ferry to Friday Harbor

September is a busy month in our family since Joe, Luca and I all have birthdays in September. It was filled with birthday dinners, birthday desserts and a big birthday outing. Instead of having a big party for, uh, any of our birthdays, we went on a family trip to Friday Harbor at the end of the month. Growing up in La Conner, I used to ride the ferry to the islands quite often to compete against them in various sports, but haven't been to any of the islands since then, which is now quite a while ago. I also thought Luca would really enjoy the ferry ride. Oh, and I found out while planning this that Joe had never been to the San Juans! You think you know someone...

Anyway, we got stuck in construction traffic on our way there and missed our first-choice-ferry and, therefore, were in the car for about 3 hours total (just so you know, babies kind of get sick of the car after about 1.5.... especially when they are hungry), but we didn't let it get us down.

It helped that the weather was beeeeeautiful.

Oh, and this helped to. Fish and chips with clam chowder. I believe doctors in Britain prescribe this to patients. I don't know who voted them "best", but I agree!

They have that quirky, Anacortes sense of humor too.

Which we went right along with.

Over and over... and over again. I'll spare you the many variations we have of these. (Leo's shoulders are HUGE!)

Ahh, young love. Well, not so young anymore, but still love.

Did I mention the weather was perfect. Look at the beautiful work of an amazing Creator. Not the ferry people, the water and all that!

It gets a little windy on the water. Cool bangs, huh? Poor Leo had to work to get a breath.

Just to remind you what the inside of a ferry looks like these days... exactly the same as they did ten years ago. Look at Joe's smile, it's totally fake. Just kidding, but he was suffering from some serious back pain after tweaking his jacked-up back lifting Tiz at the ferry terminal. What a trooper.

So, yeah, we didn't take one picture while we were actually at Friday Harbor! We did some walking and mainly checked-out a couple of toy stores before they closed. We let the boys pick something each. Luca chose a pull-back "monster" school bus that can do wheelies (of course) and Tizzy chose a red pull-back tractor. We never really let them just pick out a toy and get it, so I think they thought it was pretty cool.

We also got a little dinner and it just so happens there is a little (very literally) ice cream shop right at the dock to the ferry. How convenient! We got a bowl (along with 90% of the other passengers) to finish things off.

Here is the only picture we got of the actual island.