Our Kettenring Family: I LOVE my sisters!

I am very blessed to have four wonderful women as my sisters. I grew up in a family of FIVE girls and NO boys. We are really close and I love my sisters. We try to get together as much as possible and sometimes in our husbands views maybe too much :) But we love being with each other and there is no one I would rather be with than with one of my sisters.

In the past we have taken some fun trips together. We have go to Niagara Falls, Toronto, Hill Cumorah, Kirtland, OH, Savannah & Atlanta, GA, Laguna Beach to see the Pageant of the Arts. This past month three of my sisters and I went on another trip. We do this ever once in awhile and it is so much fun! This year my sister Lynne turned 50 and we tried to get something planned for a couple of months but she was in the midst of a move and didn't want to commit to anything. Then last minute, literally we planned it in 24 hours, we decided to go up north to Vancouver Island and Olympic National Forest. Tammy wasn't able to go so last minute and we really missed her. Next time we need a little more notice so everyone can go. But we wanted to go and celebrate Lynne's birthday and she really wanted to visit Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC. So off we went.

The Northwest is so beautiful!!! We flew into Seattle, drove to Vancouver, took a ferry to Vancouver Island and toured the Butchart Gardens, then we ferried over to Port Angeles, WA and drove all around the Olympic Peninsula. I don't think I have seen such beautiful scenery. All of us are very alike in how we like to travel as well. We want to see as much as possible so we go, go, go until midnight and wake up early and then we figure we will sleep later. That is what we did on this trip too. But it was worth it because we saw some pretty incredible places in such a short time. We hiked many hikes but since we weren't really planning on hiking (remember, this was last minute and we didn't have any reservations anywhere, we just checked in to places and hoped they had room) JaNet and I ended up hiking in our sandals :) We had a blast and it was just what the doctor ordered, for me at least. Actually for all of us. We all had a pretty stressful month of June: Kim had surgery on her shoulder, her daughter got evacuated from the Sierra Vista fires, her son left for Tokyo on his mission, her other son was up for rank advancement in the guard, and her oldest has been unemployed for a few months and they just had their fourth child; JaNet had a son leave for his mission to Africa and her husband had a massive heart attack; Lynne moved from a huge mansion to a smaller home and to top it off it was completely ready with the remodel and didn't have everything ready. Also her oldest just graduated from High School, and me, well I won't go into complete detail to protect the privacy of my children, but one of my children is living elsewhere to get some help and that decision was made in June. So needless to say we all needed some fun in our lives.

Here are some fun places that we visited: