Oregon Trip Part III

The next leg of our trip to Oregon was awesome!


We headed west and drove until we reached the ocean.



We spent three fun days camping with my sister's family right on the coast. We enjoyed every minute...



We went to the Bandon lighthouse;




took the dog on numerous walks;

learned the fun game of geo-caching and found several;

caught a crab (see next post);



and searched for treasures on the beach.



We got wet in the freezing Pacific Ocean;




discovered what a sandstorm feels like...




and tastes like;



enjoyed some fine outdoor cuisine;



and celebrated our cousin's second birthday.



We ate lots of yummy camp food (there were hardly any bugs, it was quite nice);



roasted marshmallows;



and had so much fun we wore ourselves out!! A big, huge thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for our coast adventure. If I concentrate hard and close my eyes, I can still hear the waves and feel the sand in my toes!!

Oregon Trip Part II

A big part of our fun with our Roseburg cousins was bedtime!

10 cousins and endless combinations of who gets to sleep next to who...plus...my sister and her husband set up their tent trailer outside as another "room" for cousins to stay up late in sharing scary stories!

My brother-in-law was really nice and stayed up late every night with the tent trailer gang so they wouldn't be outside alone.

I don't know how much sleeping took place, but I know that I heard lots and lots of giggling.

We also spent several fun hours at the park!

Slides...

more slides,

climbing towers,

climbing trees,

and the big highlight for our second oldest......

playing fetch with Perry, my sister's very fun dog.

Running right through the town of Roseburg is the Umpqua River. I ran next to it and over it every morning on my run...but it was even more fun to...

swim in it!

Initially it felt quite cold,

but with 95 degree weather it was perfect!

We had fun in the mud,

fun making mud art,

and fun smearing the mud.

We found treasures,

tried to catch fish,

we even found a couple crawdads (they might have been dead, but they were still cool).

We made little rivers and then...

the more adventurous kids swam across the big river.

It was quite a ways across and the current was faster than they thought, but....

the river was still conquered!!!

We had a fabulous day at the river! I really enjoyed spending time with my sister. She and I are a lot alike and we had a fun time visiting and watching our kids play together.

Oregon Trip Part I

We have been home a week and a half now and I finally have a minute to sit down and record our fun, fun trip. We spent 10 glorious days in Oregon during the last two weeks of July and we loved every minute of it.


The first leg of our journey was the 800+ miles to Roseburg, Oregon where my sister and her family live. We ventured through Nevada and then up through southern Oregon...14 hours later we finally arrived.


Everyone warned me that Nevada would be boring, and it was...but I also found a simple beauty to it...it wasn't busy, it was plain and somewhat dignified-like an old farmer with a story to tell.




The roads were also very empty which made for easy traveling, but I also did a little worrying- if we did get stranded on the way would anyone ever find us? When we crossed the border into Oregon it was like I was instantly home...gorgeous pine trees and a small river following the highway...mountain lakes and volcanic landscapes. I love Oregon!!



When we arrived at my sister's house, we were met by cousins and got a tour of their beautiful home.







I was so so tired and I couldn't sit down without feeling like everything was still rushing by me...is it possible to get motion-sickness from being in a car all day???








The kids figured out who was sleeping where and with who...I was so tired I couldn't even think...sleep finally came and the next day we were ready for fun!!!










We headed to the Wildlife Safari...an awesome drive-thru adventure where we got to see animals from every continent...up close!







Some animals we drove so close to that we could have reached out and touched them...






and we did get some good whiffs of authentic wildlife animal odors!



At the end of the driving adventure we got to go through a zoo-like section with smaller animals.













We got to pet, feed, and even got some hands-on farmer training!


Our wildlife adventure's cherry-on-top was a train ride through some animal habitats.



What a day!!! So much fun!!!

Scout Camp

This year our oldest went on his first week long camp out with the Boy Scouts. He was really excited to go and eager to earn as many merit badges as he could. Highlights of his week were: earning the leather work merit badge (he made a knife case) and seven other merit badges, the hike up to an old mine, the "sailor" shower he got halfway through the week, catching frogs, eating camp food, and hanging out with his friends. It is a milestone for this mom to have her son gone for a week at a time...I was worried and did a lot of praying for him, but he hardly missed home at all and came back full of stories and adventures to tell.

I asked him to take pictures...

Some turned out better than others!!

He was pretty proud of sleeping in a tent for a full week! And he said he was so tired at the end of every day that he fell right asleep. But he is definitely glad to be back in his own bed!