Katherine & Erik are here for the weekend! :o) Lucky for us, we'll only be 2.5 hours away once we move to Madison....it's nice to know that good friends are semi-close by. We visited Mt. St. Helens today, which was having an "event" (not to be confused with an eruption)...steam and gasses coming up from the bulging crater. Pretty neat...I hadn't been there for 8 years, so it's changed quite a bit in that time.

Tomorrow is gonna be another hot one, so some eagle creek exploring will probably happen. I'm definitely looking forward to that. I love showing visitors the gorge.

wednesday was a lovely dinner with my cousin and her husband. a long time coming. and it was great.

julie and i did a night hike up angel's rest on thursday evening. quite pleasant, despite my exhaustion hiking up and stupidly wearing jeans on such a hot day. we arrived at the top just as the sun was setting and witnessed a lovely sunset, then made our way down as dark was falling. i need to do more night hiking!

next weekend is also gonna rock. an entire long weekend spent with ethan & nicole at netarts/oceanside. i love the beach. and i love having personal hours/vacation time from work. definitely a lot to be excited about in the past few days and upcoming ones.