Day Five

Our last full day of camping.  Debi had to leave a little after breakfast and before she left, we took some group photos. 









Oh but we forgot to include our little forest neighbors who camped with us, ate with us, hung out in our cars...  Yeah, these guys:



Cute, yes.  But pests for sure.  It was entertaining to watch Joe chase them away from our cooking area on occasion.  And it was exciting to try to get one out of Ruth's minivan.  But we had no problem leaving these guys at the campground when we left on Saturday! lol

After Debi left, we headed down to MacKerricker beach to watch the waves and play on the rocks/beach.















Notice the seals on the rocks behind the kids?  We watched some of them playing in the waves, too.  Cute!













We decided to walk up the beach a little ways.  Some of us took the high road:





While others took the low road:





There were some people flying kites there.  They let the kids fly one and even gave one to Jared!







There was some other excitement going on around this time, too.  I don't have the video of it yet, that is on David's camera, but I can give you the run down.  Cadi was down by the waves and lost a flip flop.  She started to go after it, but incase you couldn't tell from the pics, this is NOT a beach where you can go into the water!  She was about a foot away from it, but a huge wave was about to crash on her and she had to make a quick decision.  At the last moment, she chose to live, at the encouragement of Ryan and Tom who were yelling at her to come back!  While, she was glad to be alive, and I think she realizes that it was the best deicision, she was absolutely crushed to have lost her "favorite flip flop".  That would explain this photo:



I'm just glad that she lost it at the end of our trip and not the beginning since we were wearing our flip flops into the showers. ;)

After lunch, David and Teresa took Cadi and Esther to see Glass Beach.  Rori and Jared were napping and the rest of us were being lazy, so we hung out at camp and played Phase 10.  Ruth was ahead the entire time, until Ryan swept in at the last moment and won it!  He's such a meanie.  So much for being a gentleman. ;)  It was fun though!

After the Glass Beach group came back and the little kids woke up, we went back to MacKerricker Beach to check out the tide pools since the tide was on it's way out.  We drove over to the end of the beach and walked out to the pointe where there are tons of rocks and tide pools.





















We found some really cool stuff!  Like these two crabs fighting:



These starfish:






Tom showing the kids a hermit crab:












And then it was back to camp for dinner.  All of the siblings not living at home took turns being in charge of meals.  The other three boys contributed by helping with clean up.  Here is the dish crew at work, they did a great job:





And then we had our final campfire, with lots of S'mores and Wiifms:




I was sad it was our last night, we had such a great week together!  We definitely want to go camping together again! :)

Day Four

Guess how it started?  You got it - relaxing and just hanging around! lol







Debi found an off leash dog beach for us to take Chloe to.  It was a bit misty/foggy and the beach was clearly not the best beach in town, but it was still a nice relaxing place to hang out.  The fog burned off then rolled back in and finally burned off for good a little before we had to leave.  So in some pictures, you can't see anything off in the distance, but in others you can see it all clearly. lol



Rori cracked me up.  She wanted to play in the sand, but also wanted to munch on pretzels.  Not just one pretzel, but several at the same time - while still playing in the sand.  Goofy girl.

Day Three

Mendocino.  We packed our lunches and headed down to Mendocino for the day on Wednesday.  Mendocino is full of cute little shops and art galleries. 

Here are Jared and Esther, Esther is holding an art project that she made during a little storytime we happened upon in the back of a bookstore.



One of our favorite shops... the hat store!









And finally, Jamaican Jared.  Don't you dig his dreads?  lol


We took a break from window shopping to have a picnic lunch. 


The whole week, these two were just the CUTEST together!  It was so sweet and I'm excited for them to have more visiting time when we go down to Sacramento for Thanksgiving.







Group Hug!  There was some major cousin hugging going on here...






After lunch, we did some more shopping and then stopped for ice cream before heading back to camp.
Rori was sporting her "leash" and at one point, Jared held onto the other end. lol





Do you think he might be interested in any ice cream? lol


Tasting MUSHROOM ice cream:




They liked it!  See...


Ryan and Cadi tried it too, but I was lame and didn't get pics (these were courtesy of Ruth).  Ryan says it tasted like Butter Pecan.

Back at camp we were back to relaxing and hanging out.  (A common occurance.)  :)



That night Rori was so tired, she fell asleep on Ryan's lap during the campfire!  I honestly don't remember the last time she was tired enough to fall asleep on someone's lap! 



Some more S'mores!


That was the first time we busted out the coats.  Up until that night, the campfires were cool but we were comfortable enough in just a sweatshirt (or three, if you were Debi. lol). 

A much needed pampering.

After a week of camping, my feet were in bad shape.  My fingernails too, for that matter.  So this morning I visited the nail salon to fix that.  And here are the results, aren't they cute?





I was going to take Cadi with me but gave her the option of getting her's done now or waiting until right before school starts so they would be nice and fresh for her first day of Fourth Grade.  She opted to go later.  :)