Washington vacation--the ferry

Friday morning we went to see Inside Out to take advantage of free A/C and mostly because it was fun for everyone and they had Baby's Day at the Movies where everyone under 5 gets in free and everyone else gets the matinee price. And it's ok to take toddlers or babies that can't sit still or that might cry. So Megan did. She spent almost all the time walking up and down the aisles, or protesting that I wasn't giving her what she wanted (freedom to eat everyone's popcorn off the floor and steal their straws from their drinks). I got to see most of the movie anyway and I enjoyed it. Everyone else who got to sit to watch it seemed to enjoy it, too. :)

That afternoon we headed north to ride on a ferry. About a mile out from the ferry the cars were backed up waiting for their turn. I'm sure the fact that it was Friday and the day before Independence Day didn't help traffic any. Thankfully we were riding the ferry as pedestrians and got to bypass the long wait and go park our cars in the parking lot and walk on.

 Our family riding a ferry for the first time:

 Megan is enjoying her new walking skills more and more lately. She didn't particularly like having shoes on, but she forgot about them as long as she was walking on them.

 After the ferry ride we found a picnic table in the shade and ate dinner.

 We took a little time to go wade in the ocean water, but not too far in. There was a dead, half eaten crab floating in the water that helped me dissuade the kids who wanted to go get their swimsuits on.

Annie spent most of her time here, and at the beach on the lake front searching for seashells. She has been asking to go to "the beach" for probably a year and a half, so when I told her we would get to go to the beach when we were in Washington she was so excited to be able to find seashells. She has a rock collection and up until this trip had maybe 3-5 shells as part of the collection. Now she has probably more than 30-40 shells and is so happy about it.

Ben and Ryan found someone's sand toys and happily played with them.

The tide was coming in and by the time we left 15 minutes later the water was all the way up to where Ryan is in this picture.

Here we are in our rental car:

I had reserved a standard size 5 passenger car, planning on Rachel or Annie riding with Todd and Savannah, or taking turns riding in their car because reserving a car that seated more than 5 people cost over $1000 for the week. Jacob got talked in to upgrading to this SUV that fit our whole family for just an extra $15/day. But Rachel still rode in the other car the whole time. It's not until just now looking at the picture that I realize we could have moved Ryan's car seat to the middle row and saved ourselves a little trouble getting him buckled. Oh well. It probably saved us a lot more trouble that would have ensued with him and Annie fighting.