Labor Day Weekend Outings

We stopped and had lunch at a little burger place in Concrete, WA.
Aly had a hot dog, Sean and Noah had packed lunch from home.

Noah eats like a munchkin.Aly crossing a small bridge over a little creek.

Looking at a creek.

Sean mostly walked at the tail end for some reasons and kept shouting "wait for me!!" most of the way.

Towards the end, Saya hopped on to the backpack carrier because Aly wanted to sit in the stroller. We took the carrier with us just in case someone gets tired. We learned from the past mistakes!


It's always nice to have a three day weekend especially when the weather is still warm. It wasn't a hot and sunny day, but we had a decent day up in the north cascade on Sunday. We went up north to Rockport state park to hike and we had a lot of fun.

We left home in late morning and had lunch at a small grill restaurant by the road near the state park. We were aiming to go to a pizza place where they recommended on a newspaper, but we did not expect it being closed for lunch on Sunday. We were bummed but the burger joint we reluctantly stopped surprised us with one of the best chicken burgers we've ever had! The girls shared a hot dog and the boys ate what we took from home, which is a standard these days.

The hike was very pleasant! The forest was ancient and could not believe the height of some of the trees! My neck arched backed so low, it hurt! It was so ancient, the branches were covered with moss and it was so ghostly beautiful seeing them all sway in the forest breeze. Alyson of course, spotted some flowers and was busy picking them. Sean was afraid of the trees but he got used to them. He found some bugs, squatted down to see where they go. Looked at unidentifiable objects growing from dead logs (turned out to be mushrooms - they were red an shiny), picked out some little stones, the hike took a long time but the kids soaked up all they could from the forest. Noah and Saya sat in the stroller, Noah fell asleep, but Saya was content looking around. She called for me when she couldn't see me. It was very cute.

After the hike, we went to check out the organic farm nearby. The farm belongs to "Cascadian Farm", a national organic health food brand, much like Kashis. On the newspaper, it recommended checking out the organic ice creams they sell at the stand, so we had to go. We all got out of the car, but sent Mike in to see if they sell non-dairy kind. It turned out, they don't. We surely can't eat ice creams in front of two very sad-eyed (or mad) boys, so we left without one. The farm was beautiful though and did not feel like we wasted the time.

On our return trip, we stopped to have some beer at Birdview Brewery, which they also recommended on the paper. Unfortunately, they didn't allow kids in the outside seating area and didn't feel like taking kids into the pub, so we bought a jag instead to take home. We'll probably have it at the football party next weekend.

For some crazy reasons, we decided to stop at the Premium Outlet Mall in Marysville. As soon as we turned into the parking, we noticed the mayhem! The mall was packed! We walked around and looked at some stores, but we didn't buy anything. If there weren't so many people and if the kids weren't with us, it might have been a fruitful shopping visit. We had no desire to line up or hassle people with our gigantic jogging stroller, so we left fairly quickly. It was a nice mall though.

It was nearly 10 pm when all the children settled down to their own beds and we were so tired. In fact, I am still tired after one day. But we had a lot of fun. We all do better with outing to a peaceful location like this time. Hope to have more trips like this before the dreading rain season officially kicks in (which just seems like it already has...)