The rest of the story...going home.

Continuing on with the highlights of our trip to Oregon...if you missed the first few installments you'll have to scroll back through the posts. I assure you it's very exciting. (haha) Saturday we went to Cannon Beach. On the way we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory in, where else, Tillamook. I had forgotten my camera so Jeremy was the only photographer.
No surprise that the only picture of the Cheese Factory was in the parking lot and was of these Ferraris. There were several of them traveling together and I think the boys enjoyed seeing these more than anything esle. The factory was fun and interesting. We got to watch through big windows above the floor of the factory as they cut and packaged 20 pound blocks of cheese. My Dad and I bought some Cheese Curds to snack on the rest of the day...it's tradition.

(Ally goat)

Just a few miles down the road from the Tillamook Factory is the Blue Heron Cheese Factory. It's smaller and specializes in more fancy kinds of cheeses. It also has a petting zoo with goats, sheep, peacocks, ducks, geese, and a few donkeys. The kids enjoyed seeing the animals.

(Julia, Me, Ally, Gage and Dad)

We arrived at Cannon Beach, which much to my kids surprise, is not like the California Coast. The water is very cold, it's overcast and foggy, and the sand is even different. The kids did enjoy some of the differences.

(Julia and Me...Haystack Rock in the background)

Julia loved the water and didn't seem bothered that is was so cold. She kept trying to run into the waves so I made her hold my hand. Even then she kept pulling me to try to go into the water. When I was little we did play in the water some. Usually just up to our knees which was as much as we could stand. The thing about the Oregon beach is that you are fine playing in the shallow water as soon as your legs go numb. You can't swim out into the ocean like you can in California unless you have a wet suit or a death wish. Maybe some macho boys would do it but they'd have to come in to shore pretty quickly.

(Ally and Jack discovering treasure)

Jack and Ally found all different kinds of shells, jelly fish, and big sand crabs. They were very excited about their finds.

(The Family)

As we were leaving the beach we saw some people pointing out into the surf, so we looked and saw a whale that was surfacing and blowing water every few minutes. It was too hard to get a picture, but it was a nice end to our beach day.
Monday was a day for the little kids. Jeremy and Gage hung out at the house and Rich and I took the three little ones to Enchanted Forest. There are no amuzement parks in Oregon so this little place is all we had. It's been there since I was little. I remember going to it when I was Jack's age. It's got characters and scenes from nursery rhymes and stories that the kids can look at. It also has some fun things to do like the Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe...it's a huge boot that has the old kind of burlap sack fun house slides coming out of the bottom. We had to go on that many times and had to force the kids to move on.
Ally, Jack and Julia were so excited to see everything. They crowded around the window to see into the Three Bears' cottage.
They loved the candy house from Hansel and Gretel but the girls were a little affraid of the scene inside with the old witch.

(Ally at the Keyhole)

The kids went into Alice and Wonderland's rabbit hole, which is a tunnel through a log and underground, and came out the keyhole just like Alice.

(Ally, Jack, and Julia in the witch's mouth)

Then there's the coolest looking one, the Witch. You can walk into her mouth, climb some stairs to see out her eyes, and slide down the back of her hair. Since I was there last they added a Haunted House...Jack and Ally braved it with Rich and said it was the scariest place they'd ever been. They started to cry as soon as they got through the front door so poor Rich had to hurry them through the rest to get out as fast as possible. Ally lost her flip flop at one point so they had to back track a little, but they made it out in one piece. They also added a small rollercoaster similar (on a much smaller scale) to the Matterhorn at Disneyland, and there's a cute little log ride. It was a fun day and even now Julia still asks when we can go again.

(Grandpa and Grandma saying goodbye)

Tuesday morning we said goodbye to Dad and Netta. Most of the kids were so sad to leave and we promised to visit again soon.

(Rich and the kids)

On our way home we stopped at Crater Lake. We had been driving for several hours...you can tell how much the kids appreciated the detour. Rich and I loved it. The water was so blue and beautiful!

(Jack, Me and Ally)

We stayed the night somewhere in Central California then got up and headed for San Francisco. We stopped to see Sarah, my sis-in-law, who is expecting their first baby shortly. The live in a cute little appartment on a hill just outside San Francisco. It was fun to see her, too bad Jeff was at work so we didn't see him. Sarah gave us some good advice about getting to the Golden Gate so off we went.

