Beach Date with Dave & Alexis

For my birthday this year, my brother's family gave me dinner at The Hog Shack. I had the option to go with Andrew on a date, or with them and make a day of it. Of course I chose to make a day of it with the whole gang.

We got to the beach just before the Rossis, and settled on the beach. Luckily we found this chair for David, who oh by the way, sprained his ankle that week. They were playing Man Hunt at recess and he got pushed off a tree stump, twisted his ankle and pulled some ligaments. Or something. He's all better now, but poor kid had to hobble around for quite a while. Anyhoo, here he is chillaxing by the beach.

But look at how happy he was. We love Steveston.

While we awaited the Rossis, we had an impromptu photoshoot in the Japanese Gardens.

You might want to click on these to enlarge them - my kids are super cute.

And they like each other some of the time - so glad I can capture some of these moments.

So anyway, we were in Steveston. It's one of our favorite places on earth. Our pattern has evolved over the years, but these days we park at Garry Point Park and check it out there for a little while before progressing through the village. There's a Pajos in Garry Point Park. We like to take pictures on the bench in front.

The Rossis finally arrived, and came armed with kites. We thought we might fly them on the beach.

But quickly abandoned that idea for flying them in the park.

We thought Ada might be interested in flying a kite or two.

But she quickly got side tracked by a little puddle of sand.

And even though I find kite flying kinda boring, I was having a ball taking pictures.

Ada makes a pretty good subject though, don't you think?

The other thing about Steveston is the ships. I mean LOOK AT THIS.

Did you know my brother is going to school to be a boat man or something? I'm kind of amazingly proud of him.

And geeze louise, they make cute kids.

oh, there's a ship.

So they flew kites for a really, really long time and I really didn't have anything much to do but take pictures.

And everyone is just so cute.

Plus my new birthday lens takes the best pictures.

But after a while we finally decided to move on to the village.

So if you've never been to Steveston before, it's a fishing village. Incredibly quaint and very touristy, but their heritage is as a fishing village and cannery town. So when you walk from Garry Point Park towards the village, you walk past all the fishing and cannery buildings. Past crab traps and ship bits and it's kind of industrial and beautiful and makes for great backgrounds for even more pictures.

I don't seem to have any pictures from the village this time, but trust me, it's cute. Then on the other side of the village is where they're building up houses. Along the water they've built a whole bunch of retail buildings with living space on top. There's a HUGEly wide boardwalk and more fishing/cannery stuff to look at.

Again, a great place for pictures. Even if you don't have a bunch of cute kids with you to photograph.

But seriously, how could I limit myself to just a few pictures?

Oh look, I actually got one of Alexis and Ruben too.

We continued on, to where the old fishing village/boat building area is. It's all wooden and full of wooden boardwalks, wharves, houses and such. On weekends they open everything up and have guides to explain the history to you. If you've never been for that before, it is SO interesting.

Last year we met with a guy who is about Andrew's age and went to trade school to learn how to work on wooden ships. I think he does the cabinets for them. He explained a lot about ship building and let us try out some of the tools.

This trip we got to that end of town far too late to experience any of that. But it's still a beautiful walk.

Plus there's all kinds of weird things to climb on and jump over.

Or lie on to peer through/into.

And photograph.

EVERY TIME I come to Steveston, I have to take this shot. These are some of the houses you can tour through.

"Ada, climb in the dog house," I said.

"Ada, sit in this chair."

"Andrew and David, pose for this picture". They're so obliging.

And then it was time to go home.

Wonderful birthday present Rossis. Thank you.