I took Ada to the children’s museum in Bellingham a couple weeks ago with our good friends, Jessica, Owen & Jimmy. It’s a small room with several interactive sections for the kids such as an art room, woodland scene, stop-motion camera, building blocks, and more. It’s geared for a little younger audience but all the kids were easily entertained for over an hour.
We had lots of fun at the Logos picnic this year. Ada spent most of the time running around, seeing the animals, climbing the playground, and playing on the giant inflatable slide.
I put the picture of the round hay bales in because I asked Ada if she could tell me what shape they were and she yelled “toilet paper!”
The second to last weekend in July we drove up to Artist Point because we heard it was open (the snow melted enough). The drive up to Mt. Baker was gorgeous, I often forget just how beautiful this place really is (with or without snow). We stopped at the ranger station, a couple waterfalls, Picture Lake, Artist Point, and Heather Meadows. Ada enjoyed running around and playing in the snow, especially throwing snowballs at Mommy 🙂
We spent half of a day at the Birch Bay Waterslides. Ada was hesitant to try the slides at first but seemed to enjoy them after awhile. Todd mostly took her down the slides (I did a couple with her) and she liked the double inner tube one the best. Our friends did all the slides, including the one that drops straight down. You couldn’t pay me to do that one 🙂
That afternoon we cleaned up and headed to a beautiful outdoor wedding of a friend of ours. Afterwards we drove back to camp for s’mores and one last campfire. We discovered that s’mores taste really good with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup sandwiched between the marshmallow and graham crackers.
During the middle of July we camped with some old friends from our Trinity Western days. They have two cute, adventurous boys a few years older than Ada. We found a playground the first morning there and then drove to the beach for lunch where we spent the rest of the afternoon playing on the mudflats, building sandcastles and flying kites. We saw crabs, blue herons, tiny fish, lots of sea grass and clams. We ended the day eating ice cream at a little yellow shop with a pretty garden.
We also shared a campsite with a family of skunks, five babies and their mom. All my pictures are blurry, they were always on the move around dusk (and I was at a safe distance). Thankfully we did not smell them or have any close encounters 🙂
Every summer Bellingham has an All Comers Track Meet that runs every Monday evening for the season. The little kids get to run two races, a 50 meter hurdles and a 50 meter dash. Ada participated last summer and had fun, so we tried it again (we only made it to one this year). Todd had to run along side her to keep her going, especially with the hurdles since she would stop at each one and gingerly step over them. She didn’t win any prizes other than a green participant ribbon. It’s all for fun!
I forgot to post these before our California trip so they are a couple months old.
Our last full day in California was spent in beautiful Big Bear with my parents. We had a nice time walking around part of the lake, watching animals at the Big Bear Alpine Zoo (rehabilitation/release center) and strolling through the village shops.
I think Ada enjoyed her two weeks in California and we look forward to the next time! 🙂
My Dad has a beautiful ‘65 Mustang that he purchased last year. After months of hearing about it, Todd & I finally got to take a spin in this classic car 🙂
The kids spent another day playing outside on the slip ‘n slide. They had so much fun which you can clearly see on their faces 🙂
If you ever get a chance to visit LA, the Science Center is lots of fun and FREE! We paid $2 a person to see the Endeavour exhibit but it was a small price to pay to see a real space shuttle close-up. They have a cool aquarium tunnel with divers swimming through, lots of hands-on exhibits (like wind speed & infrared) and of course the shuttle. We did not have time to see all 3 stories, probably because we had four kids with various meltdown periods 🙂
La Casa Blanca 