Birch Bay 3: Day at the Beach and the Drive Home

The weather before the kids showed up was 60 and sunny.  On the day they arrived it was 40 and stormy. Finally Friday morning we had sun so we took them to the beach.  They thought it was pretty sweet to play by the ocean, and Rock told everybody that it was his lifelong dream to visit the ocean.

You'll never feel safer in your life than you will with a goggle wearing Superman watching over you.

Even though we had sun it was still a little chilly, which meant the cape came in handy.

Jens loved the beach and kept trying to walk right in to the water.

She also discovered all the shells and rocks and thought those were just tops.

We made sand castles, skipped rocks and searched for shells.

It was hard to tell for sure, but I think the kids really liked playing there.

Well, Ryker did throw a tantrum because he wanted to make a contemporary castle while Rock chose to go with a modern design.  (Thankfully that isn't true, but DeA didn't want me to tell people that Ryker wanted to pee in the bucket and was told no)

Here we are deciding which of the shells is the coolest while Ryker contemplates a swim.

Jens was in heaven with all the rocks, shells, sand and seagulls. 

There's our happy Ryker.

I think those goggles might have been a little tight.

After the beach we went to get the kids some ice cream.  They all chose chocolate chip cookie dough instead of the far superior lemon meringue pie.

Jens especially loved her ice cream and threw a tantrum whenever DeA had the gall to try and take a bite.

"Mmm...sweet, delicious ice cream..."

"

Just imagine how much happier they'd all look with lemon meringue pie ice cream.  They're happy now, but not lemon meringue pie happy.

"Mom, how is Jensley breathing through the ice cream?"

Saturday morning came too quickly and before we knew it we were on our way home.  Four and a half hours is a long time for little guys to ride in the car so we made a stop at Chuck E. Cheese's.  Rock was prepared for anything and everything.

They loved that Jensley was now big enough to ride with them.

So very, very happy.

The kids played really hard and so by the time the pizza came they were starved.

The natives were getting restless about the time we made it to Leavenworth so we stopped at the park and let them kill two cheeseburgers and a dozen nuggets while running their little hearts out.

Ryker was disappointed that they didn't have ketchup but discovered a new love with "Chinese ketchup", also known as sweet 'n sour sauce.

At one point Jens stuffed a whole chicken nugget into her mouth.  She never choked and it never came back out, so I guess she figured out how to chew and swallow it.

It's still in there, just gradually getting smaller.

We made it home about 8pm and let the kids play with Huddy before putting them to bed.  And that ends the story of our Journey to Birch Bay and back.  Trust me, the actual trip was way better than me trying to tell you about it.  Especially since blog posts like this are really just the new way for people to show off slides from their vacation.