November

When I looked in my November file I was surprised to see only pictures of Henry (taken by the kids) and a very cute very small Polly doll with a disassembled tech deck looking very large.

Henry before

Henry after

I didn't know my base boards where so dirty.

We did enjoy a nice Thanksgiving at Christa's house with my mom and Craig's twin brother's family. We had and delicious dinner with great company.

October

The best thing by far that happened in October was a visit from part of the Hopkin family. It turns out that at least one of the Hopkins likes us. Thanks T pot. We wanted to show them a good time so we took them on a very late season camping trip that was cold yet enjoyable.

Brent and Mark

Cousins

There were marshmallows day and night

Our guests happen to be here for Halloween weekend. Young T pot looked darling in her handmade costume while my poor children got last minute target specials. (as Brent likes to point out)

The Bee

Carm you are amazing!

The army dude once again.(last years costume)

Tiny had a hard time picking which costume to wear. I had he wear the butterfly to school and let her wear the bat girl for trick-or-treating. If she had it her way she would been bat girl the whole time.

6 months later...

I knew this would be hard for me. I thought 6 months was a good time to update and recommit.

A lot has happened and here are some highlights.

September:
Carson turn 8 years old and was baptized the day after his birthday.

Our Oregon Trip

I finally decided to do a blog. I am not great at keeping up on this kind of thing so I am going to see how it goes. I thought that our Oregon trip would be a good place to start. Last December when we were in Hawaii there was a huge storm coming through. It lasted about a week and it was the week that Brent was there. So he spent some time on the computer planning our next vacation. He put together a 9 day camping trip up through Oregon staying a few days in each spot. To say the least I was a little nerves. Packing food and clothes and being on the road for so long was causing a bit of anxiety. We left on 8-8-08 the same day the Olympics started. We first went to Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California just east of Redding.

The kids knew that I had gotten some art supplies for the trip and wanted to get right into it. Here are some of their creations.

We only stayed one night and we where off. We drove up I-5 to the Medford area and went to The Valley of the Rougue State Park campground. While we where there we went to a Family Fun Center.

We went on go-cart, bumper boats, and did batting cages. It was a BLAST! Brent had to be in first place every time. That is me and Lily trying to keep up.

We had squirt guns on the boats so we all got soaked. We didn't mind too much it was about 100 degrees.

The next day we headed north to the Grant Pass area and took a jet boat ride up the river to Hells Gate Canyon. They took us up to a nice cabin and feed us a delicious lunch. The boat ride was awesome. The driver enjoyed doing 360 and stopping quickly to get us very wet.

Here is the boat and us at the cabin where we had lunch.

Then we were on the road again. Northward to the Coos Bay area. We drove through Coos Bay then south a bit to the Sunset Bay State Park campground. It was beautiful and very different. I don't think it go above 60 degrees and the fog hung very low. I enjoyed this since the trip so far had been blazing hot. We spent time checking out the tide pools and collecting things.

We went to a botanical garden and look at a small island covered with seals and sea lions.

From Sunset Park we went east to Eugene. I was born in Eugene and lived there for 8 years so I enjoyed this stop. We visited my aunt and Brent's brother. This was also the half way mark so I did grocery shopping and laundry. We stayed at an RV park and the kids swam and played ping pong. I don't have any pictures of Eugene but I do have to add one of the highlights of the trip. We found that as soon as we crossed the border into Oregon there was a Dairy Queen on every corner. I think there were 4 in Coos Bay alone. Needless to say we made several DQ stops for dipped cones and blizzards.

Next we went to Lake Billy Chinook and meet up with Brent's sister and brother and their families. We got the kids on the tubes. Lily was doing the cut sign when he would get around 7 mph.