in this picture!!! :)
Since I was playing that night at a coffee shop in Osceola, we got to do our hair. Here are Grace and Molly O'Connor, our cousins, with their hair up in what we call a "Birthday Bow." 
And, as I mentioned, I had gone to Washington. I actually went there with my mom on business, but it was awesome!!! I have never been on an airplane before, and it was great (except when I really had to go to the bathroom on take-off and wasn't aloud to!)! We also brought "Camille" with. But it we kind of smuggled her in! :) lol.
I was totally in awe of the magnificence of the land from the plane! I cant believe that God could have created all that! But he did! Wow! It is so amazing! 
It was cool how there were some places full of snow and some bright green! This was a small chunk of snow that I took a picture of. 
Some mountains from on high. I believe that these were the Cascade Mountains or somewhere near there. We landed in SeaTac, WA at 1:30 p.m. Which was very confusing given the fact we left Minneapolis at 11a.m. and it was a 3 hour flight and it would have been 3:30p.m. when we arrived there...Man, that is really confusing! 
It was awesome, though! We had know idea of direction when we landed so we wouldn't have known where we were going to go, though we did have a map Jessica Wilson "hand wrote" out for us. So we went to go get our rental car once we had landed, but they wouldn't let us have one!! So we had to wait for two hours for my dad, who was in Minnesota, to get everything straightened out! It got to be sooooo long! I just sat there in mental shock thinking: "Whoa, we are going to be stranded here, in the Seattle airport, with no sense of where the highway was and no way home!!!!" I was freaked...
We finally did get a car, a Minnie van actually, and headed off to Squim, WA to meet the Hines family. It was an amazing drive!! Awesome views; it was amazing how the scenery can change from lush, green hills to mush, snow hills. 
After we spent some time at the Hines' we went out for diner at Applebees; just mom and I. I had a Margarita, which was interesting...and Camille had a Martini. lol. :)
We stayed right next to the Olympic Mountains, which was SO AWESOME!! We were lucky enough to see them at night and the morning before we left. It is usually so cloudy in WA, I didn't think we would see them! But God happened to open the sky just for us! 
We could actually see a couple different Mountains: Mt. Angles, Mt.Pleasant, Elk Mt., Mt. Deception and a couple others. I don't really know what these ones are, but I am pretty sure one is Mt. Angles. Squim is right on the border of CANADA, so we were able to drive right to the border and see the Canadian mountains (I don't know there names). 
