Summer Recap 2018 ⋆ Shannon Lee Blog

I don’t usually recap my summer like this but I just could not this year, and with Fall already upon us, I better get this thing done!

This summer was abnormally special as my sister, nieces, nephew and brother in law were here for it. That means, at one point I had eleven people under our roof!! It was worth every breakdown, fight, meal left, puke bucket (yes, it happened) and lack of a moment to ourselves.

My sister flew out with her kids and friends first as her husband wasn’t able to come right away. If you are following me on Instagram you may have seen her epic arrival here. This allowed her to have help during her flight here and extra hands while Matt was back in Ohio.

SHE’S FINALLY HERE!

We decided to do some water activities like White Rock beach and Bridal Falls WaterSlides first.

White Rock is always a great local spot for us. It’s only about a 30-minute drive from Langley.

BRIDAL FALLS

Seeing how our kids are still on the younger side, we took advantage of Bridal Falls Waterslides. It is a bit of a further drive but it’s less busy and on the more affordable side as there was a Groupon that we scooped up.

After those two excursions, we mostly stayed at either my mom’s place hanging out or at mine.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

Other than camping, these were the major highlights of having them here. For the first time since having kids, I had someone to mother with. We were each other’s village. That was priceless to me.

CAMPING

One thing that is always on our Summer list is camping. We always book at Golden Ears Provincial Park in Maple Ridge. We have been coming here since Abigail was an infant.

Some of the main reasons why we keep coming back are

1) It is close to home
2) The sites are large and covered
3) We have never had issues with noise or rowdy campers
4) The private beach for campers is awesome
5) Functional showers and bathrooms

It was my brother in laws first time to experience REAL camping. He had a slight fear of bears. The odd thing was when we were picking up my sister from the airport there was a couple needing to dispose of some bear spray they had purchased for backpacking. My husband took it off their hands, and we joked that it was a gift sent from God for Matt to ease his mind.

The day they arrived camping, (we went before them) we wrote a little note and stuck the bear spray with it.

TO: MATT
FOR THE BEARS
LOVE: GOD

There were many special moments on this trip but two stand out to me most.

STAR GAZING

I LOVE space. It fantasizes me and always leaves me in such wonder and awe of God.

For my birthday present, I asked if we could wait until dark and head to the beach to star gaze. The younger ones were a bit terrified but we all held hands, chatted and headed down.

It was a bit disappointing because the smoke was still very much around but my heart was happy. I was proud of my children for facing a fear and blessing me by conquering the walk down.

TIE-DYE FUN

The other special moment was the day we all wore the tie-dye shirts we made especially for the trip. We had a little photo session in the forest with them on.

HIGHLIGHTS

Here are some other highlights from the trip……

LAST FEW DAYS

Once camping was over the days went by in a blur. We tried to pack in as much as we could with late-night board games, a few adventures and an at home “drive-in” movie night. Unfortunately, we had a stomach bug hit most of the kids the last week they were here which sucked up a bit of our time together but we made the best of it!