July Beach Visit And Family Gathering

On our way to a family gathering outside of Astoria we stopped at the beach to play in the sand.

Oh, but first here is Gracie working in the kids kitchen with her leg warmers on.  Those things are coming back around.

It was a little cooler at the beach than we had planed, but we still got come sand castles made.

The only kite we have in working order is Mia's, here Ethan is helping her get it up in the air.

Momma and Grace actually stayed in the van where it was warmer.  They hung out in the back and played with toys, until was time to view the castles.

Lily Bug

Ethan

Ethan helped me work on this castle most of the time, here it is before we packed up.  

Do you know about the wonders of baby powder at the beach??  We always have baby powder on board when headed to the beach.  It dries out the wet sand stuck to your body so that it all brushes off.  Each kid gets doused in baby powder before getting in the car, and we all smell baby fresh afterwards.  It is great, try it out!

On to the family gathering.  Luckily the weather was quite a bit nicer further in land.

Jennie and Grace were spent some time visiting with Great Grandma Johnson.

Some friends of the family had brought a large rock display with lots of activities for the kids to learn about rocks.  Here the kids are trying to dig shark teeth out of plaster of paris with just a tooth brush and a couple of other blunt instruments.  It was quite a bit of work but apparently that is all they give you when working at a dino dig.

2nd Annual egg toss, some of the eggs appeared hard boiled.

Ethan and Evan in the wheelbarrow race.

Garlic Braids

So, this last year I purchased see garlic and planted it right at the end of November.  It grew really well through the winter and we mulched around it with some straw after doing some weeding.  In early July it seemed to be starting to die and turn brown so we dug it up.  I have always thought that braided garlic would be a neat way to store it and be decorative as well.  We ran across a tutorial on one of our favorite blogs.

Jennie actually did the braiding while I stood by for support.

We ended up hanging them in our kitchen and look forward to snipping off the bulbs for some homegrown garlic.

Supposedly it is really healthy for you especially during the winter cold season.  One time I even tried eating a clove whole when I was starting to come down with something.  I had heard raw garlic was even better than cooked.  Well I would NOT recommend it!!  My stomach did not care for the raw garlic and I felt bad for at least a day.