Jeff really enjoyed his new lounge chair and I was lucky enough to get to enjoy it too!  The kids are taking their final rocket ride and then it's clean up and pack up time!  Our vacation was over!  So sad but we made some wonderful memories!

On Saturday we headed up to Langley to the art festival.   It's a great place to people watch and look at the cool booths.  Last year Mom bought her 3 big scenery pictures here so we were hoping for so more good luck.  We actually struck out on finding the booth with the beach glass pendants, (darn it), but we did enjoy the sun and some nice music.  We ate at Mike's Place and then indulged in some ice cream cones!  Thanks Grandma for buying them!

On Friday, the weather cleared up a bit so Jeff and Kylie put the crab pots back out for a few hours.   We were all happy to see the sun.  Papa Gary, Oma Andrea and our little 3 year old niece Ryan came for a visit.  It was nice to have someone for Kylie to play with and Ryan loves the sand!  They played for a while, even Zach and Matt got in on the sand castle making. Kylie got a hold of the camera and was taking pictures of everything!   We had a wonderful visit with everyone!  We had a delicious dinner of steak, crab, corn on the cob and Oma's famous potato salad.  We actually had s'mores for dessert too which is the first time we had them all week! 

One of the days we were there it rained hard, and there's not too much to do in the rain.  We read and played on the computer and the kids played a 3 hour game of Dogopoly.  I think Zach was the eventual winner after taking over Maggie's $ and dogs after she bowed out.  Mom came over this day and we went to Chinese food for dinner just to get out of the house!  Very good dinner too with large portions so we had enough for a 2nd meal a few days later!

We had a wonderful crab fest with all the crab that Jeff and the kids caught on the 4th!  Nummy stuff!  Here's some fun pictures of just hanging out at the beach and the kids in the boat.

After we left Fort Casey, we headed towards Coupeville to get something to eat.  Our friend Barbi had texted that she and her sister and Jordan were in the kayaks near the wharf if we happened to be close by.  Lo and behold, we found them!  The kids were screaming as they rounded the marina.  What a small world! Anyway, they beached their kayaks, we talked and made a game plan.  We picked up pizzas and went back to Aimee's house to eat an early dinner.   Afterwards, Barbi and Aimee took us on a trail on Aimee's property that leads out to the bluff!   Wow - what a beautiful sight!  We could not believe how striking everything was!  You felt like you could see for miles!  We had a wonderful walk on the trail and the kids made it down a steeper trail to the water and sand below.  They certainly got a good workout on the way up!  Thank you Barbi and Aimee for sharing your part of paradise with us!

On our way to Fort Casey, we stopped to check out the water and the scenery....it sure is incredible!  What a beautiful beach we found.  Notice Zach is not in the pictures?  He sat in the car so we left him there.  Hmmmpf! What a spoilsport!

We decided this year that we would take the kids around the island a bit to explore and show them the history of Fort Casey.  It is a massive building and pretty impressive!  Kids weren't too excited at first and it was a bit windy and cold, but in the end, they thought it was pretty cool!  As you look out from Fort Casey, you can see Fort Flagler to your left and Ford Worden to your right.

As night is falling and we are waiting for the fireworks show, we took some pictures.  The fireworks were screwed onto 2 platforms and carried down to the sand.  Rob only had to light 1 fuse and we watched a spectacular show for about 35 min!  It had lots of color and so many shots going off!  Very fun to watch!  The only bad thing that happened was Kylie got sick right as the fireworks ended and we were picking up chairs.  Too much excitement I guess!  Poor kid!  And, Rocky loved the fireworks and wasn't scared at all!  Good boy Rock!

We came to Whidbey on July 2nd for our vacation week and the 4th of July was so nice!  It was probably the nicest day of the week and where we all got our color - well, Zach and I got burned and Jeff and Kylie got a nice suntan.  We pumped up Zach's relaxation station (birthday present) and anchored it in the water.  The kids had to wait awhile until the tide came up to use it, but it finally did!  We had a great day hanging out at the beach all day and watching cousin Rob get his fireworks display ready. We had a good showing of family but not as many as last year.  We all still had lots of fun!