Rocks and Root Beer

The girls started another cool project with Emma's nail polish kit. They started decorating rocks. Actually everyone took the time to decorate a rock.

Bruce and Clay hanging out under the tree.

We stopped at another park overlooking the water. The girls and Clay had fun playing around.

The day before we left to go back home Deanna told us there was a Root Beer store just north of Seattle. We HAT to stop there and try out a few different flavors. 

We picked these three for a taste test. We didn't like the So Duh! We did like the Steelhead and Bulldog. I liked the Steelhead better. I ordered that in my root beer float. Now that we know about it, we need to go back there next time we are in Seattle.

Mud Kitchen

Iluma had a little mud kitchen in the backyard. Rebekah and Iluma loved playing in it. 

It was good MESSY fun!

Iluma also had this pretty cool little fairy garden.

Whale Watching

What Emma wanted most for her birthday was to go whale watching. We booked a cruise on the Victoria Star from Bellingham to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

Then we got to see the Orcas. I took A LOT of pictures. It was actually quite tricky to have my camera zoomed in close watching and waiting for the whales to surface and trying to keep it steady as the boat bobbed up and down. Quite a challenge I tell you. Then trying to guess where they will surface, have the camera focused and ready to take the shot. Well, that's why I kept taking so many pictures. Clay was laughing at me. He knew when I got the shot because I shouted out "YES!" right after I captured a cool moment. 

As we pulled into Friday Harbor, Emma spotted this cute little harbor seal. 

Emma was so happy to have seen so many Orcas. In Friday Harbor we checked out The Whale Museum. They had all kinds of great information about the pod of Orcas we saw.

On the way back to Bellingham the girls had fun dressing up Granddad's hair.

Canoeing

Clay had told the girls we would go canoeing on Crescent Lake when we were on the Olympic Peninsula. However, the weather made us have to switch our plans around and canoeing got left out. The girls were very disappointed. So, being the great Hero Dad that he is, Clay called around and found a place for us to go. We went down to AM Beach (just on the east side of PM Beach). 

We had a good time. Though we had to make some adjustments to the seating arrangements to balance out the boats. Deanna and Emma had a hard time getting around the island. The wind blew really hard, so unless you had two really strong people at the oars you were not going to make it. We switched it up again and were finally able to get Emma around the island. 

These two fell asleep as soon as they got buckled into the car. We had to wake them up for lunch.

Rebekah and Iluma enjoyed playing with the jukebox at the A&W Restaurant.

We must have done something else between lunch and dinner. I can't remember. Maybe it was just getting cleaned up. But here they are at dinner. It's Fairhaven Fish & Chips. All your food is served out of this old double-decker bus.

After dinner we drove down to Marine Park.

Here's Deanna with all her grandkids!

Mt Baker

It was a beautiful day up on Mt Baker. 

The girls were surprised to find snow on the mountain. They all had a great time playing in the snow and riding the sled down the slope.

Here's the tightly twisting road we took up and back down the mountain.