Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Where to begin????

This seems like a good picture to start out a summer post with.
I'm going to blame my lack of any post whatsoever in the last month on my sister. Yep, it is my little sisters fault. Never mind that she actually asked me to post so she would have something to read, brought my darling niece and nephew all the way from Minnesota to Oregon so I would have funny little stories about my children's interactions with them, and went with us to do all sorts of fun things that we probably wouldn't have made the time to do had she not been here, it is really all her fault. She just took up too much of my time so I didn't have time to upload any pictures. Now that she is safely home in Minnesota, *insert weeping and gnashing of teeth* I will take the time to upload a few pictures and tell you what we have been doing. (I should just change the date on the post and pretend I did this in mid-july. I'm sure no one is reading blogs right now anyway- so if you are just tuning in, on a rainy day in October, pretend I posted this a week after my previous post rather than a month, thank you.)

So jumping back one month- we went to Andrew's 20th high school reunion. Of all the people in his class I definitely married the right one! :)

The next day we took off with my parents and my sisters family and went to the Carl's beach house in Rockaway. It was so much fun, except of course for the stupid Oregon weather. We loved going Kayaking on the lake behind the house. We had a great time.
How cute is Eleison?
Grandpa withe Reagan- catching the 12 minutes of blue sky we saw.
Kayaking
We took a train ride on a steam train from Rockaway to Garabaldi. It was very fun!

Next up was Milton-Freewater. If I ever figure out how I will upload movies from our trip. Uncle Bob took the kids out on a swather which might have been the highlight of their time!
Our kids had so much fun with Zech and Eleison. Camden almost daily still tells me, "I miss my bwest friend Ehwason." They played so cute together. The only bad thing is how not fun it is when it is time for them to leave.
Honestly could some very smart person please improve transportation technology so there is a way to bring my extended family here for dinner tonight, have it cost about $3 to get them here, and return them home to their own beds tonight. That would be great, thanks. It certainly would be more useful than an ipad.Grandma and Reagan in the alfalfa field.
Oh and here is a little public service message. If your kids swim in grandma and grandpa's pool day after day there is a very good chance that *all* of them will end up with swimmers ear. Plan accordingly.

After a trip down the gorge, we unloaded at home for two days then packed back up and went back to the beach again. On the way we stopped in McMinnville and went to the Evergreen Air and Space Museum.
Then it was on to the beach. We went to the beach once the end of July and once the middle of August and didn't really see the sun at all. It was 95 degrees in Portland at the time and we were happy if it hit 65 at the beach. Between the weather and how much I don't like sand I may never go back to the beach again. Although I certainly have never gone to the Oregon coast for the actual beach part, it is all about the company! We spent our second beach trip in Lincoln City with Andrews parents for the first couple of days.
Grandma and Grandad took us to the aquarium in Newport. It was so fun- the kids loved all the animals. I didn't get a picture of it, but when we were in the shark tunnel there is a glass on the floor that you can see underneath and of course Camden's response was to lay down on the floor to see in. It was very cute.
For our last little beach fun the Strandbergs came to join us. Our kids are in heaven when they are around. What amazing teenagers to put up with the punishment our kids put them through.
We went on the Drift Creek Falls hike when we were in Lincoln City. This is such a great hike. The bridge is a suspension bridge and no picture of it can do it justice. You hike down to a beautiful waterfall. We did this hike two years ago (funny how two years ago I was doing a similar "catch up on everything" post) and Camden did not enjoy being held the whole time, in fact he screamed the whole time. I'm happy to say that this time went much better.

Okay. You are officially all caught up. I could have posted about 3,247 more summer pictures, but blogger was freaking out on me with just these. And really, if your still reading this I'm amazed. Hope your summer is as fun as ours!