Annual Harris Beach trip

We have made it a tradition to go to Harris Beach every summer. Most years we get a lot of my extended family to come. This year we had a couple of my aunts and uncles, and my parents, my brother Paul, and my sisters Tracie and Kris. Along with one of my cousins and his wife. It was tons of fun.

Amber is at a hard age for camping because she isn't walking yet, so she was held a lot.  She is funny. For some reason she loves Young Sooks dad. Always reaches out for him to be held. He loved it too. Pretty sweet.

We got glow sticks and Paula brought these silly glow glasses for the kids. 

This playground was right behind our campsite. We will ALWAYS reserve a site in Loop A. This was so nice to have so close. The kids played there most of the time we were at the site. It was great!

 Amber loved the beach, until the sand got in her eyes. :( 

 The boys had fun with this skim board for a while. 

 Poor Amber would get sand in her eyes then rub them with her sandy hands. 

 Tracie got this idea to bring an exercise ball to bury half way in the sand, and you do jumps off of it. Well, she over filled it with air and it didn't last long. 

Paula thought it was hilarious. 

 Dallin digging a hole to burry himself in.

 Burying Tanner in the sand, and turning him into a merman. 

 Tanner was in a very vulnerable place being buried. 

 Totem pole.

 Grandpa helping build something. 

 It's a volcano, in case you didn't know. 

 Love this smile.

Muscle Men.

 Giant Spider.

 Flying her kite.

 BFFs, Whitney and Amber

 Nate got a Dutch oven for his birthday. We had fun making food in it. Made a peach cobbler one night, and the next we made cheese chicken casserole. Yum. Yum.

 Cousins hiking.

 Amber's version of hiking.

They found lots of banana slugs along the path. 

 We went down the beach a low tide to see what cool creatures we could find. I have always loved star fish. 

 We found one on the sand that we could pick up. She wasn't sure if she wanted to hold it or not.

 Cutie. She is still talking about how much fun the beach was.

 Heading back to camp.

Amber helping deflate our AeroBed. She got a kick out of that.

 Paul thought it would be fun to put chips all over his chest and lay down to see if seagulls would come eat off of him. They were scared of him. As soon as he jumped up though and the chips fell to the ground they were all over it. 

 Who knew messing with seagulls were so fun. 

My Artist

Dallin was born a gifted artist. He has always been very precise when coloring; always in the lines. He can copy things very well. One Sunday we had my siblings over and my brother Paul drew a picture of a bird and my sister Kris colored it in. Dallin thought it was so cool, and wanted to make one of his own. So he copied it. You can see that it looks pretty good. 

Dallin's birthday Party

Dallin got spoiled this year. He had a party with his cousins in WA, and then he got to go to Chuck E Cheese with some other cousins. And then he had a friend party! Too much fun. We kept it really simple though. We just played baseball at a park and had a piñata.

 Ava, the only girl in the picture, is one of the girls I watched during the school year. She was the only girl that showed up, and she was tons of fun; super fast running bases, or chasing someone.

 Nate was the pitcher for some of them.

 Dallin wanted M&Ms on his cake. We didn't even do a real cake. We did a two layered brownie with cookies 'n cream ice cream in the middle, with frosting and M&Ms on top. Pretty tasty, but I needed to cook the brownies better. If you like gooey brownies, you would have loved this. I loved it. Unfortunately, I dropped the leftover pieces in the dirt. :(

 The birthday boy up to bat.

 Ava running the bases, with one shoe on. Lost the other while running.

 Beating up the homemade piñata. The kids and I put it together, and I worried it would either break too easily, or it would be too difficult. It was actually pretty perfect. Only one kid didn't get a chance to hit it.

 Tanner with some of his school buddies. 

Amber's 1st Birthday

Pre Cake pictures. 

 I think she might like cake a little. 

 Ok, she is crazy about cake. 

Chuck E Cheese

Dallin really wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese for his birthday, and since we were going to be somewhere where there was one around his birthday, we went. He also celebrated with his aunt and uncle and cousins in Vancouver since the kids stayed at their house for the weekend while Me, Nate and Amber went to Olympia for the wedding. Mickie blogged about their weekend here.

We went up to Washington so I could photograph a wedding, and we stopped in Eugene at Chuck E Cheese.

 Doing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, and getting free tickets from Chuck E.

What a fun place for the kids. Glad we don't have one close though. Too expensive to go there often.

 Turning in tickets to buy prizes.

 Picking out prizes.

Earrings and Graduation

Ashlyn has been bugging us about getting her ears pierced. Not sure where she is getting the idea. I showed her a YouTube video of a 2 year old getting her ears pierced, and not even that scared her. She asked to watch it again and again. Wierdo.

 So we bought her some sticker earrings, that she seems to be totally satisfied with. 

Love this crooked smile. 

And these EYES! I can stare at this girl all day, she is such a doll face.

 Dallin graduated from Kindergarden last week. He has had a good year. Turns out he is kind of a smart kid. :)

 Here is his wonderful teacher Mrs. Einck. We hope he gets another great teacher for 1st grade.

The sang some songs they have learned this ear. They learned quite a lot of sign language. I was impressed. Not that the signs in the song in the video are real sign language. The other songs they performed had American Sign Language in them.