A California Beach!!!

We all slept well our first night in California! It felt so good to get settled in! We knew we did not want to go to the theme parks on the weekend, so on Sunday we drove a half hour to Huntington beach and had a WONDERFUL time enjoying the California Coast! I am so grateful to my husband who knows the area so well and drives us safely and confidently anywhere we need to go! He chose this beach beautifully! There was a Polynesian band playing and surfers out on the waves, it was perfect weather!! I knew I wanted to take the kids to a California beach, they have never experienced a beach where you don't have to wait for your feet to numb up before the fun begins! The water was not warm, but it was not freezing and our Oregon feet adjusted very quickly. In fact, it felt great!

As we got to the beach I got on a jumping picture kick and the kids soon joined in willingly! I love these photos! My kids are so great!

I don't remember asking them to be super silly, but the next couple of photos surprised me when I was reviewing them! I don't know what they were all up to, but they were having fun!

There was a surfer who had a big kite hooked up to his board and he surfed up and down the beach over and over while we were there. He'd turn his kite and head the other way, it was fun to watch!

After some fun in the sun, Adrienne got into the jump pics and even Richard joined in!


Next we decided to walk out on the pier! We watched the sun set and explored some shops!
Joseph got photo shy and refused to be in any more photos. But hey, who is in charge here? I won-he is in the photos, he won-he is NOT smiling! It was a win-win situation! What is funny to me is that once we got to Disneyland he was begging me to take his photos and I don't think I could have paid him to stop smiling! We got back and a&j fell quickly to sleep! Shortly after that Disneyland decided to put on another Fireworks show just for us! Turns out they did the same on our last night there too! Wow, we felt so special!

We finally made it!!!

We left at 2:30am Saturday morning. We had hoped everyone would fall back to sleep in the car! Aside from Jacob who took some Nyquil to help his cold, I don't think a whole lot of sleeping happened. The kids stayed busy with some activities I brought along and we listed to several of Lemony Snickett's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books. It was a lot of driving!

We drove and drove and drove and drove and 16 hours later we arrived in sunny Anaheim California, the last two hours of the trip was sitting in traffic! They knew we were coming and had a beautiful fireworks display just for us that we watched from our balcony! Wow, Disneyland really knows how to welcome a family! Our room was on the sixth floor and we could see the tip of of the Matterhorn from our deck as well as some of Disney's California. This was very exciting! We have not been to Disneyland since A&J were the ages of a&j now, so its been about nine years. We had tried to do this trip a couple of different times, but finances just never worked out. We have saved for this trip for a year now and were so excited to finally be able to take our family on this dream vacation!

So happy to finally be here!!!
The view from our room! We overlooked the pool and the parking garage which was pleasantly covered with vines!

I could not help but take these two photos of the kids getting comfortable. All four of them were playing a game of some kind! Too funny!

First Day of School

Nature Photo Shoot

In case you cannot tell, I A-D-O-R-E my children! Nothing in this world makes me happier! If I could record every smile, I totally would! In between fishing and swimming I was able to get some great shots of the kiddos playing in nature!

Fishing Day

Ever since Free Fishing Day at Hagg Lake, we have been excited to get out there and fish some more. A few weeks ago Richard and I hit a bunch of garage sales and struck gold! A guy was selling a bundle of fishing poles and a bag of reals for $10! Woohoo! Richard had fun sitting at the campfire sorting them all out and he got 5 working beautifully! At this same garage sale we picked up a tackle box full of stuff, most of it new for another $10. Fishing may be fun, but for me, frugal fishing is even better! We got up one morning and headed to Coffenbury Lake for some fishing. It was a gorgeous morning and although we did not catch anything, we had a great time together!







The kids got tired of catching nothing after a few hours and since it was warming up they decided to go for a dip in the swimming hole! I have fish for children! They love the water and they love each other! They had a great time swimming and even made some new friends in the process! Gotta love that!!

The Columbia River

Wednesday we headed out to the Columbia River. The kids got their suits on and had a great time. I was able to relax and read since I wasn't worried about sneaker waves and undertoes! While I read and the kids played Richard wandered up the shore to where a bunch of trucks were parked. The men were fishing and crabbing and Richard learned a lot from them that we can hopefully use someday when we go back to shore fish!










The kids always collect feathers and want to bring them home. I talked them into making some artwork for the birds to enjoy and took this photo for their scrapbooks. Nature art!!