Vacation: subjecting small children to "quality" time in the car

Ahh... To be able to finally sit down and blog. After my relatively laid-back June and July, August was a three year-old hyped up from eating a bag of jelly beans and a pilfered soda. No, really, it was that crazy.

The highlights of my August so far:

After another weekend trip to my mom's to visit with family from out of town, the kids and I headed to the far northwestern part of Washington to visit with more family! We went with my mom (a teacher married to a farmer-she's always game for a impromptu vacation) and took a little stop in Leavenworth, WA. Leavenworth, or "Elevenworth" as E called it, is this great little town in the Cascades that is all Bavarian themed. 

E and J with their candy from the Sweet Shoppe in Leavenworth.

After Leavenworth, we headed to Lynden, WA. We visited the Northwest Washington Fair. J's favorite were the horses and the tractors. E liked the cotton candy and the horses.

One of the best parts of the fair was seeing the new calf that had been born earlier that morning.

From the fair we drove over to Birch Bay. The tide was really low and E and the other kids had a blast wading out and trying to dig for clams.
From Birch Bay, the caravan of cars headed north to Semiahmoo, where we drove out on the spit and enjoyed eating fresh blackberries from the bushes that lined the parking lot.

We had a great time playing on the different sides of the spit- one was rocky, one was sandy. We ended our day at the Peace Arch  at the US/Canadian Border. It was very pretty. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries after I took my first picture. Wish you could have been there!

On our way home after everything was said and done, my mom thought a nice break from the 8 hour drive would be a tube float down the Wenatchee River. So we stopped at Leavenworth (it really is a great place!) and floated down the river for an hour and a half. No pictures of that fun jaunt either.

When the kids and I finally made it back to our house, E requested that we not drive ANYWHERE for at least a week.

So two days later I made them drive an hour to my work so I could start getting my classroom ready for the first day of school!