Family Vacation

We stopped at Multnomah Falls on the way to the Oregon Coast.  It was a nice break from driving.  We walked up the the falls lookout and felt the cool water from the falls spray on us.  It was a nice change from the 100+ Idaho weather.  

One woman walking up the trail passed us and said to me, "did you birth all of those kids?"  Oh yes I did.  And I love every one of them.  

We got to the beach and the kids immediately went running to the water.  Preston even grabbed Caroline and ran her down to the water too.  

When we got to our rental house, we unloaded all of our bags and enjoyed our wonderful view.  We ate outside on our patio several times, and we even saw a whale one morning!

Preston and Ammon went exploring during low tide and found a sea lion hang out.  It wasn't until we got really close for this picture (Preston is about 5 feet away), that someone told us that it is illegal to be closer than 50 yards.  Good thing we didn't get fined.

There was a waterfall on the beach by our house.  Everything was just so beautiful!

 One day Wesley collected drift wood to make a wind break.  He spent a lot of time, making two spaces for him and Emery.  It was actually really nice because the beach was quite windy.  The next day he was devastated to find that someone had used his wind break for a latrine and firewood.  That's the problem with public beaches.

Caroline had a good time running all around and digging in the sand.  She tried to bring home as much sand as possible in all of her pockets and crevices.  

This is what happens when I say "cheese".  Pretty Natalie

 Emery ran up this rock and asked me to take his picture.  He is a shy boy... except when it comes to cameras and him family.

 Savannah was never bothered by the cooler weather.  The highs were always in the 60's with a fair amount of wind.  One day she even put her swim suit on and played around in the cold water.  There were a number of surfers in the water, all in full wet suits when Savannah looked at me and said, "I don't understand why no one else is swimming"... the rest of us don't like being cold.  

We took all of the kids crabbing.  It was fun to see how crabs are caught and measured.  The boat rocked Caroline to sleep.

This was the biggest crab that we caught. Boy was he tasty! We took home 25 crabs and stuffed ourselves.  It was a real crab feast, complete with corn on the cob, garlic bread, and fruit salad....Yumm 

 For some reason, Caroline decided she was too old for a port-a-crib on this vacation.  She shared a queen bed with Natalie and Savannah, until the girls told me that Caroline slept all over them in the night.  She successfully kicked everyone out of the bed except Savannah...who had to sleep on the edge.

 We left the Oregon Coast and took a beautiful drive down to the California Redwood Forest.  The trees were breathtaking.

Just a normal sized tree...over 300 feet tall.

Even the dead ones are amazing giants.

One of the trees had fallen down on the path, so they cut a tunnel through the middle.  So cool.

 Emery had fun climbing through the dead trees.

 This tree is one of the oldest trees at the park, over 1,500 years old.

We took another trail through the fern valley, not to be confused with Fern Gully.  This valley was used in one of the Jurassic Park movies. It had five different kinds of ferns growing up the sides of all of the walls.

 As we were walking past one of the trees, we noticed that the branches made perfect climbing steps.  Wesley immediately started climbing.  We made him come down once we saw that he could easily get very high.

 When we lined our family around the base of one of the "normal" sized trees, the nine of us didn't even make it half way around.

Our family pet.  Everyone took turns holding her and playing with her.  We really like her, even if she is almost 2 and still bald.