Whirlwind Vacations

In the last week and a half, I've gone to Jewel, Oregon with my husband and kids and Tucson, Arizona with my mom and brother...*sigh*...talk about a whirlwind of VERY FUN activities!! :o)

Anthony and I took the kids down to Oregon to visit our good friends, Able and Abbe. We were just there for a couple days but it was SO nice to get caught up with them and get to know their sweet, adorable little kids. They have a son that's 4 years old (he's actually only 4 months older than Tirus so they had a blast together) and they have a daughter who's 2 1/2 but talks better than I do! :o) Sadly, their daughter was only 6 months old the last time we got to spend time with them! :o( All the kids got along VERY well which a total blessing! Able and Abbe are amazing parents and it was really nice to see how other people run their house and get fresh ideas of how I could do things better at my own house. The first day we were down there, the 8 of us went for a drive to Seaside Oregon. I thought I'd been there before but I definitely hadn't. I'd highly recommend going there, especially with kids! There's actually swingsets on the beach! Plus the kids all got to go on a beautiful carousel that we found in one of the cool little shopping centers we went to. There were a ton of cool little shops to look in to but with 4 kids 5 years old and younger that'd be just asking for trouble! We did venture into a hat store where the kids got to try on all kinds of crazy hats. :o) Alena's favorite of course was a tall, pointy princess hat where as Ty preferred the crazy one stripped in primary colors with the spinner on top...go figure... :o) The second day we were there we all went to an awesome pumpkin patch! There was a pond in the middle of the farm where they had set up a fun little boat ride. About a 1/3 of the way thru the ride a (metal) shark jumped out of the water and then a little while later 2 (metal) dragons came out of the water. The kids thought it was the coolest! :o) Although poor little Chloe did NOT like the dragons! :o( She screamed and ran to her mom...poor girl! :o( After the boat ride, Alena and Ty got to pick out a pumpkin, as did Chloe and Jack. Then we got to go on a train ride back to the front of the farm by the parking lot where we paid for our pumpkins and checked out the farm animals before leaving and heading to lunch. Above is a picture of Alena and Tirus getting a ride from Daddy in the wheelbarrow. Here's a really cute family picture of us at the pumpkin patch:


I was home for only 2 days before I packed up and flew down to Tucson with my mom and my brother, Danny. We got to go visit my other brother, Scott, and his girlfriend, Kelsie. Scott got a job down there at the national headquarters for MDA (Muscular Dystrophy Association) at the beginning of this year and I hadn't seen him and Kelsie since June when Scott came up to help Kelsie move all her stuff down there. I must admit, I kind of fell in love with Tucson! I know I'd eventually get sick of having pretty much one kind of weather all the time (except during monsoon season in July and August - which I'd LOVE to experience some day!!), but I thoroughly enjoyed visiting! It was about 90 degrees the whole time we were down there and it felt perfect. It's a very different kind of heat than what I'm used to here in Washington - it's a very dry heat - so it's more like if it were 75 degrees here at home. We went to a few places to observe and learn about the plants and animals that are native to the Sonora Desert that Tucson is in. We also went to an active Catholic Mission and that was gorgeous! The architecture was unbelievably ornate. I can't even begin to imagine all the work that went into making that place look as amazing as it does. One of the evenings after we'd all gone to dinner together Danny and Scott went to a college football game while Mom, Kelsie and I went shopping and out to coffee. We ended up hanging out at Barnes and Nobles for quite some time and that was actually a ton of fun! It wasn't part of the original plan for the evening but it turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. It was the first time I'd gotten to spend any one on one time with Kelsie (Mom was off looking at books most of the time) and it was really nice to get to know her. She's really sweet!!

Well, Anthony is anxiously awaiting a chance for me to destroy him in ping pong so I'd better end this here. I'm hoping to get better about adding new posts to this blog on a more regular basis.