Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Happy Birthday John!

 

We celebrated John's birthday a last month.  It was lots of fun.  Here's John getting a special birthday dessert at Olive Garden.


We had a few Pokemon themed activities including pin the ears and tail on Pikachu.



John wanted a cake with strawberries

We did a Pokemon scavenger hunt - I printed out little pictures of different Pokemon (I think we ended up with over 40 different ones after the kids made all their requests for which should be included.  For a while I could name all 40+.  Now I am forgetting already.  I hid a couple in each room and we searched for them.

Poke-ball pinata


Cake time


A few presents


John had been wanting a big Squishmallow stuffed animal.
He was excited to get one. 
Happy Birthday John!

Sunday, September 19, 2021

Happy Birthday Anna!

 

We celebrated Anna's birthday a few weeks ago.  So Anna is a teenager now.  On her birthday weekend she and Scott and the older kids did an escape room (along with one of Anna's friends).  Then we went out for Mexican food at a place in Vancouver right on the water.  It was nice.





Anna got to wear the birthday hat while the employees sang to her


Later we had a Clue themed birthday at home.

The kids dressed up as different characters

We went around to different rooms to get clues about whodunnit
A taco pinata was involved


Here is Anna reviewing all her clues to try and solve the murder mystery


Reviewing
She guessed right and the mystery was solved.

We moved on to cake


It was a fun day.  Happy Birthday Anna!

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Oregon Coast

We went to the beach for a few days this summer.  We stayed in a beach house with my sister and her family.  Here is Emma walking around the neighborhood with me.

Hooray cousin time!  There was a fun game room in the house.  
Here are Emma and our nephew, Gideon, playing foosball.

Video games!

Pool

Lots of us had fun using the hot tub

The weather was not perfect beach weather, but we had a good time.  On the first evening there we went to check out the beach by the beach house and it was so cold and windy!!

I didn't last long on the beach that evening.

Neskowin Ghost Forest

Another day we had fun in Neskowin.  I wanted to see the ghost forest.  Here we are looking at an old tree trunk.  This forest had slid (or something) into the sea about 2000 years ago and was covered by sand.  It was only recently uncovered.  Here we are looking at some of the stumps.  You can see baby Enoch, my sister's new baby, in the baby carrier.

Another stump




You can see some of the stumps sticking out of the water - they are slowly getting weathered by the ocean.


Another stump - it was pretty cool to see.



You can see some of the stumps here - they look like little rocks peaking out
And here are lots more stumps!











Fun climbing on Proposal Rock (I think that was what it was called)

We had a fun time there - although it was a bit cold.



The Devil's Punchbowl

Another day we went to the Devil's Punchbowl area.  We had fun climbing on rocks and exploring tidepools.


Inside the punch bowl
This fills with water when the tide is high




Lots of tide pools to explore






We had fun playing and exploring there.

Seal Cove

Spying on some seals

So far away

Depoe Bay

We walked around downtown Depoe Bay a little bit and looked for whales.  We didn't see any whales but did see some boats heading out.  We also got to see salt water taffy being made, which was lots of fun.  And of course, we ate some salt water taffy.  We had a fun time!  My sister has a new baby so it probably wasn't as much fun for her - and for some reason I didn't get a lot of good grown ups pics but we were all there.


Scott had to work every night of our vacation.  At least he was free during the days.

Yes, here he is using two computers - regular job and AF reserve stuff.

Here are all the cousins on our last morning!
Axel, John, Enoch (the new baby), Magnus,  Anna, Matthew, Gideon, Emma and Grant.

Cousing hugs!!  We had a lot of fun!
On the way home we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  Very crowded, but we did get cheese and ice cream.

Tillamook


This is the first time we've made it to the cheese factory since moving here.  So fun!