Bainbridge Island and our last week in Seattle | Summer 2015 Road Trip

    One week home and I have finally gotten through all of the pictures from the trip and even made a small book of all our trip pics (35% of at Blurb through tomorrow!).  As I was in the middle editing, I grew a great appreciation for my photographer friends who do a lot more editing than I and pour through a great deal more of pictures than me too.  Hats off to you, that job is not for me.  :)  This past week, most of my non-kid waking hours have been glued to my computer (and neglecting the husband a bit).  It's important to me to stay caught up, so I was very motivated, but basically what I'm trying to say is that there is a lot of boring and tedious work that goes in to making my life look so glamorous and fun on the blog and in my picture books.  I think most people know that, but just in case!  Okay, drum roll for the last blog about our trip.....

  The morning after Mike got in town, we were on our way to Bainbridge Island.  We were  crossing our fingers hoping we had enough time to grab Stumptown before hopping on the 10:40 ferry.  Turns out, we were about 2 lanes away from catching that ferry so probably about 5 minutes late.  Whoops!  I wasn't horribly sad since that gave us time to walk the Seattle waterfront and continue to play tourist.  Would have been fun to actually take the kids on the wheel, but we would have missed the next ferry and that definitely would have been sad.

  We have taken the ferry many times to Bainbridge Island to see our friends the Hemphills, but it hasn't gotten old.  With such a beautiful day to enjoy the skyline, we were quite excited about it!

   She was so happy to have her daddy back around.  "My daddy."

  We finally got to the "Hemphill Hotel" where we would be staying for the next couple of nights along with our friends Luke and Maggie.  They actually were the whole reason we mustered up the idea of a road trip this summer.  They were renewing their wedding vows for their 10th anniversary on the 4th of July.  Luke's parents live on Bainbridge and we all stayed at their waterfront home.

  Luke gave Mike and another friend the paddle boards and away they went.

     Far, far away.  Too far.  We were all getting nervous they were going to get stuck in a current.

   After we put the kids to sleep, not that they went to sleep right away, we decided to cool off by jumping into the Sound.  It was my brilliant idea, but even just getting your toes wet getting onto the paddle board was enough to cool you to the core.  It was a very effective technique and it wasn't but 10 seconds before you were wanted to get back on that board.  So thankful that Maggie took some pictures because these were some of the best of the trip!

   LOL!!!!!  I had no idea he went in like that because I was clinging to the board and too busy thinking about not falling back into the frigid water.

Below are pictures from the vow renewal:

So fun to get to be a part of this with them!

   I can't stop dreaming of these AMAZING flowers.  Gorgeous, gorgeous...

   After the ceremony it was back to the beach and crabs.  Luke's brother was crabbing and showed them how to take care of them right there on the beach.  Eeek!

  Another fun destination on our trip with great memories made.  After this is one more week in Seattle with Mike's parents and then back on home.

  Mike's parents let us go on a date night one of the nights and we took full advantage!  It was like old times and so so so fun.  We headed downtown and shopped and enjoyed Pike Place and the sights and the yummy food and everything about it.  We had dinner at the Pink Door and when we were done we went over to West Seattle and had ice cream at the Husky Deli.  Whatever we wanted to do we did.  It was spontaneous and nostalgic and definitely a highlight of the trip.

  I swam at our old pool in the mornings and we also had dinner here with some of our oldest friends one night.  This place is a very special place for us both. 

Ava loved this puppy too! 

  We had to get a stop into Mike's fave donut shop, Top Pot.  We had to refuel after our morning at Lake Hills CrossFit you see.  :)

  We left Seattle on saturday morning for Portland and then left at 4:07 a.m. the next morning for home.  We shuffled the kids around a bit in hopes that it would help with the carsickness, but the Siskiyous got to poor Hannah again and this time Joel too.  :(  But all in all, they are great road trippers and with only two stops on the way home, Mike got us home in 10 hours and 10 minutes including the stops.  It left us feeling like we could easily do this again and that is a good feeling because I really miss our peeps back home and the amazing Seattle summers I lived for up there.  Seattle was too good to us!