Quinn's Lizard Joke

My little drama troupe

Lately the kids are very into putting on plays, musicals and puppet shows.  Friday they put on a series of fingerpuppet shows for me that were pretty hilarious.  I love seeing Beck's little toes poking out under the curtain and the way he sings his lines.  And Quinn is quite the improve artist!

Here is a bit of their artistry for your enjoyment.  :)

@Ruby Beach, WA

One of the venues I most looked forward to on our WA trip was going to Ruby Beach.  I had seen and heard so much about its amazingness....so I had high expectations and couldn't wait to get there our second evening of the trip, after we finished our Lake Quinault hikes.

The drive to the beach was beautiful.  You park in a lot and walk down a trail to the beach.  Our first view of the beach was lovely...until we noticed the hoards of people.  Yuck.  

We tried not to be too disappointed by the gazillions of people EVERYWHERE....kids running all over the place, foreigners talking super loudly, all that jazz....and the giant stacks of driftwood did take our focus for a while. They are pretty fabulous!  This picture doesn't even do the driftwood (or the crowds) justice.  In the background of this picture, you can see the most famous sea stack at Ruby Beach that is photographed most often.   The sea stacks were cool, but we had actually already seen some amazing ones on our past Cali trip, so these didn't rock our world. 

 Matt spent some time getting some great landscape shots while I walked in the chilly water and picked up rocks and sea treasures.  Beachcombing is one of my very favorite things, so I enjoyed that part so much.

 Matt got a sweet pano of me soaking in the ocean.

 And picking up treasures.

 I really love the frigidness of the Pacific ocean and those rocks.....Let's just say I filled my satchel fairly quickly, and my sweet husband carried them home for me in his carryon, which caused him to get hand-searched by security.  They don't put that tidbit of love and dedication in the wedding vows, but to me, that's amore!

 The rest of these pics look like we had the place to ourselves.  But we didn't.  Not even close.  The Mr just got crafty about composing his shots and found ways to cut out the riff-raff.  No disrespect meant to other beachgoers.  ;)

 I am used to muddy Mississippi-delta beach sand, so these rocks....rocked my world!!!

 Check out the rocks and the way they are formed.  You can see how the plates were pushed in different directions by the way the rock lines changed.

 I had also heard how great the tidepools were at Ruby Beach.  We did see some cool anemone and a snail.  And that was it.  I was a bit underwhelmed and it wasn't at all what I was expecting.

We decided to leave Ruby Beach and head for nearby Beach 4, where we hoped to see less people and better tidepools.

Around Here

It finally feels like summer break to us.  We have traveled or had lots of fosterbabies so much of the summer that it has not felt like slow summerness.  Which isn't bad, but we are just enjoying a week to finally slow down a bit!

Library trips and fresh books are always mandatory around here.  Lollipops are an added bonus!

Beck finally hit the weight mark to be able to take the 5 pt harness off and use his seat as a booster.  Now he can unbuckle himself, which is nice when we have extra babies with us.  He still needs help to buckle it.  

 Q is trying to teach him to jumprope.  He isn't excelling.  And he's determined to wear "shoe jammies" even though it is the hottest part of summer....He can't be convinced that it's too hot for them.  The boy loves his shoe jammies!

Then she put on quite a looooong jump rope demonstration.  

 Writing some lovenotes to encourage our peeps:

 The kids' favorite "slow morning" breakfast is Uncle Bob's hot 7 grain cereal.  I soak it overnight and then cook it in the morning.

 They eat it with a bowl of ice cubes to put in because I cook it boiling and it stays HOT!

 Nothing too exciting, but we like our slow, mellow days!  And we did have some busy times this week with Impact Back to school night and teaching Art Club tonight.

Monday was Impact Back to School Night!

We had fun shopping with our kiddo, who was just as sassy as Quinn and gave her a run for her money!  Nonetheless, we had a good time helping our girl pick out some new school clothes and supplies and then eating/playing at McDonalds!

Lake Quinault in the Olympic National Forest

Our first full day in WA we headed for the Olympic National Forest.  We stopped off at the Lake Quinault trailhead and got a book on PNW wildflowers (for me) and a pamphlet on types of trees (for Matt).  Then we headed out on an amazing hike called Valley of the Giants.  It was in the Quinault rainforest and the trees were HUGE old growth conifers!  We had a great time learning to tell the various trees apart and enjoying the beautiful, peaceful trail.

 The huge trees were the Douglas Firs and Sitka Spruce, Hemlock as well as some Red Cedars.  This valley has the world's largest Western Red Cedar, Sitka Spruce, and Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, and Mountain Hemlock.

 It was so tropical in the forest!  Moss and huge ferns everywhere.

 The weather was BEAUTIFUL!  We only sweated the tiniest bit, and only when we were in the sun.  It was perfect in the shade, and with all the huge trees, the understory was very shady.

 It was really neat to see the trees in various states of decaying.  You could see the heartwood so obviously in this tree.  I was glad to be hiking with someone who loves science and nature as much as me, because we made so many stops to just look at neat bits of flora.

 We learned to identify Douglas Firs by their pinecones, which have these little forked "ribbons" at the end of each seed pod.

 These teeeeny pinecones come from the giant Western red-cedar trees.  Amazing to see that such giant trees make such adorably tiny cones.

 We saw some birds, but no critters except for some slugs!  Of course we had to send snapchats home to our little slug-lovin' man!!

The tiger slugs were HUGE!

 I learned about thimble berries and ate my fill of them.  They are delish!!  There were blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries and raspberries all along the trail!

 Huge wild foxglove grew along the roads.

 The trail to the lake:

 Lake Quinault Lodge:

 The rain gauage....They get 15-16 feet of rain a year.