Summer Adventures

Summer is in full swing here in the Pacific Northwest. It arrived early this year...now we just have our fingers crossed it will stay until September.

We've doing our best to take advantage of the awesome weather + summer vacation.

This past weekend we took the kids to East Montlake Park near the University of Washington for a little walk adventure. It's the little area you see in Lake Washington when you are driving on the 520 bridge. We were greeted by a puddle of water, which was then followed by a muddy patch, which then turned into a whole long muddy trail.

We plowed ahead, making the best of it. Mud can't hurt ya, right? and Shane was lovin' it. At one point Shane took a step into a puddle and ended up waist deep in mud. He quickly got himself out with an amazed look on his face and couldn't stop talking about the leg he lost in the mud.

Adalyn rode pretty, either on my back or Daddy carrying her. I think the only mud she got on her was a little splash on her forehead.

Here are our feet after the walk:

It really doesn't capture the full mess we all were. I in flip flops and the one wrong step Kenny made.

We saw a blue heron up really close (Shane LOVES those birds), a turtle, a HUGE bald eagle hanging out on a tree, jumping fish, big boats, and kayaks and canoes. A fun summer adventure!

The weekend before that we explored Luther Burbank Park on Mercer Island. This was a beautiful park with lots of areas to explore. The play ground is currently under construction, which didn't make the kids to happy at first, but we were able to distract them with the dog park. We didn't bring our dogs with us, but the kids had a blast watching all the other dogs play in Lake Washington.

This coming weekend we plan on hitting the tide pools at Richmond Beach with the Seattle Aquarium Beach Naturalist program. 

So many parks and fun places to explore and with a short amount of nice weather we need pack it all in.