Oops

So, I totally forgot to blog this week. Oh well. I didn't even have a kid at home to distract me from blogging. Pretty much, I kept busy this week by working out, preparing for a co-worker's baby shower (which we had at a waterfront restaurant--view posted below), going to a friend's house for dinner and chatting on the porch for a couple of hours, attending a continuing education webinar about malnutrition at work, and a girl's night in at my house (everyone left at 10:30 PM last night, and I am beat). I definitely missed Carter, but holy crap, sleeping in until 8 AM on my day off was amazzzing.

This is our view of Gig Harbor and Mt. Rainier from the restaurant. I honestly think there is not a more beautiful place out there than Western Washington in the summer.

Anyways, I did talk about telling the story about how my friend and I got caught in high tide 2 weeks ago with our kids. We were here:

My friend Audrey has lived in this area almost her whole life, so I figured she'd know a lot about the place. So, with that said, we were running a little bit late because she had to run some errands after work. So, we ended up pulling up to the park around 6:30 PM. She and her 3 kids, along with Carter and I, packed up our dinner, camera, and beach toys and walked for about 5 minutes along the shore to get to the big, sandy beach area for our kids to play. Along the way, we had to climb over some rocks and fallen tree trunks along the shore. We wondered out loud, "is the tide going out or in?" I figured that it had to have gone out already because the sand was wet. When I asked her about the tree line along the shore, she replied, "oh, there's no way the water goes up that high!"

So, we ended up hanging out for like 45 minutes or so, eating dinner, and letting our kids play in the sand. There was only a couple of other people out there, so it was relaxing. When the other people left, I thought I saw them in the water, but dismissed that thought, thinking it was their dog I'd seen swimming in the water. About 5 minutes after they left, they yelled back at us, "there's not much shore left!" It took us about 15 more minutes to pack everything up and get the kids moving. 

We got off to a bad start because her boy (who's 3), started bawling because he thought he was being left behind. So, I ran back to grab him too. Then, we got to the point where we had absolutely NO shore left. I hiked up my bags (which included my nice camera), and grabbed Carter on my side. Luckily, he's light so it wasn't the worst thing ever. Audrey's little girls, who are 8 and 5, were big enough to handle walking through the water. Her boy, on the other hand, was still freaking out and would not hold on to her side. So, along with her cooler and bags, she wrapped his arms around her neck and carried him on her back like a monkey, with him crying the whole time. I hadn't planned on getting in the water, but I was wearing my bathing suit under my shorts and hoodie just in case. That was a good thing because I eventually took off my jean shorts because the water was up to my hips. I was jokingly yelling and laughing because I had to walk through water with slippery seaweed and shells and stuff.. because seaweed is totally not my thing. But, then we had to climb over rocks and fallen tree trunks again. We had to pass the children over the tree trunks while avoiding the rocks. My friend's oldest girl climbed super high on a tree trunk, and when she realized the only way down was to jump 10 feet into the water below, she started crying. So, I had to go rescue her as well. 

But, after 10-15 minutes of high-tide hell, we made it to the steps to shore and parking lot. Carter arrived completely dry and scrape free. Audrey and her jeans were soaked up to her hips, but her jeans protected her legs and hips from any scrapes. Her son was just soaked, and extremely upset about the whole ordeal. Her girls had multiple scrapes and scratches from rocks and blackberry bushes. My legs looked like I'd gotten into a fight with a cougar. I had a couple of gashes and lots of scratches from blackberry bushes and rocks. Also, my scratches got extremely puffy the next day. Apparently, blackberry bushes have some sort of mild irritant on their thorns. When we got into the car, Audrey said that I'd probably never hang out with them again because of her lack of planning. I honestly thought it was kind of a hilarious situation, but I might not have thought so if we'd been caught at even higher tide.

I told her that this never would've happened if we'd had a man with us. Her husband was supposed to go with us, but was made "on-call" for work that evening, so he stayed home in case he had to go to work. Turns out, her husband has a tide tables app on his phone, and we were there at the beach at high tide (and the highest tide was 15-30 minutes after we left). So yeah, my theory about having a man with us was correct. Anyways, lesson learned--when going to the coast, look up the tide schedule!!