Biking In Stanley Park

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  While in Vancouver we went biking in Stanley Park. My mom, dad, and I all got 7 speed cruiser bikes, and my brother got a city hybrid bike. Stanley Park had a cement trail that went along the water. There was a nice breeze and I think it was a perfect day to go biking. The only problem was that the trail was so crowded, it seemed that every single person in Vancouver was on the trail biking.

  One of my favorite places that we stopped at along the trail was an area kind of like a beach that had rocks covering every part of it. On top of some of the bigger rocks were stacked smaller rocks. The rocks were piled one on top of the other. That fact that they were all balanced made us all think there were medal rods in the middle of the rock towers. In fact, we were convinced of that until some guy tried to add to one of the towers and nocked the whole thing over. It was a good thing that he jumped out of the way because those rocks could have hurt him.

  Biking was one of my favorite things we did all month and it was a great way to end our amazing vacation. I can’t wait until we go back to Seattle, it was the best vacation ever!

Olympic National Park (Hoh Rain Forest)

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  Up until now I have been doing posts about entire days, but for my last 2 I will be doing posts about 2 very exciting things we did this last week of our vacation. Why? Well, we have been very busy between doing many activities and packing for our trip home.

  The first most exciting thing we did was go to Olympic National Park, or the Hoh Rain Forest. At the rain forest we went on 2 hikes. The first hike went around hundreds of years old trees covered in moss. It was so cool. It almost looked like one of those haunted forests in movies.

  The second hike we went on has this freezing river all around it. We crossed this little creek by hopping over stones. Once we got across the creek there was a small hill. Jacob and I were the first ones to climb over it. When we got to the top and look to the other side, we saw a fast flowing river. The river was freezing and I di not want to put my feet in it.

  The Olympic National Park was huge and we only got to see a small part of it. I can’t wait until we get to go back again sometime!

Days 14, 15, and 16

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  The last three days have been the exact opposite of the previous ones. On Day 14 we spent all morning relaxing and doing nothing. At 2:00 the nothingness ended. We went over to the Dyer’s house for a kid party. At first the party was 4 kids and my dad, but Trevor came shortly after the party had started. At first we watched Harrison run around in a giant fabric fire truck pulling Jacob and Avery around. Harrison called his truck a “bus”.

  For dinner we went to a Greek restaurant and ordered take out. We took our food to a park where we played around until the sun started to set, then we got some ice cream at Molly Moon’s (we really like it there)..

  All we did on Day 15 was, well, nothing. I spent most of my day reading and playing Minecraft. Jacob did the same. We used this day as a break to prepare ourselves for the restless, busy week ahead of us.

  Day 16 started out with a delicious breakfast to celebrate our final day in Seattle. I had bananas foster French toast and it was delicious! I didn’t eat lunch I was so full from breakfast.

  Later in the afternoon my mom and I took a final trip to City Target. While there we talked about where we could fit a City Target and Trader Joe’s in Tampa.

  I may not be able to blog for a couple days, but when I do blog it will be very exciting and worth the wait. Tomorrow morning we leave for Forks at 5:30a.m. Stay Tuned! 

Days 11, 12, and 13

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  These last three days have been so busy!

  On Day 11 we went to a hand specialist for my mom, where we found out that she was going to live, yeah!! We celebrated this special occasion by going to Molly Moon’s for some ice cream. It was just a delicious as it was the first time we went there.

  Later in the evening we went over to the Dyer’s to play some croquet and eat dinner. The croquet game was intense and I almost won! I ended up coming in second place after Tia and Trevor. For dessert we had a delicious tart made from the berries we got at the farmer’s market, it was delicious.

  On Day 12 we started off the day with some delicious hand forged doughnuts. After breakfast we headed to discovery park where we hiked to a beach with a historic light house on it. The beach was very rocky and not a pretty as beaches in Florida, but it was still cool.

  After hiking we went to an outdoor restaurant at a marina where we looked at big expensive boats and some pretty awesome sail boats. One boat in particular was really big  and had almost 4 stories. I asked if Bill Gates had a boat like that. My dad said that Bill Gates probably has a boat that makes this boat look like a dingy.

  That night the parents went out to dinner and the kids stayed with a babysitter. We had lots of fun and many laughs, but by the time the parents got back we were really ready for bed. 

  On Day 13 we headed off the Anacortes to look at sail boats that we might possibly want to rent in the future. The drive to get there was very long, but we got to go in a car ferry across a bay. At the boat marina we looked at a sail boat and a really big expensive boat that my brother wants to buy when he gets older. It was less like a boat and more like a house.

  On our road trip we also stopped by the beach Deception Pass, which is a really big bridge that goes over water. At the beach we climbed around some rocks and tried not to fall or slip. My mom and brother also collected many colorful rocks while my dad and I climbed around on the large rocks.

