Where our hikes started
A view of Deception Pass
Lottie Bay
HERMIT CRAB! I love the ocean!
These were little tiny snails
And they were everywhere!
Our favorite part of the hikes was when we got to a tiny secluded beach right next to Deception Pass Bridge. It was just beautiful and we even saw a seal swimming around and doing some cool flips underwater. We definitely want to go back to this place next summer and just waste our days here :)
The seal head!
Deception Pass Bridge
The belly!
After our hikes, Rusty took me to a drive in theater to watch The Maze Runner and eat some dinner and snacks. I had been really wanting to see a drive in movie and it was SO much fun! I absolutely loved it! After the movie we drove out to an open part on the island and just looked at all of the stars before catching a ferry home. Outstanding day.
Rusty really wanted this GIGANTIC drink for our dinner and movie
The screen!
August has Rusty's birthday, and this year I knew exactly what I wanted to get him. Rusty loves seafood, and is actually a big part of why I do now too (that and the fact that Seattle has the best seafood). He also really loves fishing. When we lived in Seattle last time all he wanted to do all summer was to go crabbing but you have to have a license and we never got around to getting one. So this year for his birthday I got him a license and the whole set up! There were a lot of different choices, so I ended up telling him about my idea and having him help me pick out the kind that he wanted. He had to work on his birthday so the day started out with one of his favorite breakfasts! Orange juice, a blueberry muffin from CostCo, strawberries, and I tracked down a cereal that seemed similar to the kind he got so excited about in France and Greece (not as delicious sadly). I picked up his favorite lunch (Papa John's Supreme pizza and brought it to his work for lunch, and then had one last surprise for him. I set up with some of our best friends to meet us at a restaurant close to home. Rusty had been really wanting Mexican, but I was still feeling pretty sick and didn't think that I could do that. When I was texting our friends to set up the surprise I acidentally sent the text to Rusty... and even with all of my trying to cover it up the surprise was just kind of out of the bag. But it was still a lot of fun to meet up with them for dinner! After dinner we came back to the house for Rusty's "cake"; this year he requested turtle cheesecake. It took me about 5 hours, but he loved it so it was worth it! Another great year babe!
After Rusty's birthday, we went out crabbing of course! We went a few times before the season ended over Labor Day, but our license will be good all next year. That weekend we went to Kayak Point for the first time, which is a really wonderful place! It's pretty close, but it has a giant pier where crabbing is very popular. We drove the half hour out there and parked up at the top of the ridge and hiked down carrying all of our things. By the time we got down there we realized that we didn't have the license! Rusty went back up to the car to look but couldn't find it. We talked to the rangers there and told them what happened, but he informed us that without our license we couldn't crab. So, we walked around the pier and saw how other people were crabbing (we had no idea how to do this) and then ended up just laying on the grass and playing some games. Unbelievably, when we got home and unloaded the car the license was sitting right on the backseat! Blast!
We saw a deer on our hike down!
One of our games... catching Goldfish in your mouth. I found that Goldfish really helped my morning sickness, but it did get boring so after a while I needed games to eat them.
So surprised I actually caught it!
We also went crabbing just down the road at the Mukilteo Lighthouse Park a few times, and we actually got to crab. It was absolutely hilarious to pull up the crabs and have to grab them to throw them back in the water. In order to keep them they had to be male and a certain size. If they didn't meet those requirements, back in the water they went!
Steps for crabbing.
1. Tie raw chicken to ring.
2. The wind up
3. The release!
Trying to pick it up
Beautiful views while we wait
4. Wait 20 minutes
5. Pull it up
6. Grab the crabs!!
Like a pro, my handsome crabbing husband :)
One of the most fun things that we got to do this month was announce to the rest of our friends and families that we were pregnant! I had taken the pictures in June when I first told Rusty, but now we got to send the pictures out as postcards for our close friends and family. It was so much fun to hear back from everyone about how excited they were for us! It made the whole thing feel more real now that we didn't have to keep it a secret anymore. I also felt a great deal of relief knowing that we had made it through the first trimester. During that time I was trying to stay distanced from the idea of being a mommy and having a baby so that if I miscarried I wouldn't be completely shocked and heartbroken. After entering the second trimester I felt like I could relax and that I would actually be blessed to keep this baby.
Rusty had a few more races during August and he kept doing great! He even got a little plaque :) It was so much fun to get to watch him race. This time I took a lot of pictures of him during his race.
Talking to his friend!
And they're off
I just love the scenery of the track. And there he is flying through the air... which I love less.
After this particular race we went to Sonic because I had been craving their toaster sandwiches. We don't have one anywhere close to us, so the closest one was 15 miles North of the track, which is about an hours and 45 minutes North of our house. Pretty much you had to drive to Canada. Really. We got so excited that we got so many things we spent $20... and then we both got super sick afterwards from eating too much and all of the greasy food that we had been staying away from because I had been sick. Haha, don't think we will want Sonic again for a while.
One Saturday we were feeling like we really wanted to get out and go exploring. Because I was feeling sick pretty much all summer we didn't get to do much camping... at all. In fact our only camping trip was when I started to think that I could be pregnant because I was feeling sick haha. I found out the next day that I really was pregnant. So, we did a lot of day trips around to places so that if it was too much we could easily come back home. One of these trips was out to the Olympic Peninsula. We spent a weekend out here when we lived here in 2012, but this was our first time back. It is such a cool place! Both Rusty and I absolutely love it out there. We drove down and around Tacoma and out across a huge bridge to make it onto the peninsula. The drive is so beautiful that part of what makes the trips out there worth it is just driving through the scenery. Then we went to Olympic National Park for the day! There were a lot of really beautiful hikes that we could have done, but Rusty had learned that there was a pretty easy, paved trail called Hurricane Ridge that was really popular. We figured that this would be a good start to see how I was doing. When we got there and parked our car there were deer all around that were not shy of humans at all. I've never been so close to them before!
Anyways, we went on the hike and it was really beautiful and at a good level for me. It was all that I could do though, so afterwards we found some lookout points and drove around a bit more.
The trail!
A tiny little ski first aid station
The land across the water is Victoria, B.C.!
A look out looking down at Port Angeles
Rusty likes to play with grapes :)
Then we went into Port Angeles and laid down on some logs at the beach for a while just watching the water and the people. We got some dinner and then started driving home when we decided that it might be fun to stay out there for the night in a hotel! We stopped at a place (even though we didn't bring anything with us at all) but they were full, and told us that many other hotels would be full too. So we opted out and decided that another time would be better. We went to Kingston to hop on the Kingston-Edmonds ferry back home, and had a little bit of time to walk around Kingston. It is so cute! There was a wedding going on at the tiny church and a bunch of cute restaurants and shops on the main street. Definitely somewhere that would be fun to go back and explore more.
Cute little Kingston!
