WA Part 3, Camano Island

After our Argosy boat trip, we headed up to Kevin and Cary's beach house on Camano Island for a few days.  What a treat to get to stay with them in their beautiful home!  They were gracious hosts and we  had a wonderful time.  Their house is on a very calm bay where lots of driftwood piles up on the shore (which made for really cool family pics!).

Bailey, Addy, Thomas, Matt and Papa all headed
down to the water right away.

The Clark's beach house

Kevin pulled out the pool and umbrella so the littles could go for a swim.

When the tide was out, the beach was a great place to explore!

Thomas, Matt, and Papa

Looking for treasure!  Bailey came home with a bag
of beautiful shells and rocks.

Did you know that rocks can be
shaped like hearts?  This is Cary's
heart shaped rock collection.

Lovin' on Uncle Shoe

Matt, Dad, Mom and Becca

Peanut gets some lovin' from Bailey.  She loves to kiss and hug her little brother or sister already!

Kevin set out crab pods and caught crab for us to eat two nights for dinner!  He gave us lessons on how to crack open the crab legs.  The fresh crab was delicious!

Checking out the crab before he became our dinner.

Kevin explained that he could only catch male crabs.
Any females that were caught were thrown back into
the water because they need to keep having more baby
crabs!

Bailey wanted to kiss the crab!

Beautiful backyard with a beautiful view and my bro,
Matt!  Ladder ball was played many times and we
roasted marshmallows in the fire pit one night.

This is Jack.  He was our buddy.  He
loved to play fetch and went down to
the water with us every chance he got.

Picture time!

It was a bit tricky trying to get 3 girls to look at us, smile, not squint, etc.  As you can see, we got some silly pictures, but then some awesome family pictures!

Parting shot:  We finally got some fresh Washington berries for Jenny (we told her all about them and then didn't buy any until the night before we were leaving)!  We ate berries that night and the next morning like crazy.  As you can see, we think Milly loved the berries too!

Thanks so much to our family and friends for a great trip!

WA Part 2, Argosy Trip

We headed back to Seattle to meet up with my dad's childhood friend, Kevin, to take his Argosy boat cruise to Tillicum Village.  If you are ever in Seattle, we highly recommend doing an Argosy cruise!!  It was a beautiful day and we had a great time!

Space Needle

Light house with snow covered Mount Rainier
 in the background

Thomas was totally enjoying using Jenny's new
 camera to take pictures!

Headed over to Blake Island and Tillicum Village

Snuggle bug

It was neat to learn about the Native Americans from the Northwest and to have our own personal tour guide.  Thanks, Kevin!

I just have to throw this picture in because it makes me
laugh.  It looks like Bailey is already begging for money.
"Please Daddy, I just need a few dollars!"

We got to eat a delicious lunch.  This is how they
baked the salmon.

Love this Bailey Girl!

On the boat ride back, Addy was being silly!

Milly was making me laugh because
she's got one leg resting on my belly.

Soaking in the sea air or licking up the sea air??

What a fun excursion and day!

Okay, we're going to have to do 3 posts for this trip...  Jenny got a new camera and most of these pics came from her camera (thank you, Jenny!).  

Washington Trip Part 1

Warning:  Lots of pictures to come (so many I decided to break them up into two posts)!  

We headed up to Washington State for the first week of August for a mini Shoemaker reunion.  We had a great time and enjoyed catching up with my grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins and their families.

Papa with Bailey and Addy--
they were so excited to see each other (Papa included)!!

Thomas and Matt were bonding as well.  :)

Papa and his granddaughters

We headed to Point Defiance Park in Tacoma for a picnic lunch, to visit the zoo and aquarium, and to check out the water.

Lunchtime!

Bailey, Ava, and Addy--sweet cousins

The sharks were awesome!

Matt and Thomas decided to try the Hurricane Tunnel.
We thought their hats would blow off and they would
 get knocked over, but nothing really happened
 but blowing air.  Bummer!

This tiger was asleep until we decided to make some noise!

We normally go here to find crabs under rocks,
but the tide was in.  Just beautiful!

My amazing and handsome husband!

Sweet Milly along for the ride.

Instead of looking under rocks, we threw rocks into the water.
We were a little nervous the girls would fall in and the water was cold!

We enjoyed a BBQ dinner back at Aunt Nicki and Uncle Don's house.  Yummy food and good company!  (So sad we didn't take some family pics that night with our WA family.)

Silly face #1

Silly face #2

Great Gramie and Milly

The next day we took a trip to Seattle, not realizing it would take us 2 hours to get there and 2 1/2 hours to get home (normally it's about an hour trip)!

At the Locks to check out the
Fish Ladder and watch the boats.

We made it to Pike Place Market and it was crazy busy!
  We got to show Jenny the flying fish and the original Starbucks.
We had a yummy lunch and bought honey sticks and cherries
 at the Market. (And cool drinks from another Starbucks just
down the street.)

We headed back to Gramie and Papa's for dinner and popsicles.

Papa Shoe, Addy, Bailey, Gramie and Milly

We love you, Papa and Gramie!

Popsicles--yes, please!

We were happy for one last visit with Jami, Jason, Cole, Blake and Aunt Nicki.

Bailey and Blake doing puzzles "together"

Blake, Jami, and Bailey

Bailey and Cole

More to come...