The Pacific Rim

Today started early when Ollie woke and refused to go back to sleep. The two of us escaped the tent into the cool morning air leaving the other five huddled in their sleeping bags snoring. I wiped the sleep from my eyes, threw my hair up in a bun and wrapped my babe on my back and embraced the foggy morning. The mist wet my face as we walked down the steps to the beach. The air was moist and cold and I could see my breath as we made our way towards the ocean. 

The tide was out leaving lots of shallow pools behind. I rolled up my sweat pants and dipped my toes in the water as we walked. The coolness of the ocean was invigorating and wonderful. I examined the uncovered rocks for sea life while Ollie pointed and babbled at the water and birds. We met many early risers as we walked, most of them very friendly and polite. We would exchange hello's, comment on the weather and go on our way. Ollie ended up falling asleep tucked on my back so I headed back to camp to get ready for the day. I brushed my teeth, properly combed my hair and started breakfast. The children emerged from the tent sometime after 8:00am and stretched and shivered at the picnic table.

Since the morning was kind of wet and dreary, we decided to hike Radar Hill. We had seen it on the side of the road the day before and thought we'd check it out! We got out of the van, put on our walking shoes and got ready to go. The littles scrambled up a rock face and declared that they had made it to the top! As Mr. Stannix and I walked over to the trail head we read the sign and laughed out loud. The hike was a total of 100m and would not take the whole morning like we thought! 

So we walked up to the top to meet the kids and admired the rather foggy view. We laughed at ourselves all the way down and when we got into the car Camilla laughed, "Whew! That was a hard hike. Do you think we could go out for lunch today?"

We stilll had a lot of rainy time to kill, so we drove over to the aquarium in Ucluelet. I had heard a lot of good things about it from friends. The kids were so excited about the touch tanks and loved learning about the sea life!

These sea cucumbers were pretty epic, and gross. The kids LOVED them! 

They could have held these things all day long.

By the time we made it back, the drizzling had stopped the skies were starting to clear. 

The kids asked to head down to the beach to dig in the sand. It was still a little bit chilly, but this guy was thrilled to be free from his carseat and crawling around the beach!

The water was cold but these two couldn't resist going for a dip...

After a few hours we shook off the sand and went up for dinner.

Daddy cracked open one of his special rootbeers to enjoy after dinner.

Joe can hear a bottle of pop opening a mile a way. He quickly crawled down from his make-shift tree house and asked for a sip. These two melt my heart.

Our camp site had a lot of old fallen trees that made the perfect hangouts. I would often catch the boys trying to solve their rubiks cubes up there.

We all enjoyed cups of hot chocolate and then made our way to the beach.

The light was stunning...and bedtime begs for long walks along the beach to tire children buzzing from cups of hot chocolate. We've had a week of tenting to practice putting five children to sleep and I think we've got it down!

We made it all the way to the other end of our beach before turning around to head back home. The older two kept drawing pictures in the sand with sticks and then Joe would quickly run over and stomp them out. Eventually they worked out their differences and we were on our way again.

And when little legs were tired, Daddy hoisted them onto his shoulders for a ride.

The fresh air and sand beneath our toes was good for the soul. Ollie was asleep by the time we made it back to camp. Everyone brushed their teeth and tucked into bed without a fuss. 

I'm going to miss this place.