Weekend Recap: Outdoors and Olympics.

So you guys.  Last weekend.  It needs a recap is what.  First of all on Friday we had an Opening Ceremonies Party.  This has become a tradition 'round here.  We've  done it for the past few games and OOOOH how things have changed.  For Beijing I was just barely pregnant with my daughter.  We weren't even telling anyone yet.  This time She was old enough to comment on the Parade of Nations and enjoy partying pretty hard herself:

Yes.  There were six kids at our party.  The oldest of which was 4.  Insanity but fun insantiy:

And I have to say that now that our friends have kids, too things have gotten ALOT easier.  At some point in the night every adult had to deal with some sortof kid situation or crisis... and it wasn't a big thing at all.  We all understood.  There were no apologies for interrupted conversations or meltdows.  No issues with kids getting things sticky or making messes or... being kids.  We all just got it and moved on.  And I'm pretty sure that noone had as good of a time, stayed as late, or got as crazy at our very kidless 2008 party:

One comment on the Opening Ceremonies.  I heard beforehand that a hundred Mary Poppenses would descend on a 100 foot Voldamort and I didn't believe it could actually happen because this is reality.  Oh how wrong I was.

So Saturday we spent most of the day just recovering from the night before.  And when after our family nap I realized how lazy we had all been I kicked it into gear and decided we needed to get outside and blow the stink off.  So we did this:

I love that we live 15 minutes away from a real beach.

Unfortunately we weren't able to swim at first because of a riptide warning.  So we played in the sand and feasted on a dinner of CSA cheese and crackers.

Finally at 7:30 they took down the red flags and it was safe to swim again.

The guard walking back with the flag

 I was out there before the guy had even put the flag away.  I love playing in the waves.  And once I had scoped it out as safe for the kids all 4 of us were out in the surf.  Funtimes, indeed.

Also funtimes:  Letting the kids stay up late to watch Olympic coverage.

On Sunday we did something we've been meaning to do again since our Accidental Vacation - take the kids on a hike.  Strapped them in and headed out in the Big Creek Reservation.



We did the Isaac Lake Loop Trail.  It's about 1.5 miles and is pretty flat overall.  Although we didn't exactly stay on the trail...



And ended up following a deer path to a wild blackberry patch:



And later on hiking down the raveine to check out the stream.  Of course the boy and the dog got as dirty as possible as quikly as possible:



And the girl  got in on the action as well although she was much less mud-centric than the other two.

There's nothing quite like stream wading after a hike.  Once we got back to the car I tried to get a photo of our little family but well....

It didn't turn out that great.  Eh.  Maybe next time.

Then we ended our weekend with more Olympics:

The next 2 months for us is basically booked solid.  Trunk Shows!  and Vacations!  Work Deadlines!  And out of town guests!  And then, gulp, Preschool!  So it was really nice to just hang out together as a family before the crazy hits.