We have been keeping quite busy these last two weeks. Poor Sophie ate one too many treats and busted out the back end of her stroller--haha! It wasn't super strong to begin with so good thing it is still under warranty. We can just send it back and get another one. We didn't know anything was wrong until she started slipping out of the stroller by her back side. Poor Sophie--haha! She does really like her stroller otherwise, though.
Sarah was in the middle of eating something crunchy when she gave me a sudden worried look. I was worried she broke one of her two front teeth. Luckily, she didn't break any teeth--her last baby tooth fell out while she was eating and she chomped down on it. She was having a bit of a rough day as you can see by her face, but her day did get better.
Her last baby tooth:
With all the craziness of this summer and Covid we actually decided it would be better to try and go on vacation sooner rather than later when a few things will be starting back up again. Since this might be Josh's last big family vacation with us (he's a senior and wants to go on his mission next year as soon as he can) we let him choose where we went within reason. He chose the Oregon Coast. Aaron and I have never been there before so we were okay with that. Good thing the library has lots of travel books so we could see what Oregon had to offer. It was a very good social distancing vacation, too. We left on a Friday afternoon and split up the drive. We stayed the night in Boise. Aaron was able to check us in at the hotel online so we didn't have to go up to the front desk at all which was nice. After unloading at the hotel we drove over to show the kids the Boise State 'Smurf Turf' or blue football field. This was the best picture we could get of it, though:
The next morning the hotel usually offers a buffet breakfast, but that was put on hold due to Covid. However, we did get to order our food. No one else was in the dining room the whole time we were there. It was nice, however, we did then realize how loud our kids were and we had no one else to blame it on--haha! The kids got to get drinks, but they only brought them out in kiddie cups. Josh was a bit embarrassed to be drinking from a kiddie cup, but the rest of us thought it was pretty funny.
Yes this is all of what Josh ordered (French toast, waffles, bacon, ham, hashbrowns, eggs, etc.) and he ended up eating 95% of it washing it down with his kiddie cup--haha!
After loading everything back up we were on the road again. Everyone was excited to see the 'Welcome to Oregon' state sign:
The van was so loaded down we got pretty bad gas mileage, but what can you do?! We had the roof rack fully packed, the back full of luggage and added the trailer hitch carrier with a completely full rubbermaid tote. All that along with 7 almost adult bodies the van really struggled hauling it all. The hard part was when we hit Portland we needed to stop and pick up groceries. We were so glad Grandma T had sewn all of us a cloth mask to wear!! Everyone wore their masks throughout the store and then we picked up a Costco pizza and drinks for dinner having an impromptu picnic in the parking lot of Costco.
We didn't have much extra room for the groceries we bought so the the kids had to hold the groceries on their laps until we got to our AirBnB 90 minutes away. They were good sports about it. Getting back on the freeway after Costco we did do a quick drive by stop at the Portland Temple which was beautiful:
We happened to stop while a bride and groom were getting their wedding pictures taken. Aaron yelled 'Congratulations!' out the car window to them.
We were glad to finally reach our AirBnB. The kids were finally glad to get all the groceries off their laps--haha! After unpacking the car and getting stuff somewhat settled at the AirBnB house we decided to walk down to the beach. It was about a 10 minute steep walk/hike down a recycled tire trail. The kids all handled it like a champ, however, Aaron having just had ankle surgery didn't fare so well. He did slowly make it down, though. Here's what the trail looked like:
We then walked down the road and made it to the beach. It was drizzling and cold, but awesome. We stayed at a very low tourist place and so a lot of the time we were the only ones on the beach. It was awesome!! Here's the kids checking out the beach:
Oregon is so beautiful. They have so many state parks and all of them are pretty. We drove out to do a hike at Munson Creek Falls the next morning and even the drive to the trail head looked like this:
Everything is so green and lush.
Later than afternoon we had an appointment to do a Rail Riding session. This is where you could pedal a quadricycle car along a portion of the Tillamook Bay Railroad. This was the most fun activity we did all week according to the kids. I must say it was really fun! They got us all set up in two different cars since each car could only hold 4 people. We tried to divvy up our family to make each car have equal pedaling power. However, Josh was too tall and his legs too long so only Sarah or Noah could sit in front of him instead of Daniel or Matthew like we had planned out. Here's what the first car looked like:
The second car had me, Daniel and Matthew in it. I didn't think Matthew would want to pedal so me and Daniel were going to have to carry the load which was fine. We were excited to get started.
We even got to go under and over some cool bridges like this one, too:
On the way home from Railriding we stopped at Rockaway Beach. It was really pretty despite being a bit windy and chilly.
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