Washington Coast (summer vacations continued)

Almost our last trip of the summer...   I wondered why it seemed to go by so fast... now I see!  It's almost October and I'm not done posting pictures of all of our wonderful trips!!
The beginning of August we took a trip to Ocean City, WA with Matt's Dad & Matt's sister Jenny.
We ate hot dogs over the fire... YUM! (with Mac & cheese on the side, of course!)

 Aunt Jenny had a birthday party for all of the birthdays she missed this summer.  What a treat!!  Emerson blew out the birthday candles over and over before Jenny could get them all lit!  Now that she knows that birthday candles are all about... she can't get enough!!

 Aunt Jenny got Emerson the coolest silicone drawing sheet.  You color it with dry erase markers and then wipe it off and do it over and over again.  Super fun!

 The biggest highlight for the trip for the boys was definitely skimboarding!!  Despite the weather being fairly chilly, they were out there skimboarding as often as possible!

 Emerson had some fun playing on the beach too...

 I thought this was such a cool picture of Aunt Jenny coming out of the fog on the beach

 Aunt Jenny and Hudson making sea monsters out of seaweed and shells..so clever!

 Ice cream in Ocean Shores...YUM!

 what's better than sitting by the campfire in your PJs???

 I love this picture!!

 Stu may have had the most fun of all of us while on the beach!!  He loved running around and in and out of the waves!

 Awesome skimboarding moves

 and some more...

 Yup, Matt joined the action too!

 and Stu tried to keep up with them riding their boards!!

 Kelp wars!

and that was our trip to the Washington Coast.  

Next up... MONTANA!!

summer vacations, part 2 of 3.

Hudson celebrated his 8th birthday!!

He received a GIANT teddy bear from his brother and loves snuggling with Ted.  

Papa came up to celebrate too!!  8 great years!!

The morning of Hudson's birthday they started soccer camp.  They had an awesome week of Sounders camp and on the last day we headed to Desert Aire to spend the weekend with our good friends.  We left the Dad's at home but the kids had a blast swimming for hours, watching movies, playing in the river and even trying their hand at poker! (ha!)

 The boys built an awesome raft at the river and had fun riding it and rebuilding it for hours!

we were home for 2 days and then we headed off with another of our favorite families to go camping at Icicle Creek in Leavenworth, WA. We try to make it an annual trip and I'm so glad we do!! We had so much fun! This was Emerson's first camping trip of the season and she did fantastic!!
both of the boys learned how to chop wood. Mom may have been a little nervous (especially since her dad split his foot open with an axe as a kid) but we all survived it, and they had fun and yet, they were super cautious.

Apparently camping is hard work when you're 2

Emerson, Hudson and Berkley loving the hammock!!

The kids even got to do a little scrambling. No rock climbing gear this year, last year the kids were a little scared of climbing the big wall so this year they just played around.

The weather was great (as usual) so the kids got lots of time to cool off in Icicle Creek.  

Hudson and Mom in the hammock...

Hudson learned how to build a fire all by himself this year.  I must say, he did an awesome job!!

More hammock fun... Berkley & Camden

Emerson LOVED the hammock!  She asked to lay in there as often as she could.

Her other favorite pastime was snuggling up on mom & dad's bed.  Sometimes she'd look at books, sometimes just lay with her blankie. 

Matt took all the boys fishing and they had a blast!

Hey look! They even caught something!! YEAH!!!

That's a successful fishing trip!!

We had 2 more spectacular trips but I'll have to write them on another post. My blog time is up and this is probably getting long. Stay tuned for the Washington Coast camping trip and Montana roadtrip!!