Emerald Isle

After Brian’s meetings were over Saturday, we drove to Emerald Isle, NC to meet with the Summers for a week at the beach.  Brian and Kyle grew up together and are still good friends.  Kyle’s boss owns a house right on the beach, so we were able to stay there for the week.  We had such a great time!

Georgia, Elna, Emma, Ava, Clara, Oliver, Hattie, and George

Kyle’s wife, Lindy, is really crafty and productive, so she made a bucket, filled with beach toys, for each kid—8 kids between our families.  Elna’s face here is making me laugh—she was bugged about something sweet little Georgia was doing.

How could you be bugged with that face?  Ha!

Elna picked up and kept every single shell she saw on the beach.

Favorite picture of Harriet maybe ever!  Her little spirit shines so brightly through her eyes and smile

My girls love Emma and Ava--they were so nice to my girls!

George and Hattie--I just couldn’t pick one of these—look at Hattie’s smile!

Georgia rocks sunglasses!  She loves loves wearing them!

Lindy brought craft supplies and the girls were in heaven—crafts are my girls’ love language.

This was my crew coming back from the beach—I stayed at the house while Georgia was napping.  You can see how close we were to the water.

Elna had the best time riding the waves.  She was so brave and adventurous!

On one of our days we went on an excursion to Fort Macon.  It was beautiful and very interesting.  This sign was great too!

I loved the wood tile flooring throughout the fort.

All eight of our kids.

Kyle, Lindy, Clara, Georgia, me, Brian.

Gorgeous!

Just being good dads.

Cute Summers family!

Elna was in heaven!

She’s happy, in case you can’t tell.

After our Seaside beach trip in April, I kind of figured Hattie wouldn’t like the water here—but she loved it!  Probably because it was pretty warm.

Harriet was copying Georgia’s crawling and Georgia thought it was hilarious.  I kind of love this picture because all of the Harris girls are accidentally in it—Elna is way back there in the background.

Elna buried in the sand.

This was our last night there.  We stayed out there pretty late to soak it all up.

Building castles and waiting for the sun to set.

Lindy tried to get a shot of me and Brian, and Harriet wanted to be a part of it—love it!

Our trip home was loooonng.  We left the beach around 11 a.m. and drove 3 hours to the airport in NC, then flew to Chicago, where we had a 3 hour layover—brutal!  It was about 11 p.m. eastern time when we left on our final leg back to Portland.  The girls were exhausted, obviously!  Luckily, we were so blessed to be able to get a spare seat next to each of our older girls so they could sleep.  All 3 girls slept the entire 4 hour flight back home.  We didn’t get home until around 1 a.m.  We had the best time on our trip, but we were so happy to be home!                                                

Washington D.C.

Brian had a conference in Washington D.C. the first week of June.  We decided to go along for the ride.  It was such a full trip!

Excited and happy girls at the beginning of our trip.  Our older girls have both flown before, but this is the first flight they remember.

Out like a light.

We really tried to pack light…

On the bus to get our rental car.

How big is Georgia?

We didn’t fit in the car they picked for us, so they upgraded us free of charge (nice!) to a car that Brian really enjoyed. (Ford Explorer)  The air conditioned seats were kind of a game changer in the heat and humidity of Maryland.

So happy to be done traveling for the day—it was an all day experience.  We stayed in National Harbor, Maryland, at a resort and convention center.  Brian had meetings during the days, so we did a lot of swimming and playing in the hotel.  Brian also was able to fit in a couple of trips to the city with us.

While Brian went to get dinner for us, we got ready to go to the pool.  Hotels are so fun!

  A selfie in the mirrored doors of the elevator.  The girls really loved the elevators.  We were on the 6th floor with a great view!

On our first full day there, before Brian’s meetings began, we went into D.C.  First stop was a vegan cafe for breakfast—then they each picked out a pretty cupcake with their own little pink box--cute!

The next stop was the Natural History Museum (behind us, above)  I wasn’t sure how much the girls would like it, but they loved it!

I spy three bears // and a big dinosaur

Look at those happy happy girls!

My cousin, Marian, who lives nearby, came to visit us one day!  We had the best time catching up!  We didn’t get any pictures together (darn!), but I did get one of Elna and her cute boy, Victor, who is Elna’s age.  The kids had a great time playing on this beach as we talked.  Then we went to the hotel pool and swam.

Another day, another elevator selfie.

Ice cream!  (and I love it when my 3 year olds accidentally tuck their shirts into their bottoms—I do it on purpose with their pajamas whenever I can—it just seems to keep them little for a little longer or something)

We were walking around National Harbor waiting for Brian to be done with his meetings for the day.  The girls were tired!

And hot!

When Brian joined us, we headed downtown again to see some of the monuments:

Lincoln Memorial.  See us their at the bottom step?

The girls were exhausted during a lot of these—justifiably—it was a lot of walking and it was past their bedtime.

A few times someone offered to take our picture as a family—so so nice!

World War II memorial

From the World War II memorial we started seeing and hearing Marine One helicopters flying overhead towards the White House, so Brian started running, hoping to see the president land.  They had a gate set up around the perimeter of the white house, making it so that we couldn’t get very close, but we found out later from a friend who is on presidential detail that it was, in fact, the president!  Had we had binoculars we would have seen both the president and our friend.  Kind of exciting!

The helicopter flying away after dropping him off.

I’m always surprised by how small the White House actually is.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was so late!  The girls were exhausted and went right to sleep.

On Friday we went to visit my dear lifelong friend, Rachel Terry.  My dad set up her parents when they were at BYU, so we have been friends for as long as I can remember.  We visited at her home for a while, and then we joined her and her siblings, who had all come in town, to surprise her mom, who was being celebrated because of her retirement from teaching grade school.  I loved being there for it!  I love the Terry’s!

My girls and Rachel’s little boy, Henry.

Every time I see Rachel it’s like no time has passed.  I wish we could see each other more often.

The whole Terry family, and us.

“Mom! Take a picture!”  Oh, all right…if I must.  She’s so cute!

This was inside the resort—it was such an enormous place with restaurants, gyms, a pool, and so many conference areas—and what seemed like a million rooms.  It was fun to join Brian for the week, but I think we both decided that from now on we will leave the kids home—it was a little bit exhausting with the kids, but still fun too.