End of Summer Seaside

Dada booked us a house in Seaside, OR for the first weekend in September, so our summer would be bookended by a Seaside trip. We took the kids to Goodwill for their traditional cheap toy buying to start the trip. We rode our bikes down the prom for ice cream and the kids ate meals outside in the new hammock that was there this time. 

We also tried out going on a new outing to Indian Beach. It starts out as a beautiful hike down to the ocean. The kids loved scrambling on the rocks, playing in the sand, floating Berg's Goodwill boat in the tide pools, looking for little sea creatures and discovering all of the dead animals. I don't know what was going on there but we found 14 dead birds and a dead seal. (The really orange looking thing in the photo of Opal and Berg.)

Back at Seaside, we got some more ice cream and played at the beach.

Well, I don't know what Eben did, he was conflicted about wanting to go in the water and being too cold at the same time.

The next day we tried to go back to Indian Beach because the kids had so much fun, but the line of cars to get in was super long. We went to a cute park, had lunch and jumped on sand dunes instead.

Silverwood

The kids worked really hard reading books for a homeschool reading program at the beginning of this year and were all awarded with free passes to Silverwood, a theme park in Idaho. We decided to actually go and take them this year, since they were given free tickets for the same program the year before and we never went. We borrowed our friend's trailer and slept in the Silverwood parking lot when we got there.

The next morning after moving the trailer to the theme park's campground and a breakfast in the trailer we walked to the theme park. It was actually much nicer than I was expecting. After a ride on the merry-go-round we quickly realized we had better split up if we wanted everyone to enjoy the park. So Dada took off with the older three and headed for the fast paced roller coasters and Mama went to little kid land with the four youngest. Their favorite was the train that goes around the entire park and stops for a stunt show that you watch from the train. It was about a half hour long ride!

We all met up after a couple of rides and rode the log ride together, well, in three different logs.

We even got a family picture in front of some beautiful flowers.

Then the big kids and Dada were off again, to enjoy puke spin rides and wet river rapids.

We all met up again at lunch to eat some cheese, crackers, fruit and salami and the big kids rode on the little rides with the little guys. At one point we even met up with our friends, the Holmes, who are the ones that told us about the reading program in the first place. When it got late, Dada took the little ones back to the trailer and Mama took the big three on a couple more big rides in the dark.

The next morning after sleeping in the trailer again, Berg asked, "Can we all go to the big playground again?" I thought he meant there in the campground, but he wanted to spend another day in Silverwood. They had a really great time. On the long ride home we had packed some ice cream cones in the trailer freezer so we ate those at a super windy truck stop, while playing with tumble weeds.

Race, Surf, Sink

Aug. 15th our family signed up to help out with our church's booth at the 4 US event at Fort Steilacoom Park to support buying more ultrasound machines. Little did we know we would be sucked into participating in many events and our one hour commitment lasted almost all day. Berg, Pella and Opal played in the jumpy toys while Eben, Kivi and Jasper participated in the 5K race and then they ran along side Berg and Opal in the 1K and I got a massage! Hey, you have to support the cause however you can! After that the three bigs participated in trying to break the world record for the largest squirt gun fight. They ended up raising $127,645 for the "Save a Life" campaign.

Peter has had a great summer of wake boarding and wake surfing on Jeremy's boat on Lake Steilacoom. He's gotten really good at it, too! We actually never put our boat on our little Lake Louise this year! So good thing he has like-minded, water sport enthusiasts as friends.

Tuff, our little 9 month old, taking a bath in the sink. He was the cutest little sink baby ever! And he had the greatest time I think he could have stayed in there playing with the running water all day.