It was foggy, windy and cold but it was fun to see the Golden Gate and drive over it. We are planning another trip to San Francisco when we can take more time to see everything but Jack really wanted to see the Golden Gate, so we did this for him. We had a good and short time there, the last stop of our trip. Everyone enjoyed the trip but we were all happy to get home.

The continuation..at least the first half of it...

(Ally, Gage, Julia, Me, Grandpa, Jack and Jeremy)

...The first stop we made on our first full day in Oregon was to see my Grandpa. It was important to me because growing up he was the Grandpa I was intimidated by. He was gruff and stern and just generally didn't seem kid friendly. Even the last time I saw him about 7 years ago he wasn't all that happy to see me. I had heard that he had mellowed and sweetened up recently at the ripe old age of 94 so I really wanted to see him to experience it for myself, you know, before it was too late to make that memory. (The memory for me and my kids, he doesn't exactly make new memories very well anymore). It was great! He was happy to see me and was sweet to my kids. He patted my leg as I sat next to him and said he was so happy we came...I am pretty sure he knew it was me. He gave us hugs and kisses when we left, it made me quite emotional since I hadn't had too much of that from him before. It was nice and just seeing him made the trip worth it.

(Scott's memorial, they planted the tree when they made the memorial, it's so big!)

After we left Grandpa's we drove to my old high school. There's a memorial to my brother Scott there that we visit every time we go to Oregon. The school was open so I was able to show my kids my old locker from my senior year and the cafeteria, etc.. It was a little weird walking around my high school with my husband and 5 kids. We also drove by my old junior high, grade school, church and the house that I grew up in. Some things looked the same, some things have really changed.

(Rich, Julia, Jeremy, Jack, and Grandma Netta)

My Dad suggested we go feed the ducks at the Pringle River. I pictured a few cute little duck families but there were at least a hundred birds there; some ducks and pigeons but mostly geese. We did have to be careful where we stepped...lots of poop...that was gross. Next we went to the Riverfront Park in Salem which is next to the Willamette River. I walked down to the banks of the river, which is full of the smooth little river rocks, and skipped rocks with the kids. We watched an old stern wheel boat take people on rides on the river. It was fun.

(Me and Ally)

There is a carousel at the park that Grandma bought tickets for us to ride on. Each of the horses was custom made by local artists so they all had their own personalities. I had forgotten how "artsy" Oregon is.

(Jeremy, Gage, Jack, Ally and Julia)

Later we walked around my Dad's little town of Monmouth to Western Oregon University which is just a few blocks away. The kids played at the park and found several trees to climb.

(Rich, Jeremy, Jack, Julia, Ally, Me and Gage)

The next day we went to the Columbia River Gorge. We went to Crown Point first which is at the top of the gorge.

(Ally)

The views were beautiful!

(Grandpa, Grandma, and the family)

Next we went down the gorge to Multnomah Falls and hiked up to the bridge.

After that we drove just a little farther to the Bonneville Dam and fish hatchery.

(the Sturgeon)

(Mr. Salmon smiling for the camera)

The fish hatchery had a huge pond full of Salmon and Sturgeon. There was a viewing window where we spent a lot of time watching the huge Sturgeon (they get to be about 10 feet long) and the Salmon swimming by the window. Jeremy took a picture of several of them but, "Mr. Salmon" as I call him, is my favorite because it looks like he's about to say something.

The next day we went to Silver Creek Falls. Rich and I stopped at the view point on the way there because it was so pretty. You can see the Christmas Tree farms behind us.
Okay my Twilight girls...yes, this is the field that the baseball scene in Twilight was filmed. A lot of that movie was filmed in this part of Oregon, including the in the gorge where we were the day before.

(Jack, Julia and Grandma at the top of the falls)

Silver Creek Falls is a little river, a big creek really, that flows over a huge cliff but...

there's a trail that goes under the falls. If you look close you can see the people on the trail under the rock overhang.

(Cousins Megan, Amy and Me)

That night my Aunt, Uncle, Cousins and their families came over to my Dad's for a BBQ. It was fun for my kids to meet even more cool cousins to play with. We made a fire in the fire pit, roasted marshmallows and visited. It was a nice evening and a nice end to the first half of our vacation!

