Mother's Day

I'm behind! Way behind! Two weeks ago, Abby, Jake and I took a trip to Pennsylvania and I have MUCH blogging to do about that. Then the following week the kids and I were sick with various illnesses such as pink eye, croup, ear infections - no need to blog about that; just know that it put me further behind. :) But throughout that time, Kevin was home and did some blog-worthy projects (a fence, a garden, etc). And, of course, Benny's 3-year-old birthday was in there too! Oh my, so much to blog about! Anyway, I decided I would continue with the current stuff (Mother's Day) rather than fall even farther behind, and then I will try to play catch-up with the aforementioned events as I have time.

Mother's Day morning on the way to church, Kevin mentioned that he would have to drive out to Westport later for a quick meeting with his business partner and to deliver a few supplies to the seafood store. I thought, why not all of us go? We could see Kevin's mom for Mother's Day and I could go to the beach (where else would I rather be on Mother's Day? :). So, following church we returned home for a clothes change and loaded up the car to head to the coast for the afternoon.

Unfortunately, as is often the case, while it was a balmy 80-degrees in Olympia, it was 10+ degrees cooler at the beach and WINDY. But we LOVE the beach and had fun anyway, even though the best sheltered area we found to sit was actually IN the beach grass. We even had to clear some of the grass away so the kids had room to play with their sand toys. :) I pointed out to Abby some lovely purple flowers that were growing amongst the dune grass, and she went right over to pick me a bouquet and gave them to me with a Happy Mother's Day wish.

It was very sweet, but what was even sweeter occurred at the end of our day on our drive home. I made a little comment about how I'd wished Abby would have made me a Mother's Day card and maybe next year she could be sure to do that (ahem, obviously, the comment was directed more to my husband as he could use a little improvement in assisting the children with this ;). She responded, "This is what I would write in the card, 'Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you so much that he came to earth to die on the cross for your sins. Dear Mommy, I love you. Happy Mother's Day. Abby.'" Sigh. :o)

But back to the beach....despite the windy, cold conditions, the kids had lots of fun playing and exploring. We found a lean-to someone had made out of driftwood, Grandma helped Abby write "I love Mommy" in the sand, and Jake made some great crow sounds every time a crow or seagull flew by.

Afterward, we headed to the dock area to Kevin's store to deliver the supplies. The kids watched the crab crawling around in the live crab tank (Jake kept saying, "What's that? What's that?" - more like "Wazat? Wazat?" - as he pointed to the crab :) and we enjoyed a bit of freshly smoked salmon and smoked tuna. It was Jake's first taste and he LOVED them both. Benny, of course, in his picky fashion, wouldn't even try some. Oh well, that left more for the rest of us! :) The customer before us bought several chunks of smoked salmon and said that it was better than the smoked salmon at Pike's Place Market in Seattle! What can I say? It's the best! :)

We arrived back in Olympia and stopped by my parents' house. We gave Grandma her Mother's Day card, took some pictures in front of her azaleas in full-bloom, ate ice cream and then took three very tired kiddos home to bed. :)   (the following pictures are from my mom's camera - my camera battery died at the beach)