God was so good to us in August and made it possible for us to go on vacation to Washington with my family. It's taken me so long to post pictures, as we have so many to go through! I think the pictures speak mainly for themselves, but I will comment on some of them. My parents were so gracious to give us this trip for our birthdays, and even though we were in one of the prettiest places we've ever seen, the best part was being with family for an entire week. We really miss being near family!The first pictures are of the place we stayed. We were on Whidbey Island, in a remote area overlooking the ocean. The Soaring Eagle Lodge was huge, we felt like movie stars with just 5 of us in this huge place!
My sister Robyn was training for a half-marathon.
We took a few walks just around the streets where we were staying. It was really quiet with little traffic. We enjoyed picking up fliers for houses that are on sale -- and dreamed of living here! 
Lots of raspberries and blueberries and apples growing everywhere.
We ate and ate and ate! I think I gained 5 pounds! We mostly made our own food, as there weren't too many restaurants. We really enjoyed Toby's Tavern where we ate fish and chips!
This is a restaurant near Seattle. Seattle was hours away, so we sadly didn't feel like making the long trip to explore the city. We ate here after we first arrived and had the long drive to the lodge ahead of us. We didn't know where to eat, so we searched our GPS for local restaurants and picked it just by its name!
We went hiking around Whidbey Island.
He is very daring.
Rather than drive to Seattle, we chose Canada, as we had never been there. The closest city in Canada was Vancouver. We didn't really know where to visit, but it was fun to just be in a different country. This is Stanley Park, with really pretty trees. 
And black squirrels!!! Never seen one of those!
Read the sign. I thought I was in California for a second.
It was a long car ride and Darby decided to take many many many photos of us!
This is downtown Vancouver. All the buildings look the same. It reminded me of the cities in Wall-E (just piles and piles of same-looking towers everywhere).
When we were just hanging out at the lodge, we watched lots and lots of this:
And played hours and hours of this:
The last night, we had a campfire. What a joy that God had provided music for our family from my Dad and Darby. They took all of our requests, even "Shake Your Booty." I will spare you a video of me dancing to that :0). 
We didn't have sticks to roast marshmallows on, so we thought outside the box. Darby is using a grilling basket. Yummy!
