Did I mention that the four days my family spent with us were jam-packed?  This was inevitable, really, due to two combining factors- a) the fact that my dad and I are both chronic fidgeters and neither of us can ever stand still, and b) our house is way too small for 5 people to just chill out for very long.  So while the weekend was a bit exhausted, at least we got a lot of pictures out of it.

Saturday was July 4th.  Maybe it’s a result of having grown up so close to Disneyland that their nightly fireworks shows were not only visible from our front yard but annoyingly loud when we were trying to watch TV, but nobody in my family gets particularly excited by the idea of fireworks.  And Mike only likes fireworks when he’s the one lighting them, so instead of braving the crowds at GasWorks park, we decided to take a day trip to Whidbey Island instead.

Whidbey Island is a one hour drive and a 20 minute ferry ride from Seattle.  This really isn’t a long trip, but it felt a little long for me because I got to sit in the back seat the entire time, along with my mom and brother.  This was made extra uncomfortable by the fact that both of our cars only seat 4 people, so we made a makeshift middle seat in the back for my mom, who spent the whole trip sitting on a pillow on the center panel.

At least it made her taller than Michael and I for the first time in forever.

Our first stop on the island was for lunch in Coupeville, where I ate a gigantic bowl of mussels and we did some wandering.

We even made our way to the Coupeville Farmer’s Market, which I had high hopes for.  Quaint island town in Washington State in July?  I expected to see berries and cherries galore.  Unfortunately, even I’ll admit it was more like a flea market in the middle of somebody’s poorly maintained backyard than an actual farmer’s market.  The boys were not impressed:

Sans produce, we piled back into the car and made our way to Deception Pass.

Deception Pass is beautiful.  Not much else needs to be said.

We explored some of the shorter trails below the bridge.

Mike, my mom and I headed down to the beach below:

The water was cold:

By about 4:00 we were ready to head home.  It had been a long day: