4th of July and Beyond (Continued)

Anywho, as I was saying...after the beach we headed back to my Dad's in Vancouver, WA. Jared and I and my niece, Marlana, stayed the rest of the week there. The first couple days there I was still sick and wasn't able to help my dad as much as I wanted to. I wanted to make him meals and do yard work and help clean the house, etc. But the first day there I didn't even get dressed. Jared was so sweet and completely made up for my sick-slackin. He helped prune a bunch of bushes, and mowed the lawn, and made some food for my dad to have after we left. I'm so lucky! Every girl needs a Jared! We did a lot of fun stuff with Dad while we were there too.

I heard the Columbia River Gorge is the most concentrated area of waterfalls in the US. I've always loved hiking up to the top of them, or even just seeing them when we drive by. Dad took us on the drive that my Mom liked to take so often. We drove up highway 14 to Stevenson and stopped for ice cream.

We crossed over the Bridge of the Gods into Oregon. We stopped by a couple different waterfalls. The biggest one was Multnomah Falls. We hiked up to the bridge and took lots of pictures.

Then we drove along the old scenic highway on the way home. We passed more waterfalls, and stopped at the Vista House up at Crown Point. There's a great view of the gorge from there.

I met up with some of my old Jr High/High School friends, Margi, Ashleigh, Alisha, and Brodi. We went to breakfast and then to a park to let their kids play. It was so good to see them! It's been a really long time.

We played a lot of games with my Dad while we were there. We made him some good food. He loves orange glazed salmon so I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com. I love that site. We also made some potato soup (another favorite of his). He loved it! We ate all of our meals outside on the deck. The weather was perfect all day everyday!

On our last day there we went to the Zoo. My brother Brett and his sons came too. The Portland Zoo makes Utah's look like a pet shop. It's so beautiful and has many realistic habitats for the animals.

When we were trying to take this group picture, a humming bird kept getting in the way. So I decided to get a picture of it!

We spent a lot of time looking at the yard, and watching the birds and squirrels. My dad has a couple regulars that will come and eat right out of his hand!

I wish I could see my Dad more often. We had a really nice trip. It was so hard to say goodbye!

4th of July and Beyond!

We had a nice trip a couple weeks ago from 07/02/08-07/12/08. We had a family reunion on the Oregon Coast (Lincoln City area), and then spent some time with my Dad in Vancouver, WA. All of my brothers and sisters and families were invited to the reunion. Not all of them could come but there were still about 35 of us! We rented 3 beach houses, and had a really good time together. It was nice just to relax but we did a lot of fun things too.

We made some cool stuff in the sand:

I got up early one day to check out the cool tide pools. Some of us went for walks on the beach. We went to the outlet mall there and I got a couple cute things. We played some horseshoes on the beach, and flew some kites. One of the coolest parts was watching all of the fireworks. The scenery was beautiful, the fireworks were great, and I got to do it all with the people I love the most!

Me & my sisters

A bunch of us went to the Tilamook Cheese Factory. (Sorry Ryan and Ashley = ) We took the tour but most of the machines were down for the holiday weekend. But we still got squeaky cheese samples (there were other kinds too, but who cares about those when you can have squeaky cheese!) and yummy ice cream. I really like their gift shop there. I'd say that 90% of the bracelets I own have come from that gift shop! I'm serious. They're so cute and so cheap! It was really crowded there, but it was still fun just to spend time with family.

My niece-in-law, Ashley, had all kinds of ideas of things to do. A huge group of us went with them on a hike. We hiked through the forest out to a suspension bridge, and then hiked down to the waterfall. It was beautiful!

(We all looked like that when we were done)

We took turns cooking. Making fajitas for 35 people is quite the task! I think they turned out pretty good though. We played some games while we were there, like Ticket to Ride, Settlers, and Rummy. On check out day I weaseled out of having to clean up by getting really sick. I was pukin out of both ends for like 2 1/2 days! That wasn't more than you wanted to know was it? My stomach hurt so bad! I just felt like yuck. My camera battery died when we took our big group shot of (almost) everyone. = ( I'll have to get one from someone else and add it later. (If you're reading this and have one, please send it to me!) Here's some of the group pix I was able to get before it died:

After we checked out a bunch of us (I keep saying that because if I actually named names this already long post would be about 3 times longer!) went to see the Spruce Goose (Howard Hughes historical wooden plane). It's in an air museum in McMinnville. It's huge! It only flew for a few seconds, but it had a big impact on the aviation industry.

K, this is a lot longer than I thought it'd be. I think I'll stop there and do the rest in another post. Let me first just say that I love my family so much. There's so many of us that we don't get to see everyone as much as we'd like, and sometimes it can be hard to keep in touch. But they all mean the world to me. I'm glad so many were able to make it to the beach. It just wish everyone could have come!