Adam's mom and little sister, Katie, came to visit last week! Katie is about to enter her junior year at Tulsa University, where she's studying biochemistry, but she was back home in Houston for the summer. They decided to escape to Seattle for some cooler weather before she heads up to school.
They arrived on Tuesday night and for the next two days we just stayed local, checking out some parks that were on my summer bucket list. On Wednesday, we went to St. Edwards State Park in Kirkland. It's on the grounds of an old Catholic seminary with the most awesome castle playground.
On Thursday, we just went to the farm park in Redmond and had lunch with Adam at work.
And on Friday, we took a road trip to the Olympic Peninsula! We left at 9:00 and stopped halfway for groceries (aka a get your wiggles out break for toddlers) in Olympia, the state capitol. We got to the Lake Quinault Lodge, a historic inn run by the National Parks Service, at 1:00 and had a picnic lunch on the grounds.
After lunch, we wandered around the lodge for a while, marveling at the folks brave enough to swim in the freezing cold lake.
Then, we piled back in the van and quickly drove to the trail head for the Rain Forest Loop Trail, a easy one-mile hike through the Quinault Rain Forest.
Claire and Maggie both walked quite a bit of the trail and fell asleep as soon as we buckled them into their car seats. We drove to the other side of the lake to the largest Western Cedar in the world and took turns going to see it while watching the sleeping girls.
They continued napping the whole forty-minute drive to our final destination, the beach town of Seabrook.
We stayed in the cutest townhouse on main street. Seriously, check out the pictures from the rental website! We had frozen pizza and salad for dinner, then ventured out into the blustery night for ice cream bars from the little grocery store. There was live music in the town square, but we were so chilly we only lasted for one song. We gave the cold, sticky girls a warm bath and started the long process of trying to get them into bed after a late nap.
We woke up to foggy, gray weather on Saturday morning, but decided to walk down to the beach anyway.
It was beautiful in an eerie, desolate sort of way! Just as we were walking back home, it started to rain, so we hurried back inside to make sandwiches for lunch. Adam's mom graciously held down the fort during Maggie's nap while the rest of us went to the pottery studio across the street.
Claire painted a castle bank, which is adorably proud of, while Adam and I painted these little gnomes just because. We were able to pick up the finished pieces on our way out of town the next morning.
When Maggie woke up, we took the girls to the indoor pool and then had dinner at Mill 109, the town's only restaurant. It had a great selection of seafood and burgers. Thankfully, all that swimming wore Claire and Maggie out. Bedtime went much, much easier, with plenty of time for the grown-ups to chill and watch a movie.
The sun finally came out the next morning, so we headed down to the beach again after packing up.
We grabbed sandwiches from the deli counter at the grocery store for a picnic lunch and then hit the road for Seattle. We arrived just in time for the 5:00 Mass, had dinner at Chipotle, tucked our exhausted children into bed, unpacked, and took Adam's mom and sister to the airport in the morning. Whew!
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You are awesome.