The Ocean

Sometimes I feel like my family is on a permanent vacation. I feel so blessed that we have been given the opportunity and resources to go so many great places and partake in so many fun adventures.
This month has been crazy. Kyle has been away each weekend at whitewater rafting school and his rafting season starts in a couple of days. He will be taking groups down the Wenatchee River, Deschutes River, and mainly the Spokane River.
We all came down to my parents in the middle of March to spend some time with my grandma who was visiting from Tennessee. We all had a great time and enjoyed our time with grandma. I drove Kyle back up to Spokane on Friday and then came back to my parents to stay for a few more days while Kyle was off at rafting school.
The first day we were back we had two doctor appointments to attend, so we didn't even make it home until Wednesday evening. We were all ready to be home. We were a bit sad as a lot of our snow has disappeared from the rain, however our first night back we got 6-8 inches of new snow. So we had a good couple of snowdays. We even whipped out our snowshoes and went for a evening/nighttime adventure. It was fun to see the clear sky and hear the quite of the night. It was a bit creepy once we started hearing the wolves howl, but it kept me motivated to keep moving towards home.

 Sunday morning we took off to Spokane. There we had the opportunity to watch Kyle and some of the other guides from Peak 7 raft down the Spokane River. The water level was about twice as high as when they did their training on it, so they wanted the new guides to experience it when the level was higher. They boys had a blast running around the river and throwing what I can only assume was hundreds of rocks in the river. On our way into Spokane we spotted 3 bald ealges up in the trees.

Once Kyle was done we got back in the car and made our way to my parents. The next morning we left for the Oregon Coast. We made a stop  at Multnomah Falls on our way and the Lego Store in Tigard, OR. Gunnar loves both the water fall and the lego store. He was very pleased. We got to the coast at evening, we stayed in a vacation home with a great view of the ocean. Kyle's mom joined us on our trip.

Tuesday morning we got up and headed to find some tide pools during low tide, while we found some we were a bit disappointed. We then went up to Tillamook to get cheese of course. Our kids were getting cranky so we skipped the air museum, on the way home we stopped at another waterfall that was about a fourth of a mile walk into. Being outside and getting our boys to burn some of their energy was critical to the success of our days....so they did a lot of walking and running. Luckily they both did minimal complaining about all the walking we made them do. When I tried using the stroller the both wanted out, so I rarely even attempted to use it.

On Wednesday we went down to Yachats. We got a bit of a later start than we had planned and the weather was not cooperating. We attempted to look at tidepools, and just as we were about to give up we found a starfish...which totally made all our searching worth it.

We then went back towards Newport for some Mo's clam chowder. We had about a 25 minute wait for a table and then were a bit disappointed with the chowder. I have been making my own and we decided we are fans of our own clam chowder. After getting our bellies full we went to the OSU Marine Science Center.  The boys were in heaven, they had fun touching lots of things and running from fish tank to tank to check everything out. We then made a few more stops on our way back towards the house in Lincoln City, as we did on our way to Yachats.

 We saw so many beautiful things and had a fun time as a family enjoying the beauty of God's creation. We headed to my parents Thursday and have stayed the night. On the way Kyle decided to get off the interstate and take the Columbia Gorge Scenic Byway. While there we had a herd of turkeys run out in front of the car and we had great views.

We aren't sure if we are staying another night, or what. Kyle's rafting contract starts on the first, so we are all just trying to enjoy our time together.