Max/Dad date

Wrapping up the last of the sabbatical kid outings! Max and Kyle finished off the summer together on a camping trip - kindergarten started a few days later than the big kids, so they took advantage of the free time by camping during the first week of school :) The original plan was for them to go on a helicopter ride in Seaside, but a certain young boy got a slight panic attack as the heli started taking off. The pilot was awesome though, and noticed this in the rearview mirror. He stopped the takeoff, and offered for them to get off (full refund too!)... Max just didn't know what he was getting into, so maybe they will try this another time. Instead, Kyle took him to the Seaside aquarium and they fed the crazy seals :) This was much more enjoyable!

They also went kayaking (same place as Marin earlier in the summer), and of course the camping! Kyle presented Max with his first knife. Father-Son bonding times spent camping, whittling, searching for critters, creek stomping, eating MRE's, shooting the spit gun, boating, almost flying, beaching, and best of all spending time together :)

Coming of age: his first whittling knife!

Oysters for lunch

Seaside aquarium

Delicious (?) MRE's

Spit gun!

Almost made it up in the air ;)

PS. About a week after they arrived home from camping, I started to notice droppings in my mini-van, which after a long and freaky day of me investigating, we discovered there was a critter living in our car. Kyle thinks it snuck in from the campground, since the car was open a lot of the time. We did our best to try and get the little thing out in a humane way, but in the end we had to set a trap since it was hiding from us. It was a CHIPMUNK!!! Poor baby, it was probably dying of thirst and hunger (although let's not kid ourselves, my mini-van has enough crumbs and water bottles to feed 10 families of chipmunks). But we did find scratch marks all up and down our interior doors (nice, I know), so we just had to get it out. It didn't take long in our little electric trap, but we all had some sad feelings about that cute little thing being trapped in there for a week (AND I WAS DRIVING AROUND WITH IT IN THERE). My wordy word.