Getting there...

We decided to take our summer trip up to Oregon, my home state. It's about time since we haven't been there since we only had Jeremy and Gage. I finally felt like I needed to go back to see family and show my kids the beautiful state I grew up in.

It takes 15 hours to get to my Dad's house from ours on I-5 if you don't stop for anything. Needless to say we took 2 days to make the drive and decided to see some things on the way.

Our first stop was in Santa Nella for lunch at Pea Soup Anderson's. It's a cute little restaurant in a Dutch Windmill and they are famous for their Pea Soup. Since that was their specialty and my Mother-in-law raved about how great the soup was...she used to go there with her family when she was young...we ordered the token bowl of Pea Soup. It actually tasted a lot better that it looked. It was yummy! Even the little ones liked it...not the bigger ones though.


We cut over to San Francisco to head up the 101 so we could drive through the Redwoods. We saw so many pretty sights along the coast. We had to take a picture of Rich's favorite, a toilet all alone in the middle of a field. He wanted Jeremy to get out and sit on it for the picture but that was a no go, so we just took the shot of the lonesome toilet by itself.

We didn't really have a specific destination in the Redwoods. We figured we'd see lots of really tall trees as we drove through the Redwood National Forrest. We did stop a cute place that had huge carvings of things. The little ones liked the panda that they could climb on.

The Clown Bear Totem Pole was pretty cool but it was so tall we couldn't fit in all in the picture and still see the kids at the bottom. It was a nice stop and the kids got to get out and play a little bit.

It was taking longer than we thought it would because the highway was so small and winding and we kept getting stuck behind really slow drivers. The sun began to set and it was dark by the time we drove by the Avenue of the Giants which probably would have been the best place to stop and see the big trees but we did see a lot of giant trees so we were satisfied. We stopped and stayed the night in Crescent City. It's a cute little coastal town in the very northern tip of California. I was kind of amazed that we had been on the road for over 14 hours and we still weren't out of the state. The next morning Jeremy took his camera, the nice Nikkon (he's a budding photographer among other things) and went to the docks to take pictures.

I've only included a few of my favorites that he took .

But there are many more that I'm going to have to print up and frame.

Once we got into Oregon we stopped in a tiny town called Rice Hill off of I-5 to get Umpqua Icecream. There's a little icecream stand there where I had been when I was little that is still there. It's the cool kind of place where your order of a scoop of icecream is more like two or three scoops. We all got our icecream and then continued on another several hours.

We finally started to see the green rolling hills of where I grew up. I had forgotten how many shades of green there are in Oregon. We also had the overcast skies which is the norm there, but it makes the blue skies that peek through even more appreciated. It was nice to be "home" with the moss on the trees and roofs, the cloudy sky...it's cozy.

We got to my Dad and Step-Mom's house that afternoon. They live in a little old town, in a house built in the late 1800s or early 1900s. I can't remember which. It's on the historical tour of the town. The first thing I did was go to the garden and pick a bunch of raspberries like I used to do in highschool at our old house. I miss all of the fresh fruit grown right in the back yard. Anyway, that was getting there. The rest is to be continued...

Emma the miracle worker...

Last weekend we had some good friends come visit from Utah. We were nextdoor neighbors with Kyle and Julie. Kyle and I went to school together and Rich and Kyle worked together. When we were neighbors we only had Jeremy and Gage and they only had Nathan and Emma. We moved back to California when the kids were between 3 and 7. It was so nice to have them here, just like old times, only our families have grown both in size and quantity! I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the whole family, only pics of the kids swimming! Ooopps!The kids had so much fun at the pool. Gage and Nate made a raft out of themselves and tried to keep Jack from destroying it.

Ally, Louisa, and Jack (our new ones since we moved) had fun getting to know eachother.
Julia bonded with all of them but like always she would only sit on the top step of the pool, terrified of the water.
Gage tried to get her to go out into the water and relax but she held on so tight she about choked him.

Then along came Emma, miracle worker. Julia actually let go and had fun.

Eventually she completely let go and was happy on her own!

By the end of the day she was jumping to Emma. What a brave big girl!

Julia was so proud of herself, such a big girl...love the hair...amazing day! We were sad that they had to go home. Julia has asked for Emma everyday since they've been gone. Good friends are such blessings!