Oregon Coast

Sunday, August 7th - Thursday, August 11th

 Cape Kiwanda, Pacific City, OR

For our 3rd week of vacation we rented a house on the beach of the Oregon coast.

We came here two years ago and really, really enjoyed it. The only downfall was the travel time (6hrs). It is a small town, not crowded and lots of time to just relax and enjoy each other.

I have just shy of 1000 photos of this trip, so it has taken me a while to get some time to go through them and narrow it down to just a few for this blog post. Myrna asked me yesterday if I ever actually print out all these pictures I have and honestly, no. I really need to get back to at least getting some of them put into an album or rather Project Life.

There was ALOT of kite flying!

This is the sand mountain that the Family climbed once and Elissa & I climbed twice.

Elissa was the bravest and spent the most time in the water.

Zach got in the water a little too, but he was more interested in using his kite stick as a sword. You can see that he is tucking it into his shirt so that he can pull it out at any moment. You never know when a bad guy is going to walk by. :-)

And did I mention that we did a lot of kite flying??

Darin reading his Kindle while Zach is flying his kite.

Then Darin was trying to figure out how to make a trick kite work. He did pretty good.

 This is the house we rented (the bottom portion only). You can see that Elissa's princess kite got wrapped around a pole on the roof. She was very sad. Here she is trying to fly her new kite.

We also flew airplanes.

And skim boarding......for about a second.

And sand dune jumping.

And some sand boarding (after they tried to do it w/their skim boards & it just wouldn't work).

Elissa is waxing the board getting it ready for another run down the hill.

There were great short bike riding trails that we had fun on.

And this wooden, twisting, pretty steep ramp to ride up. I couldn't find a place or angle to get the whole look.

Of course lots time digging and building in the sand.

There was a little inlet where the water got a little warmer, so the kids liked hanging out here. Zach said they were his little "hot" tubs.

And hunting for treasures!

This looked much cooler in the my head, but here is my attempt.

Our last night at the ocean we had a fire on the beach. It was super cold and the kids were dead tired, but we stayed out long enough to have a s'more.

It was a prefect ending to our 3 weeks with Daddy!

Seafair - The Blue Angels

Friday, August 5th

Darin's favorite things......planes.

Whenever we see a plane/helicopter/jet in the air, he can tell us what it is. He really turns into a kid when he is around them. :-) I think Zach is going to follow his Dad's love for planes too. Jets in particular.

Darin wants Zach to be a fighter pilot.

This is not a smile for the camera. This is pure joy of watching the Blue Angels flying by.

Oh how I love these guys!!

While the guys were enamored with the jets, Elissa was more interested in playing in the water with her barbie.

It is not very often that she plays with a barbie anymore. I love it when she enjoys these simple little girl things still. Too often she is trying to be much older then her 7 years. My sweet girl!

And yes, I did get some pictures of the Blue Angels too. LOL!

Though the weather was cloudy again this year, it was a great time!

Church Camp 2011

Sunday, July 31st - Wednesday, August 3rd

This is our 3rd year camping with our church family at Mayfield Lake.

We all look forward to this time each year.

The kids are getting more and more independent. Maybe a little too much.... They were in trouble several times for going on hikes with no adults with them. We had to be VERY specific on where their boundaries were.

These two were inseparable. They had so much palling around.



You could find the girls - mostly Elissa and Kelsey - walking any dog they could find.

Poor Bailey, the Chandler's new dog, was not use to all this exercise. He is more of a lay around and snore type of dog. :-) He was walking pretty stiffly after a couple of days of the girls dragging him around.

We had lots of beach time, though Zach didn't want to be down there. He was much more interested in riding his bike everywhere.

Every evening the kids looked forward to watching an outdoor movie at the Evan's camp. They bring a projector every year and a big white canvas to show movies. They even pop popcorn and serve nuts to everyone. It is such a treat! So we got to bed pretty late every night.

Though Zach never made it through the movie. By 9pm he is more then ready for bed.

I took almost no pictures this year. I spent my time chatting with friends. :-)

On the last day we were all scoping which site we want to get next year. Maybe we'll even stay till Thursday. Usually just the families with teenagers stay till Thursday or Friday. We'll see....

Camping and SUN!

Sunday, July 24th - Thursday, July 28th

The start of a THREE WEEK Vacation!

Camping at Steamboat Rock on Banks Lake!

I love, love, love camping in Eastern, WA. You can always - pretty much - count on it being really warm.

Of course, just before we left Zach was showing signs of being sick. Darin took him in Saturday morning and found out that he had strep and the rest of us needed to be tested. I was pretty certain I had it too because my throat had been hurting all week. Strep has been going around our neighborhood since July 4th. Yep, I had it too.

It was a long 6 hour drive - because of numerous stops - so we were SO thankful when we pulled up to our spot and we could run around and enjoy a beautiful, warm evening.

Monday ended up being one VERY rainy day. We had a quiet day in the trailer hanging out. It was sad, but the sun came out in the afternoon and we decided to run into Grand Coulee (my birth place) and take a tour of the Grand Coulee Dam (my Dad helped build the 3rd power plant).

3rd Power Plant

Then that evening we watched the light show. It is was pretty cool.

The rest of the week was beautiful!

Elissa was very excited to be able to go and buy a treat by herself.

The best part of camping for the kids is all the new friends to play with (because every kid is a friend).

The only bummer was the swarm of mosquitos. Poor Zach was eaten up.

The red dots were all over his face and neck and legs.

It was a fun, mostly relaxing time hanging out. We would have stayed another night if we didn't have obligations on Friday. We are definitely coming back next year.