petting baby tigers and other summer adventures

We had a full summer this year as usually and yes again we did most of our vacationing at the beach, which we love:) Starting out right after school in June we headed over to the Washington Coast and camped at Kalaloch for a couple days and rainy nights. The kids had a wonderful time with camp fires, garter snakes, skimboards, tide pools and sand. We held off on doing many hikes since I had just given my ankle a nasty, bruisy sprain that left Chris to the big task of taking care of everyone. Nevertheless it was nice to get away from the house, thanks to my mom for always taking the "granddoggie".
Our family loves going to the beach with a full container of baby powder in tow, great for getting the sand all off. There is always so much to do without looking to hard for it.
The 2 pictures of Kaatlin, Nathanael and Seth are from 2010 and 2004 at the same place, beach#4. How time flies.


Summer also holds lots and lots of swimming lessons:) Kaatlin, Nathanael, Seth & Laurel all 2-3 sessions of swim lessons (sorry no pics:) In addition to this Kaatlin and Nathanael both did swim team for 6 weeks and are now super fit from their 3 hours of swimming per week. All of this wasn't too bad for me this year as Kaatlin was more than happy to stay at home with Benjamin who I'm sure was glad to play instead of sit around at swim lessons sweating for 8 weeks.
Alone with swimming was lots of soccer games for Kaatlin and Nathanael to play in and the rest of us to enjoy watching. With girl's games Monday, Wednesday and boy's Tuesday, Thursday our evenings we filled with lots of park time and plenty of soccer to view and play. Nathanael was a dependable player on his team the Thunder, as always, scoring as well as defending. Kaatlin scored her first goal ever thanks to a pass by a teammate. She was super excited after 2 years it was well earned and we were more than happy to celebrate at DQ following the game.
Of coursed intermixed with fun and games was time at the neighborhood pool with friends and cousins, walks around the neighborhood, jogging with Dad, lawn mowing, and chores, in exchange for computer and Wii privileges.
Chris saw some of his hard work brought to the real world when in August the DOT put the variable speed signs into action on the freeways which he has been working on programming for some time.
Kaatlin attended Girl's Camp for church in White pass and had a great 3-4 days full of camp songs, hot chocolate, teepee sleeping, chipmunk raids and missing clothes all mixed with some spiritual moments. She had a great time!

We wrapped up our summer with another beach trip staying in a cabin on the Southern Oregon coast at Cape Blanco. Chris' parents and two youngest brothers joined us of more beach time with sand castles, the traditional name in the sand, lighthouse, beach cliff walks, smores, foil dinners, and a little beach nudity:) Oh, yes and that picture of the handsome devil gazing off at the ocean is poor Chris wishing the Pacific Ocean would have mercy on him and send back the skim board it just gobbled up. The kids loved having grandparents and uncles and were kept well entertained, and I can say I didn't mind a little break myself.


And the highlight of the trip was the "Baby Tigers" at the West Coast Safari park. Which boasts of an unsurpassed petting experience. We were all able to pet, feed and interact with two baby tigers and also 2 black cloud leopards. It was all a little surreal to have these exotic animals crawling on our laps. We didn't take many picture but enjoyed the experience. Our little Benjamin was in heaven even though the picture doesn't show it.
After the Oregon Coast we headed further south to stay a couple nights in the California Redwoods. We were all more or less impressed with the "big trees". But it kept coming to mind what my older sister told our grandparents when she was 3-5 years old "we got those back home":) But it is incredible to see how nature can endure the passage of time and tragedy of flood and fire.
After all this we were back home with a day to rest, some last minute school clothes shopping and sending Kaatlin and Nathanael off to full time public school, Seth and Laurel full home school and Benny sitting in on it all. We are back in the full swing of fall soccer for Seth, Kaatlin & Nathanael, clogging class, piano lessons and cub scouts and adjusting but loving every minute (when we take the time to remember we should be enjoying this stuff:)