Camping at Seaside with the Elenbaas Family

We went camping in Seaside, Oregon this last weekend. We left on Friday and got home on Tuesday night. It was a great trip, our annual camping trip with the Elenbaas family.

 
On our way out of town we stopped at a gas station for some ice and saw this car with an interesting license plate. I'll let you decide what it means.

We needed to stop for lunch and to get the kids out around Olympia so we got off at the capitol. Parking was...well interesting with Hank attached to the back of the van. We enjoyed lunch downtown by the lake below the capitol. There was a huge grass lawn adjacent to the path around the lake. Across the street was a cool water park, but we didn't have the time to go enjoy it.

There were little fish in the lake and the kids decided to count them.

Back to the car we go. We stopped shortly in Longview for gas and then made it the rest of the way without incident.

We went swimming 3 or 4 times while we were in Seaside. This is one of the kids favorite activities. Once some kid lost a chunk of doody at the side of the pool and then another kid yacked so we had to get out and come back the next day while they cleaned.

Levi loved the water again and this time enjoyed playing with the kickboard. There were a couple of moments where I thought that he swallowed too much water and was going to ralph; thankfully he did not.

Julie was a much better swimmer than I remember from before. She was chasing me and I could hardly get away. She's turning into quite the little fish.

Solon is getting ready to toss Josh into the air.

OK, so it's not the 4th of July, but the shirts are still clean at this point. There's Hank hanging out in the background. Gabe is all smiles. Levi and Gabe were great boys on the trip.

This playground was a very short walk from our campsite. Levi surprised me the entire time he was here. He climbed all over these structures and ropes like he was a monkey. And, after watching Jacob and Josh, he even slid down the pole.

As you can see, the beach was a little cold on the Saturday. Levi needed to wear his coat because of the wind. This guy was riding a dune buggy skateboard while being pulled by the power of his kite. Levi ended up in the ocean which was his week long dream. Coat and all. Joanna was not pleased with me because she didn't want him to get wet and I was letting him play in the waves. He absolutely loved it, but I ended up having to strip him down, bundle him up in a blanket, and carry him to the van. Our beach trip that day ended a bit early. It was a bit too windy to eat lunch there anyway. Sorry Joanna.

Here is Alyssa being a cutie at the beach.

The boys and girls took turns doing the dishes. The boys were thrilled about this.

On Sunday we went into town. The kids rode the carousel and went on the bumper cars. We ate lunch on the promenade and then found a couple of geocaches at the beach.

Lewis, Clark, Seaman the dog, and the Allinson's

 

Sara took some family photos at the beach for us and this is the best one Solon got with our camera. I like it. Thanks guys.

Movies at  night for the adults. We watched Fool's Gold one night and The Bucket List the next. I went to bed early on the first movie night because I had already seen it and was a bit tired. The boys slept in well every day. We Josh and Kenzie were little we would be up at the crack of dawn with the kids while camping. Well, it was a great trip. Until the next one...