On Saturday night we wrapped up our tour of the Olympic National Park and headed to a suburb of Seattle to stay in a "mansion" with my parents and siblings for 5 nights. My brother has lived near Seattle for years, and my youngest sister, Nicole, is there with her family on an internship and it worked out for all of us to come and visit just in time for the blessing of this sweet little babe.
We couldn't get enough of cute little Ivy.
In the weeks before we left, my kids worked hard on little projects to give to Edith and Ivy. Ryan made Edith this little apron.
And he made Ivy this pillow.
And Avery made a taggie blankie for Ivy and a little purse for Edith. Grant and Maren helped pick out jewelry for the purse. They were all excited to give their gifts.
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We took a family picture with all of us there (it doesn't happen very often that we are all together). This must be the dad's watching, while the mom's are trying to get the kids to smile for a picture.
Blessing day.
Later that afternoon we found a sports field to play on. And Avery found Grandpa's suspenders to play with.
This is my brother's grandson, Xavi (I know, we are getting so old!), who is destined to be a soccer star. He's scoring on my brother right now. Probably legitimately.
The next day was the 4th of July, and we started out the day with breakfast at my brother's church, followed by relay races. The best one was when the men had to spin around a baseball bat (with their nose touching the top) and then race down the grass. Very amusing.
We found a parade nearby and somehow squeezed 18 children, plus adults onto the street.
This is a mean pirate yelling at my boys. They didn't seem to be bothered by it. They are plugging their ears because the pirates were also setting off cannons.
We BBQ'd that night and then had pie eating contests and fireworks at my brother's house.
No one was lit on fire, so it must have been a success!
Tuesday was spent hiking, playing at a park and visiting a petting zoo. For each evening we headed back to the house to cook dinner, which was nice because of the size of our group and the cost for all of us to eat. It worked out well.
Who knew baby llamas would be so cute?!
On Wednesday we took a ferry over to Whidby Island to play on the beach. We lucked out because this was the warmest day of the week. As you can see, it was still a little chilly on the ferry.
The beach was so fun! It was shallow for a long way out and so the kids could run and play and make sand castles and do all those fun beachy things kids love to do.
Nice seaweed ponytail, Dustin.
We brought stuff for giant bubbles and they worked out so well! I think I had as much fun as the kids did.
Grandpa making bubbles.
My parents, siblings and I, in birth order (and, almost height order).
That night we celebrated Ryan's and Rosa's birthday because we were splitting up early the next day to start for home.
On Ryan's actual birthday we drove to downtown Seattle and visited Pike's Place. We love Seattle.
That night we stayed at Nicole's and then got up the next morning to start our long drive home.
Another night at the Farm, and this time we found kittens! How did we miss these before?
This is what I found on my phone:
We stopped at the Little Niagra Falls on our way home, just long enough to get out and take a picture. This is just minutes from my grandpa's house, and somehow I had never even heard of it.
By the end of our drive, we had to break out the barf jelly beans. They helped us make it through. But the fun is in watching other people suffer, not in actually eating a dog food flavored jelly bean.
Dustin must have got some nasty flavor.
It was a long, fun, beautiful, exhausting vacation!
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