In all honesty, a little getaway sounded great to me, too, so I took a peek at our timeshare's website to see if I could find a near-ish location with openings. Lo and behold! The Birch Bay location (one I've heard good things about from another school family) offers mid-week specials. Perfect!! I booked a two-bedroom condo and started our packing lists. Unfortunately, Eric wasn't able to go due to work stuff, but we talked with him each night ... and whenever I ran into technical issues (sorry for waking you up with a computer question, Sweetie!!)
There are quite a few perks to the Birch Bay timeshare ... first, it is close enough to drive to without too much hassle (1 hour, 45 min), second, it has an indoor/outdoor pool and hot tub (win!), and is close to Canada. Why is the Canada thing a plus? Well, apparently we are slacker parents who have never taken their son to Canada even though it is only about 2 hours away.... and haven't taken their daughter there since she was about 4 months old, and has no memory of being there so it doesn't really count. DUH!!!
We left around noon on Monday (I worked from home that morning to reduce how much time I needed to take off from work and knowing we couldn't check in to the condo until 4 PM) and meandered our way up to Birch Bay. Before leaving town, we stopped at the flute repair place (and found out Annika's flute is basically a POS ... awesome), which put us a bit later than expected but no biggie. We also stopped in Marysville for lunch at MOD Pizza (win!); yes, I made the kids suffer brief starvation to get out of Seattle and Everett before stopping so Friday freeway traffic didn't become an issue for us. After meandering around the shopping area in Marysville for a bit (picking up some last-minute items and just seeing what we could see... we were on vacation, time is more fluid on vacation!), we continued north and eventually made it to Birch Bay.
The kids immediately wanted to get into the pool after we checked in, the van was unloaded, and our stuff was sort of put away. OK, why not! Rainy weather? Who cares! I happily enjoyed some hot tub relaxation while the kids played "penguin" (aka going back and forth between the pool and hot tub) until we decided dinner was needed. After we ate, it was "chill out time", which was perfect for everyone!
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| A panoramic view of our condo |
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| The poos area |
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| The epitome of vacation post-pool relaxing |
As soon as the kids saw the timeshare building has an arcade, stopping at it was mandatory for them. Normally, I avoid arcades like the plague, but this one was small and not over-run with too many people. I agreed that we could pop in before we headed The kids played pinball, a hockey foosball-esque game (really quite fun), and a crane/grabber candy thing. Each kid had two dollars to blow and (SHOCKER) they spent about half of their allotment on candy.
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| Conor and the hockey game Final score: Conor 2, Me 1 |
On our way back to the condo, we came across a phone booth (I mean old-school phone booth ... like the kids Superman would change in). Knowing how rare they are now (and I can only imagine this trend will continue), I stopped the kids, explained what a phone booth is, and took a few quick photos of them in it. Both kids pretended to call Eric on the phone so they could tell him about the beach, Conor's muddy feet, and the phone booth. We also came across a metal totem pole, which got Conor started on explaining all about the symbols and shapes included in the design. (Thanks, Ms. Fairbanks for being such a good teacher ... I have proof that Conor actually listens to and learn from you!) :)
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| Hello? Daddy? We're in a phone booth! |
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| Peeking out from behind a totem pole |
With our arcade and beach time done, we piled into the van and headed north to Canada day (MUCH more appealing than the arcade, in my humble opinion!). I joked with the kids that we were fleeing the county, which caused them to think Canada was REALLY different from the U.S. After spending about 20 minutes in Canada, Annika said, "You know, this doesn't look any different than home!"
The border crossing was a breeze (no lines - woo hoo!) and I gave the border guard a good laugh when he asked, "How long do you plan on staying in Canada?" and I replied, "Oh, we're just here for lunch. Speaking of which, can you suggest a place we can go? Somewhere kid friendly?" He pointed us toward White Rock (a place I knew of from my college days), parked the car, and blindly picked a place for lunch.
We found ourselves at West Beach Bar & Grill and the menu posted by the door looked promising. That was when it occurred to me, I have NO CLUE about the rules about minors going into bars in Canada. Are they allowed like in California so long as food is served, or is it like in Washington where they are strictly forbidden? I caught the waitress' attention and she confirmed the kids were permitted. That's a great thing because the food we had was amazing!! All three of us had burgers and fries. Annika proclaimed that hers was "the best burger EVER" and Conor was sad that he was too full to eat all of his yummy food. (I doubt most adults to could finish all of the food - the servings were very generous). If you're ever in White Rock, stop there for a mighty fine burger!!
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| Waiting for lunch |
After lunch, we meandered up and down along the rows of shops (making a mental note to stop of gelato as our last hurrah of the day) and then eventually wandered down to the beach. Because of the very low tide. we could walk for days without hitting water, it seemed. The kids ran, explored tide pools (filled mostly with very tiny, very fast fish and mucky gunk), dug in the sand, and watched seagulls drop clams onto the rocks and pier in hopes of breaking the clam shells. It was all very easy paced and relaxing... until I told Annika she couldn't climb on top of the huge white rock (ummm.... remember 11 weeks in a cast, m'dear???). I was less fun after that, but I'll happily wear that badge if it means she goes to Ireland with four limbs that function properly!
We couldn't have asked for more perfect weather, especially considering the rainy day we had just the day before. We had blue skies, comfortably warm temps, and a breeze that kept the air from being stale. Per-fect!!!! And the fact that we got to visit a beach while enjoying such weather? Amazingly wonderful!!!
Knowing our parking meter time was ticking down, we pulled ourselves away from the beach, found a gelato spot (yum!), picked up souvenirs from the White Rock museum's gift shop (Conor got a basecall cap; Annika got a little bottle of sand and a magnet), and then we started our trek back across the border, back to the U.S. Once again, our crossing was easy and quite quick. This whole "not crossing the border on a weekend" is really the way to go!!
We wrapped up our day with another trip to the pool/hot tub and then watching Lion King on TV. Can't complain about that, if you ask me!
Day three was our "pack up and go" day. To simplify the process, I pre-packed some of our things the evening before. We had to be home in time for Conor's PT appointment, so timeliness was a constant on my morning radar. Fortunately, all went smoothly and we got out of the condo right on time. The drive home was a breeze (only stopping briefly in Bellingham for gas at Costco) and we had the added surprise of seeing Eric's car in the driveway when we got home. Hurray!!!! I didn't expect him to be home when we arrived. Bonus!
We were tired, but in a good way, and glad to be back home. We had a great time being away, but being back home and with Eric was the perfect thing for us.
Thanks Birch Bay and Canada ... we had a great time!!
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