Our Vacation Highlights in Pictures

I meant to post yesterday about our vacation but we were still just recovering from being gone for a week.  In case you missed it, my family flew from Ohio to Washington state to stay with my sister’s family for a week.  Originally we were to go with my mother and her husband, but mom broke her leg in our first airport (read more here), so my husband and I flew with 6 children while my mom went into surgery.  She’s slowly recovering, but it will be a long road as she broke her femur – ouch!

We had a wonderful time on our vacation with 14 people in one small house.  A bit loud and crazy, but fun nonetheless.  Between our two families we had ten children ages 10 years to 10 months old - the ages by the end of the week were: 10, 10, 7, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 10 mos.  I’m going to share some pictures from the trip with a bit about each one, so here we go! Early in our trip we walked to a park on base (my brother-in-law is in the Army).  It was a bit rainy but everyone enjoyed themselves.  There were not enough swings to go around – all of those children are mine or my sisters and the rest had to wait their turn. Of course, that meant they could climb the big rock in the park . . .or the little one.  Caleb wasn’t all that thrilled with the rock.  He preferred the swing:Another day we drove to Seattle to visit the aquarium and Pike’s Market.  It was raining, again.  There is an amazing set of touchpools at the aquarium with many creatures to touch – snails, hermit crabs, sea anemones, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, starfish, and more.  The water is pumped in from the sound, so it was icy cold.Caleb enjoyed riding along in the Moby Wrap with mommy.  He noticed some of the fish, including this lionfish – who shared a tank with a blue lobster.There were some birds (puffin), sea lions, sea otters, and more to see.  There were even these crazy monkeys:Oh wait, those were just the cousins acting crazy.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to get all 10 children together in one picture?  This was my best attempt that day.  Pike’s Market was amazing and packed, even on a weekday.  Some of the things were beautiful, others smelly (like the seafood stands).  I hate crowds and this was really stressful for me, but the children enjoyed themselves.  I just kept counting heads to make sure we didn’t lose anyone.Back at the house the cousins had fun playing, coloring, playing checkers, and generally just being together.  The boys played Legos and introduced my husband to the fun of the Ninjago sets that have guys on spinners.  There was even a night of smores around the fire. One day my sister even tried to kill me – we went to the Nisqually Refuge to walk and walk and walk and walk . . . my pregnant self just about kicked the littlest ones out of the stroller so I could get a ride.    We saw well over 50 wooly bear caterpillars and a lot of large slugs along one part of our walk.  That was neat, except for the fact that every few feet half the children would drop to the ground in a huddle to see the newest specimen.  It made for a very long walk. 

We finished out the week celebrating Joseph and Daniel’s birthdays.  Friday Joseph turned 7 and tomorrow Daniel will be 4.  Where does the time go?

Okay, if you’ve read the post this far you are either related to me somehow or you’re just really patient!  I think I’ll stop here and maybe post a bit about the flights later on.  Right now the kids are waiting for me to come read some more Pollyanna to them.