oregon coast adventure

Last week was spring break so we took our family to the Oregon coast for some adventures. We had never been there before, so everything was a new adventure. Our motel was right on the beach and this was the view from our window (the whole wall was windows)/balcony. Awesome! Our first stop was Multnomah Falls just outside of Portland.

There was lots of mist coming off the falls and since the falls are in the shade it was rather chilly! This is everyone but Jared. He doesn't particularly like having his picture taken.

While hiking around the falls a bit, the boys discovered this little cave away from the wind and mist.

This is just another little stream gently cascading down the mountainside near the waterfall.

This was our first look at the Oregon coast near Canon Beach at Ecola State Park. It was so amazing! Matthew told us that it was a giant swimming pool!

We were literally spoiled on Monday with a perfectly sunny 70-75 degree day without much wind and no clouds! One of the few times in my life I've been at the beach and not been freezing!

Just another shot of the beach.

Since the day was so fabulous we took a 1 1/2 mile hike through the forest to get down to a nearby beach. The hike had lots of ups and downs and muddy spots. Sometimes Matthew liked to walk...

and sometimes he liked to ride.

Mark loves to hike and I'm certainly glad he doesn't mind carrying Matthew along. Sometimes I just can't believe we never invested in a baby backpack when Jared was little -- it would have been very well used. Along the trail we discovered this humongous tree with a hole through it. The boys literally walked through the tree several times -- it was great!

We finally got our first taste of the Pacific Ocean. It was very cold, but oh so fun!

My feet on the wonderful sand.

On Tuesday, Ryan was sick to his stomach, so we decided we better not go out on the boat to do whale watching. It was a chilly and very windy day anyway. After convincing Ryan to get in the van with a barf bucket nearby we headed south along the coast to Yachats lighthouse and beach. Jared, Jacob, and I went up into the lighthouse.

After climbing 104 stairs, you get to see this lightbulb and if you're really tall you get to see out over the ocean. We were a little disappointed we couldn't look out over the ocean and countryside. I guess I expected an observation deck up there, but there's not.

We also spent a few minutes at the beach here. That's Jared in the blue sweatshirt and black pants.

This beach was perfect for rock throwing and Jacob & Matthew had a great time doing just that!

After this adventure we stopped for lunch at Arctic Circle, where another adventure happened -- Matthew got sick! Lovely. After slurping some Sprite, Ryan decided he was feeling a bit better, so we decided to head for the aquarium, thinking Matthew could just sit in the stroller, sleep, or be carried and be fine. As soon as we handed over the money for the aquarium, Matthew barfed again. We cleaned things up and headed in anyway. We were disappointed in the aquarium because it's really not very big. It is much like a zoo though with outside exhibits, but just with sea lions and seals. We watched them feed the sea lions and that was kind of fun. There is also a tunnel that you can walk through and see the fish swimming all around you -- overhead, underfeet, at your side and that was pretty cool. They had a huge octopus too. We probably only spent an hour or so there. We spent the rest of the day and evening at the motel.

Wednesday morning Ryan & Matthew weren't feeling queasy anymore, but were running low fevers. So we pulled out the tylenol and ibuprofen and decided that if the motel would refund us one night's stay, we would start heading home before the next kid got sick. The motel granted us a refund and we loaded up the van. We drove through some absolutely beautiful farm country and by the time the meds had kicked in we had arrived in Tillamook at the cheese factory. The kids absolutely LOVED this place!!

The factory has self-guided free tours and free cheese samples.

Ryan is all about cheese -- here he is with the cheese packaging process going on behind him. We could watch all this through huge walls of windows. We were also able to see the huge tanks of milk churning away to make the cheese. There were several video presentations as well showing how the cheese is made. After looking around we all tried out the free cheese samples. Cheddar is always a winner, but Ryan decided the extra sharp wasn't quite as yummy. Mark & I liked the mozarella best. All that tasting of course led us to the gift shop where we could buy some yummy cheese to take home. We ended up with packages of colby, cheddar, and mozarella. Tillamook also makes ice cream, so we all got an ice cream cone -- the ice cream was every bit as good as Aggie ice cream. Here's Ryan with cookies and cream and Jacob is enjoying his chocolate.

Despite Jared's facial expression, he loved his chocolate ice cream too!

With full and happy tummys we got in the van and drove another few hours before taking a break just outside of Portland to see a fish hatchery. The kids enjoyed feeding the king size trout, watching the tiny trout swimming and jumping and checking out the sturgeon ponds. We found a motel in La Grande that evening that had an indoor pool, so the boys went for a quick swim before going to bed. Thursday morning we jumped back in the van and started the remainder of the long drive home. It was 9:00 a.m. when we got to Baker City, where my cousin owns a fast food place called Burger Bob's. I've never seen the place, so we pulled of the road and got directions from the local gas station attendant. When we pulled up, there wasn't anyone there, but it was 9:00 a.m. and who wants a burger and fries that time of day anyway? So we jumped back on the freeway and headed home. But now I know what Burger Bobs looks like, even though I forgot to snap a photo.

The kids were super travelers -- no meltdowns or fits and just a couple of arguments! Wow! That was a blessing. We ended our spring break adventures by taking the kids to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D at the IMAX on Friday. It was fun to have Alan, Ethan, and Rachel join us for that. We also went to Ethan's baptism on Saturday and hung out with Mark's family. Heidi put together an egg hunt for the kids and Jared & Ryan really raked in the coins. We all had a good time!

backyard fun

Matthew is an outside boy -- he loves it! Last week we had some nice weather and I decided to take a few photos. Here's a sampling of his fun times: Little boys and dirt --gotta love it!

got the bear

Not the most flattering photo, but Ryan got his Bear award at pack meeting this week! Yay!

a crazy busy week

Last week was a totally crazy busy week for me, and this week looks to be quite similar. Lots of that crazy-busy stuff comes from RS. I am doing visiting teaching interviews and I have a total of 28 sisters to meet with ASAP. We've also had some changes in our ward boundaries, resulting in the addition of 4 new families, so we've been visiting with those new sisters in their homes hoping to get to know them better and welcoming them to the ward. I also had Enrichment meeting on Thursday evening. We chose to do an openhouse evening from 5-9 and give the sisters the opportunity to help with a variety of different humanitarian projects. It was supposed to be easy...but then things started to fall apart with unexpected happenings. I'm going to spare the details because in the end everything went just fine and we were able to get a lot of projects completed.

