Memories

Today we set out to find a souvenir for each kid to remember Oregon---and then do some shopping at their outlet malls to take advantage of the tax-free purchasing. We had fun. ;)
It will be sad to say goodbye to this place in the morning. It has been so much fun and relaxing. I loved that the house we stayed in was on the water, but we didn't have the ocean waves to always worry about with the kids. They could go outside by themselves and we could keep an eye on them. There was just so much to explore and things to do. I loved sleeping in every morning and having nothing on my to-do list other than play with the kids. This was probably one of my favorite places we have ever been to.

Thursday

Today we took Ben over to the beach with the big waves since he didn't go the last time we went. They didn't disappoint. Everybody got unexpectedly wet from the waves. Oh it was so cold!
Grant and Karmin went on a little bike ride. They had fun. Karmin loves her new bike! I think the countdown is on until she can do the cross country mountain biking team with Ben.
For dinner we went to MO's. And it was about time! Ben told us that one of his friends said it was the best restaurant and so it was talked about a lot for the last several days. It didn't disappoint. It was really good. I have loved being here!

Try, Try, And Try Again

It is hard to get 6 kids to cooperate for a picture. This is the result of no less than 86 pictures...

Wednesday

I was pretty excited for this day, but it didn't turn out quite as planned. We ---I guess I use the term "we" lightly...it was more "I"--- wanted to go and see the Tillamook Cheese Factory. I had heard such great things about it. However, they closed down their factory for tours last month for renovation, but they promised that there would still be things to see, cheese to sample, and their restaurant would still be open in a makeshift building. And it was, but it wasn't that exciting. It was a really nice building--very clean and bright. But there wasn't much to see and to top it off they were out of curds. The nerve!
So we went to the air museum afterwards to appease the masses. The museum was in a huge, ginormous cold Quonset with a leaky roof and poor lighting, but it was a lot of fun! There were all sorts of planes to look at and things to read about. We got to sit in trainer cockpits and the kids got to push lots of buttons. Since it was a leaky building (and it was literally raining inside) there were puddles for Lucy to jump in and a play place too. It was great! I'm glad we saved the air museum for last!
Then we came home and went clamming. We finally figured out how to effectively clam. We went out when the tide was starting to come up. It was so fun to play in the sand and little waves of the water. Each wave that would come though would diminish our shore. It was so weird to watch these tiny waves bring in so much water. After awhile, Grant's mom decided to go inside. And I'm glad she did because I watched her go in and happened to notice that the water was circling us. We were on a huge island of sand and didn't realize it. With how fast the water was coming up, we could have really gotten stuck--well, we would have gotten stuck swimming back rather than walking.

Tuesday

Today we went down to Newport because supposedly, from what I read on the Internet, they have one of the best aquariums in the United States. Well...I don't know what other aquariums they are comparing them too because I wouldn't have rated them that well.
Then we went down to Florence and rented some sand boards and sleds and went on the sand dunes. It was beautiful there! I think Grant and I had more energy than the kids though! The walk to the top of the hill was a doozy, so there were a lot of kids hanging out at the bottom! Grant and I decided that if we lived here, we would totally do this as a date night, but alas we had 6 kids in tow! I was so tired by the time we got home tonight!

Monday

We sure are being blessed with great weather! Today the kids wanted to go clamming and crabbing. It was so much fun! We had more success finding shrimp than we did clams, but it was still fun. Karmin was much happier when we made the decision to not collect the shrimp. At first we thought we would have shrimp, but then we decided that there probably wasn't much meat on them to warrant  keeping. So we threw them back. (The seagulls liked them though!)
Lucy fell asleep so we left her at home with Nana and Papa and went over to the other side of the bay to go crabbing. The kids liked playing in the sand and collecting shells. Ben, Trevor, and Karmin got to see some harbor seals up close and personal. We did catch 5 crabs with the help of a guy who lives nearby who showed us the ropes, but they were too small to keep.
For family home evening, we had a fire on the beach and roasted s'mores. It was such a fun day!