Thursday, August 1, 2019

Oregon Coast

We made it to the Oregon Coast!  With everything that's been going on this summer, it was a true miracle.  I wasn't sure we were going until a couple of days before.  Thus, I was less than prepared.  Unfortunately, because of work stuff, Jake wasn't able to come.  Major bummer.  Although I think he did enjoy the quiet house and being able to do his own thing.

Almost all of the Spjutes and Binghams were able to go, so we had great fun together.  The weather was amazing.  No rain at all with beautiful blue skies every day.  So we spent a lot of time at the beach.  It was awesome.  Zack spent hours boogie boarding, even Sage enjoyed it, we played some fun volleyball games, dug in the sand, and just enjoyed being there.  The kids spent every second playing with cousins, which was awesome.  I love when they're able to spend time together and get to know each other better.  It brought back lots of memories of similar trips with cousins when I was younger.  Grandma and Grandpa planned some fun adventures.  We went to Tillamook for ice cream lots of times.  We went on hikes.  One hike was a teenager night hike.  It was pretty amazing.  It was a clear night and the stars were amazing.  I've never been on the beach at night before.  It was pretty cool.  Anyway, I'll let a million pictures tell the story.  Bottom line: we had a great time!

Beautiful Mt. Hood

We stopped on the way and went on a little hike in the Hood River area.  It was beautiful!






Fish hatchery!

Awesome tree at our camp site





Looking in the tide pools

Zack hung his hammock up in the tree.  It was awesome!  He spent hours in that thing.

Boogie boarding fun





Double dutch with the cousins

We spent every night at the beach watching the sunset


The triplets are growing up!

Octopus Tree




Sage and Addie spent hours playing together



The littles were so excited to play volleyball


Scooter ride!


What it looked like when we gathered

Cannon Beach.  We were there for all of 10 minutes.  Maybe not worth it.

But then we ate delicious fish, which made it more worth it.



Pinata fun!



Cape Lookout Point, or something like that


Delicious Tillamook ice cream



We did our own light parade one night with all of the glow sticks.  It was so much fun!  Toby turned "The Greatest Showman" on his phone and Henry sang along.  People came out of their tents to see the spectacle.  

Candy at the end of the treasure hunt.



I think almost everyone was in this picture


The adventure ended watching "Finding Nemo" on the beach.

Friday, July 12, 2019

June Happenings

Another picture update of the month.  Better than nothing right?  We're running around like crazy here.  We had a superintendent quit without notice and we've been scrambling to keep things going.  Poor Jake is basically doing everything himself.  I've been helping him a lot more, which is hard to juggle with the kids being home.  Every day feels like a non-stop sprint until we climb into bed exhausted.  We are managing to have some fun, but so far this summer wins the award for being the busiest ever!

Some of the kids from the mountain bike team (and yes we got Kate a new helmet)

Sage talked Kate into playing with her at the park

Lots of mountain biking happening around here

The water main leak we had from last year happened again.  Yay.  This time we dug it out with the tractor and it better be for reals fixed.

Red Ledges got a new pool that we've been taking advantage of.

Our first, and last, weekly summer hike.  Every summer I say we're going to hike every week, and every summer it doesn't happen.

Learning how to change a tire.  I'm now a pro.

A short summer hike we did go on.

Super cool spot just packed with boulders.

Sage has a club every week.  This week for the club they made a cute poster and hearts and took it to this older lady who lives by us.

We talked Sage in to doing a mountain bike race.

She looks like she's having fun, but seconds after this picture she threw her bike down and started crying.

Jake racing

Lemonade stand.  They made $40 in 2 hours

We did manage to go camping one night.  Jake planned all the meals and they were way better than anything I would have done!


Sage told me exactly where to stand for this picture. 




One baby fish caught


Someone was nice enough to set up a slack line for us to play on.


Look closely.  Those are potatoes wrapped in bacon, filled with deliciousness.  With steak.  Done by Jake.

We finally got the hammock up

Jake takes me on really long mountain bike rides.  This one was 17 miles.  Beautiful though.