What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part II--JULY

July was another fun month, packed with camping, visitors, super-duper hot weather (for Seattle, anyway), and Amy and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary.

In the second week of July temperatures in Seattle got up to around 100 degrees, and for a city that just doesn't do air conditioning, that can be pretty uncomfortable. So we headed out to Mora on the Olympic coast, and that was a pleasant 25 degrees cooler than the city. The boys loved hanging out on the beach, looking for giant banana slugs in the old growth, and of course, more smores!

We don't usually give each other big fancy presents when we celebrate 'the big day', but this year I decided to make an exception. I bought Amy a double sea kayak! The best part of all is that she was completely surprised. It was a fair bit of work to keep everything on the down-low, but when I brought her outside and she saw it strapped to the car the expression on her face was completely worth it.

Towards the end of the month my brother Andy and his S.O. Rhea came to visit us for a few days. We had never met Rhea so it was good to get to know her in person. We hung out around Seattle for a few days so she could see the sights, then we all headed up to Fort Ebey State Park on Whidbey Island. We camped with the Moore-Ireland and Mahoney-Schaefer families (yes, we are one of the few non-hyphenated families in our circle of friends), and Liam was of course delighted to cruise through the woods with his buddies Colin and Max. Lochlan was happy to play with their younger siblings, Darby and Lily, but he also still tried to keep up with the bigger boys. I think this is why he started running. We brought the sea kayak along, so on the second day Andy and I paddled around Puget Sound for a bit. That was fun! It brought back a lot of memories of the epic tour we did in Southeast Alaska about 14 years ago. Amy took Liam out the next day, and at first I think he might have felt a little intimidated being in a big body of water in such a small boat, but overall I think he enjoyed it.

We also released the native butterflies we grew in our butterfly tent. It was really fun (especially for Liam) to watch the caterpillars spin their chrysalids, hatch, dry their wings, and start fluttering around the tent. We had eight butterflies in total.