Site seeing after a fun night of camping.

Last weekend we went camping as a family. It was so enjoyable to be together in the outdoors relaxing and spending time with each other. We arrived and set up camp, then had tofu dogs roasted over a fire.

After dinner we roasted marshmallows and made some smores. Alia discovered that she likes lighting her marshmallow on fire and then blowing it out. Madelyn was so cautious around the fire that she couldn't get close enough to roast her marshmallow.
I realize there's some irony here - I get tofu dogs to be healthy and then we eat marshmallows and smores, hmmm...oh well roasted marshmallows are a necessity for camping in my opinion.

We had such a fun time at our campsite, unfortunately we didn't take time to take some pictures of the campsite.
We did get some pictures the next day though of our time visiting Deception Pass in WA.

The girls and me by the bridge at Deception pass.
This bridge connects Whidbey Island with the mainland.

Deception pass bridge.

We got to walk along the top of this bridge later. It's a looooong way down. I realized that while I don't have a fear of heights, my stress level rose drastically being on the top looking down with three young children wanting to look over the edge. Luckily no one tried climbing the short railing fence to get a better view.

Ashlie on the beach with her "stick family".

Alia and Madelyn had fun climbing on all the driftwood and driftwood structures some other people had built.

All tuckered out on the way home.

Aaron always does such a good job of taking pictures on our outings. Here is one he took that I really liked.

We also went to the Breazeale Interpretive Center at Padilla Bay that had information all about estuaries and the plant and animal life in an estuary. My girls now can tell you that an estuary is a place that has these three things:

1. Freshwater source such as a river flowing into it.
2. Semi-enclosed coastal water source.
3. Open access to the ocean.

This place had one aquarium with some sea creatures. (We were told that next year they will have a lot more aquariums). We got to see a pipe fish and an eel along with other sea animals. It was pretty neat. There was also an area about the local birds. One section had some bird sounds recorded that would play when you pushed a button. My girls liked hearing what a bald eagle sounded like. They are really fascinated with Bald Eagles lately. It was a fun and informative place to visit.