  For dinner we got tacos and ate them at a park near our house. It was very nice outside and the weather was great. It was the kind of weather we won’t be experiencing until November in Florida.

  Today we are having a kid party. I wonder what kind of crazy things we are going to do?

Days 9 and 10

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I would like to start out by saying that from now on I most likely will be blogging about 2 days at a time because we are usually very busy. My parents are working most mornings so I don’t have easy access to the computer. But, whenever I have spare time I always will write a blog! 🙂

Day 9 was very exciting. My mom fell down 2 stairs in our house and dislocated her finger. At first we thought it was no big deal, but after a visit to the doctors an x-ray proved that it was a big deal. To put my mom’s finger back in place we went to a Swedish Emergency Room. It didn’t take very long, but the whole time we were wondering why they did not have Swedish Fish or Swedish Meatballs (*wink Lauren *wink).  We started out planning to go to Discovery Park, but that changed after the incident. We went to a spaghetti restaurant with great meatballs and AMAZING ice cream after leaving the ER. My mom is doing much better now. She just has to put tape around her finger and ice it every 4 hours for 30 minutes when she is not sleeping.

Today (Day 10) we went to see Despicable Me 2 in the morning with Tia and Avery. Later on in the day we went to a food truck rally at the Queen Anne Farmer’s Market. There were delicious berries that we ate a whole flat of. Also at the market was a guy playing music and Harrison was his biggest fan. Harrison would stand right in front of him and strum on his ukulele he brought from home. It was so cute!

Tomorrow is Friday! I can’t wait to find out what we have planned!!

Days 7 and 8

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These two days can go together because on both days we did a number of fun activities. I will start with Day 7.

Today we went to EMP, a music and science-fiction museum. I know, it’s a weird combination but it turned out that they went well together. There were many exhibits to look at but I think my whole family can agree that the music rooms were the best.

Basically, the music rooms were small rooms with instruments you could play in them. You had 10 minutes in each room to mess around with the instruments. I likes the room with a whole band in it. I played the keyboard, Jacob played the guitar, my dad played the drums, and my mom filmed us. We didn’t play the same song, but at one point we all kind of played along to a slow, hip-hop version of Ode to Joy.

We all agreed that the drum room was not fun. First of all, it was so loud. Second of all, none of us had a clue on how to play the drums correctly so it sounded horrible.

Flash forward 24 hours and it’s Day 8. Today we went on an underground tour of the old part of Seattle. To be specific, it was Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour of Pioneer Square in Seattle. If you are ever in Seattle I recommend you do the tour, it is both historic and entertaining. You go in the old tunnels under the sidewalks in front of the old store fronts. I won’t tell you the entire tour because then there would be no point in you going on the tour and that defeats the point.

For dinner we rented a boat on Lake Union during some kind of sail boat race. On the boat we watched the sail boats and ate pizza.

Those 2 days were pretty fun. I can’t wait to find out what we are doing tomorrow!

Day 6

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You are most likely wondering why I skipped day 5. Well, the answer is because we did nothing super exciting. We walked to the park and got some ice cream, that’s all. I will include pictures of us at the park in the next picture post.

Now on to what we did today, day 6. Today we went to Mt. Rainier! The day started out super cold causing us to bring layers to the National Park. It turned out that after our first stop to view the mountain, it started to warm up. There was still a cold breeze, but it was hot.

Our first hike was a short trail through the meadows. The entire hike we had an amazing view of the gigantic Mt. Rainier, it was very beautiful. While hiking through the meadows my mom kept saying how she expected to see tele-tubbies pop up in the meadow. My dad said if that happened he would kick them in the tubby. Before we started to hike we read a thing that told us that if we encountered a bear or a mountain lion we should:

  1. Do not run or turn your back.
  2. Gather children with adults.
  3. Stand in group.
  4. If the lion approaches make yourself seem scary.
  5. Back away slowly.
  6. If attacked (this is my dad’s favorite part) fight back aggressively!

It went on to list methods for attacking the bears and mountain lions.

Our second hike was to a place with very old and large trees. To give you an idea on how big the trees were, if all 4 of us held hands and wrapped around the base of the tree we would be just long enough to go around the base of the trees.

We planned on doing more hikes, but we were low on gas and it was getting late. Also there was a long drive home. We had a little bit of a gas adventure on the way out. We know that the next gas station was outside the park and we had no idea how far away that was. It was a close call but we got to a gas station in time. At the gas station my dad estimated we could have gone about 10 more miles before we were completely out of gas.

The car ride home felt like it lasted a week so when we got home we all went to bed after a meal of spaghetti.

Tomorrow we might go to a museum, sounds fun!