Oregon Trip

Last week we took the 12 hour trip up to Oregon to visit Cousin Rachel. They were very nice to accommodate us in our week of exploring Oregon.

The first time I started taking pictures was after a long 2 hour drive to the beach. The weather was 80 degrees and we were looking forward to a lunch on the beach. Somehow between where we parked and a 100 ft hike down to the beach, the temperature drooped 50 degrees and the wind was blowing like crazy! The boys had fun with Brian, but I headed back up to the car with Eve after about 20 minutes. We decided to head to the Oregon Coast Aquarium after the freezing beach experience. Luckily my dad let us take "Princess Pei Pei" (GPS) and she was very helpful in helping us find fun attractions, even if she did try to lead us off a cliff at one point.

The aquarium was very fun and had so many cool things to look at. We were worried it would be like The Living Planet aquarium in SLC that I wasn't impressed with. Turns out, places by the coast have better coastal animals! Who knew?! As you can see from the picture, my belly looks bulgy. We are expecting our 4th offspring in 5 more months. 4? I can't believe that I, Michelle Proctor Jones, am going to be a mother of 4. So strange.

This seal was quite the show off and the kids LOVED to watch it do tricks under the water. I want to go to Sea World now.

That evening we went crabbing. Before we left for Oregon Jack would wake up in the morning and say, "Oregon! Fishing pond! Catch crabs!" We just had to do it. It turned out to be such a fun experience. I enjoyed watching Brian get all giddy with discovering a new way to catch water creatures. He likes fishing and this was his first experience in ocean fishing. I'm sure it won't be his last.

We caught several crabs, but we were only able to keep about 15 and only 4 of them were alive after the long ride home....and over night. The crab lady told us that on ice they would survive for 20 hours. But yeah, we only cooked up 4 for breakfast. Barf. It was so sick. Jack and Heber loved it. Heber, picky eater #1, even ate a good amount of it. I tried a bit, but I couldn't handle the smells and the process.

The next day Rachel took us to a fun splash park close to their house. It was wonderful. All of the kids ran around and played while Rach and I pretty much just sat there and watched them play. It was fun to see differences in Oregon compared to my little life in Utah. Brian heard a kid yell out, "Oh sick! That's inorganic!" and Rachel pointed out the average age of the mom's at the park. I honestly thought it was grandma day at the park or something! So funny.

Cousin Dan let us watch him land his helicopter and the kids enjoyed sitting in it and learning about helicopters.

Close to Rachel's house is a cafe where Twilight was filmed. Of course we had to go. It was fun to pretend like we were die hard fans, but the food was very good as well.

I wish I would have taken more pictures of the kids at Rachel's house and at her parent's house. It was so fun to hang out with family and for the kids to play with 'cousins.' It was a great week.