The most memorable event of the week was Jared getting his teeth pulled by the oral surgeon. He is having baby teeth pulled because some of them are anklose (spelling?) and will not fall out on their own. Besides that, keeping them in any longer is going to cause his jaw bones to grow in an arch instead of a straight line. So, Thursday morning Mark took him to the doctor to have 4 teeth pulled. He came home with having 7, yes 7, teeth pulled. Once the doctor got into his mouth he found 3 other loose teeth and decided to pull them to spare us the falling out/pulling out at home in a couple weeks. Jared didn't have any pain after he woke up from the procedure and his gums are healing well. That's a relief! Basically the poor kid has nothing to chew with though. However, we can already see some of the permanent teeth peeking through, so it's all good I guess. Here's a couple of pictures:
Jared holding the tooth with a lot of root left on it. Most of the teeth were molars.

All in a row -- 1,2,3,4,5,6,7!

One of the great things that happened this week was the warm spring weather which has brought out the tulips in front of the house. Love these!

The nice weather drove us outside to do some yardwork. Jared cut down all the raspberry canes and Mark raked up a ton of leaves left over from the fall. He also discovered a snake living in our lilac bushes where lots of leaves get trapped -- ewwww! Um, that pretty much squelched the urge to do any more yard work!

Ryan got very creative over the weekend and built a huge fort in the family room. He furnished it with his radio, mp3, blanket, and snacks. What a life! I need a fort.

Last week was of course St. Patrick's Day. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do something to celebrate, so we started the day with green pancakes. The kids were a little worried that they might taste weird just because they were green, but they got over it and ate well! For dinner we had stuffed green peppers, pistachio salad, and cucumbers. I was going to do green rolls, but totally ran out of time, so we had to do the rhodes rolls thing. We had a yummy lime cheesecake for dessert.

I am also in the process of painting a bedroom that we're turning into a craft/toy room. (Jacob & Matthew are now roommates) I spent a good deal of time working on that on Saturday only to realize that I totally hated the paint color. So I had to find a new color and get new paint during this last week. I talked Mark into helping me paint this last Saturday and then I finished the second coat yesterday. I love the new color --buckskin. I'll be working on getting all the tape off and getting things moved into that room this week.

Also this past weekend we had stake conference meetings to go to and on Sunday we got to attend the Draper Temple dedication. Ryan, Jared & I were able to go to that while Mark stayed home with the other boys. It was a good experience for all of us to be able to participate in that, especially after being able to tour the temple in person in January.

As I said at the beginning, this week is crazy as well. I've got more RS interviews and meetings, Ryan plays his last basketball game of the season, and Jacob's spring soccer season kicks off this week.

a bit of followup

Here's some followup photos: First of all, here's my toothless Ryan! Both top two teeth are coming in, but very slowly. Ryan has discovered he can't eat whole apples right now -- he misses that. There's no sign of a tooth coming into the space vacated on the bottom. We're a little concerned about that.

And just because I have a picture, I'll post it. Here's the hole the plumber had to cut to fix our pipe -- the cracked pipe has been cut out -- I snapped the picture while the plumber was outside cutting the new piece of pipe, about 15 inches long. Lovely.

Jacob won the opportunity to have lunch with the school principal at Chili's restaurant today!! It was because of his "stellar star" award (I talked about that in a previous post) He had a fabulous time and enjoyed the chicken strips and fries!

On a not so happy note, we had to have a plumber visit today. There was a crack in the ABS pipe in our kitchen. It was a pipe behind one of our kitchen cabinets, buried in the wall of course. Nice. We have a nice hole in the wall, but at least its inside the cabinet where you can't see it all the time. This is the second ABS pipe that has cracked. Wierd -- apparently not a good batch of pipe. Lucky us.

tidbits from the week

We become Jazz fans at an early age around here. Matthew has taken a liking to wearing the boys basketball jerseys around in the morning. We have put off bedtimes until late this week watching/listening to Jazz, BYU, & Utah basketball.

Jared's basketball season is over. He finished up Wednesday nights game with 4 points and a bazillion rebounds. He's had fun -- the most important part.

Ryan finally lost his other front tooth last night. I'll post a picture of that in the near future.

Ryan's school program was very well done. He and about 9 other boys did quite the basketball routine to Van Halen's "Jump" as part of the program. I had no idea he was doing that or I might have taken the camera to do a little video. Bad mom!

I'm addicted to watching "The Biggest Loser" and I'm very upset about Tuesday's show ending with "...to be continued". Will they or won't they ALL get immunity? Will they really be able to lose 77 pounds combined -- did Mike lose 10 pounds this week? Will they have to vote off one member of each team? I hate being sucked in and then cut off to wait for a week. Maybe the "...to be continued" just ended my addiction! The boys like to watch it too, so it turns out to be a rather peaceful family activity. :)

Jacob had a fabulous time at his birthday party last Saturday! When you're that age, what's not to love about Chuck E. Cheese??

Grocery shopping is a necessary evil. I tend to put it off until the fridge contents are solely condiments. Guess what we're doing for date night tonight? Yes, grocery shopping -- not dinner out. :(