We headed back to one of our favorite places in August. This was Liam and Liesl's third trip to Tahoe and E's first! The weather was a nice reprieve from the Texas heat, although if I'm being honest, it could have been a tad chillier! We spent 8 low key days just the five of us, hiking, beaching, eating, and the kids' favorite, putt-putting! My pictures are just random memories in no particular order here!
One of our favorite things about escaping to northern California are the cool temps. While it would get into the 80's during the day, the mornings were in the upper 40's/low 50's. It was glorious!
We made multiple trips to our favorite park with the BEST views! I have a pictures of Elias and Liesl swinging on the swing set above at nearly the same age. There's also a great little walking trail along the water and even though it's lake water, it's so clear you can see the fish swimming which Liam had a ball looking for.
Can you believe we don't have a putt-putt place near us in Texas? This one in Tahoe is our favorite, so we had to go twice! We all got a handful of hole-in-ones (Liesl with an assist from Daddy) and the celebration pictures I have are pretty fantastic. Liesl would take 15 tries to get her ball in and then dance around like she's won the majors. They were so funny! Elias was just along for the ride this time and crawled all over every hole.
This was the first year we took the kids to hike Emerald Bay. It's a one mile hike downhill to Vikingsholm Castle that you can tour and then hike back up. The kids did surprisingly well! They hiked down easily, stuck their feet in the *cold* lake water while we waited for our tour, and were very well behaved during the tour. Usually the tours are pretty packed but we went during lunchtime so there was only one other couple touring with us. The hike back up took a while, haha, but the kids did it! There was one part right at the very end where Will was wearing Elias on his back and carrying Liam on his front, while I was wearing the backpack on my back and carrying Liesl on my front. We were quite the sight to passer-bys but it was only the last little leg, so I'd still call it a success! And apparently Elias found hiking very peaceful because every hike we took (we did three different ones over the week) he fell asleep in the ergo every single time!
Oh, Liesl's sassy face. We see this face often.
We had tentatively planned out a couple beach days, but one evening the kids were begging so we packed up a couple items and headed out for an evening at Pope Beach! We only stayed about two hours, but it was perfect! The weather was nice to sit out and it wasn't crowded at all. The people next to us had music playing and we brought some sand toys and beach games, so it was just a really fun, relaxing evening! While Elias didn't much care for the sand in FL, he didn't mind the Tahoe sand at all. It's actually very finely crushed rock, so it doesn't stick to you at all. And since it was evening time, it wasn't hot. I sat out a blanket for him but he quickly abandoned that and crawled straight for the water. It was COLD to say the least but it was cold even during the middle of the day. I never got in past my knees, but Will and Liam went all the way under! Liesl got in for a bit and then requested to be wrapped up burrito-style in a towel -- I hear ya sister!
A few more from one of our mornings. The kids collected pine cones and then started a "store" in which they traded sticks and rocks as currency. Elias slept through most of these mornings but joined us on this particular one!
More to come!!
