Finishing the Summer at Blake Island

Today, we finished off another summer at our beloved Blake Island.  This is an annual tradition that my kids and I look forward to every year.  For the first time ever, I let a friend come along since Riley left for college last week, leaving Lia without a cousin her age to hang out with.  As a result, I agreed to bring her friend, Erika, along and she turned out to be a be a great addition to the group.  Although Eric's family did come this year, we met up with Chris, Natalee, Brynn, and Trenton and enjoyed a wonderful two days and two nights out on the island.  We were blessed with wonderful weather Friday afternoon and evening and also Sunday morning.  Saturday was cooler and cloudy, but the sun broke out in the evening for our boat trip to Seattle.  As always, we had so much fun playing on the beach, hiking around the island, going to Seattle for dinner, and sleeping in our cozy tent.  Blake Island is just one of my happy places and I love that I get to share it every summer with my children at the close of summer.

August 29th:

After getting out to the island and setting up camp, we sat around the picnic tables and enjoyed dinner.  Here are all of the cousins, plus Erika, eating together.

As always, we took our family photos on the beach before the sun set.  Here are the six cousins that came this year.  Our group is definitely shrinking as more and more kids graduate from high school and head off to college.

My kids and me.

Erika joined the cousins for the "Toyota" picture.

August 30th:

The younger kids enjoyed climbing in the trees in the morning.

We then spent the rest of Saturday morning exploring the beach and playing hide-and-go-seek in the driftwood.  Here are the boys on a massive tree washed up since last summer.

Lia and Erika built their own fort out of driftwood.

My kids and me.

Emmett proudly standing behind his name that he wrote on the sand.

Ella laying next to her name that she made out of various items she found on the beach.

Logan and Trenton made a seesaw and did some beach yoga with Ella's and Emmett's help.

Logan and Trenton then agreed to do one of the craziest things I have seen...innertubing on the Puget Sound.  Since this water is so cold, this is something we have never done before, especially without wetsuits on.  The rest of us piled in the boat and just screamed and laughed the entire time while these boys bounced around on this freezing water.  Logan even fell in the water a few times!

After they were done, both boys decided to jump off the boat into the water.  It was so crazy to watch as I just couldn't imagine dipping a toe in this water, especially on a cool day.

After lunch, we hiked to the other side of the island to enjoy the beautiful sandy beach there.  Here is the one group picture that we managed to get all weekend long.

After we returned back to our campsite, we quickly grabbed our sweatshirts and piled in the boat to go to Seattle.  It was the perfect night for a boat ride.  Here is a picture of the four youngest kids in front as we approached the Seattle waterfront.

After docking the boat in a marina, we enjoyed walking along the waterfront for several blocks until we made it to Ivar's.  We enjoy eating fish and chips right alone the water.

After we were done eating dinner, the kids enjoyed feeding the seagulls our leftover french fries right off of the pier.  As bad as this is for the birds, this is a Seattle tradition.

We left Seattle right as the sun had set and made it back to Blake Island when it was almost dark.  We still managed to play two rounds of Capture the Flag before climbing into bed a little before 10 p.m.  We enjoyed breakfast Sunday morning before packing up our campground and heading to the boat to make the trip back home.  As always, it was a wonderful way to end our summer.  I can't believe that it is over...