belfair state park

In July, we went camping with the Chris&Myra and their bunch of boys out to Belfair State Park. The beauty of camping so close is that the kids don't have to sit thru a long car ride, and you can always go back if you forgot something! We also had Pat & Kristy, Andy & Jessica, and John&Tanna and clan come visit us on Sunday. It wasn't quite as hot as it was last time we were there (approaching 100 degrees two years ago), but it was nice and still warm.

Of course the creek was always a crowd pleaser:


Best friends:


Three amigos:

Funny story behind this flag: Otto found this flag and both him and Jamie were totally attached to it, fighting over it several times. Finally, on the day we were to leave, we tell Jamie that he is going to have to part with the flag and give it back to Otto before we leave since he was the one to find it. A few minutes later he is in his carseat with the flag (we were not even near ready to go yet) and says to me "Mom, let's go!!". Apparently, he thought we could make a break for it...
Wading out in the water:

Some cute pics of Isaac:


And Abby:
This was our own version of Iwo Jima (it was the best we could do):

Here Pat and Kristy are playing, well, fetch with my daughter (just kidding, thinking of a line out of Knocked Up). It's totally acceptable to play fetch with a one year old, they think it's cool, and well, Kristy was helping to fetch the rocks too!!
Abby gives the rock back to Pat and he throws again:
It was fun trip, thanks to everyone who shared it with us!

4th of july

Okay, I'm going to attempt to blog about July (so I can get to august) over the next few days. So here goes:

On the 3rd of july we went to Chad's parents house for BBQ. All his family was there plus some neighbors. Anthony did most of cooking so of course it was awesome food! Unfortunately, Anthony also made us some awesome mojitos and that is a whole 'nother story, which I will not go into. Later that evening we went down to my parents boat and watched the fireworks display from there. My cousins and aunt & uncle were also there, as well as Pat & Kristy who sat with us on the dock.

Kate (such a nice expression!):

Walter and neighbor girl:

Independence girl:


Aiden (before his cheeks got too big for his face - don't worry, Aiden, you're still cute!):

Amalia (too pretty!):

Jamie finished almost the whole thing:

The yummy chicken skewers:

Okay, this is making me hungry!

The fireworks, which I didn't really get to enjoy much since Abby and Jamie were freaking out:


Cousing Gabby and uncle Rick:

On the fourth, we went over to my parents in the evening to do a few fireworks with the kids. They didn't even really like them, I just wanted some pictures for a scrapbook page, which I got, so mission accomplished (is that wrong???).

Sydney and dad doing a sparkler:

Jamie did a sparkler too but really didn't like it when it started to "pop" at the end:

Hey, I like sparklers!


The kids did like trying the pop-its!

Trying to stomp on them (they didn't work so well)!

Ocean Crest

Back in June, we ventured out to Ocean Crest, a hotel a bit up the coast from Ocean Shores, in a "town" called Moclips. We went with my sister and her family and stayed in a room that slept 8 and had a full kitchen. The kids loved playing in the pool and the hottub (all indoors), but there are no pictures because my camera always fogged up with the humidity. But we did go down to the beach too, and although it was too cold to play in the water, it was a beautiful and I got some good pictures. The Carrie&Jason left on Sunday, but we stayed one more day and went to see the sunset Sunday night down at the beach (which is where my "cool edited pic" was from). Here are the pictures from our trip:

this is the stairway that we take down to the beach:
it was a bit windy....
so we flew our kite (don't ask me what Chad is muttering to the kite):
the engineers are trying to figure something out...they determined that the string was not tied off...I determined that it was (now who is the real engineer?!)
our $9.99 costco kite, it was fun for about 5 min then looking at got pretty boring...
Sydney tries to show Abby the kite but Abby only thinks it's about her unkempt hair...
(also notice the difference in the size of feet in the photo above - they are only 9 months apart!)
Jamie tries out the kite:
No more fluffy hair please...
Carrie takes Abby for a walk out to the water (which was aways!):
My favorite pics of Jamie:

failed family portrait:
the best of the lot:
Pics from our view of the sunset:


Here's a pic of the little duplex we stayed in. My family used to stay here when I was a teenager so I was a little scared of the quality of the room, but it really wasn't bad! And for only $150 a night it was actually a really good deal considering how many people it slept....we may be looking for someone to share it with us again :)
More of that unkempt hair...

a cool edited photo

Okay, so this photo originally looked like this:


I tweaked a few things (like saturation) then saved a copy. To the copy, I changed the exposure to reveal the sand, then saved that. With both copies open in PSE, I put the lighter one on top of the darker one, then with the brush tool, I "revealed" the darker sky underneath, and finally blended the water's edge to get rid of any harsh lines. Pretty cool huh?