Hello everyone! I can't believe it's the end of August. I've been all consumed with lots this summer and have been away from the computer. So my blog (and blog friends, sorry!) were totally neglected. Thank you all so much who have been checking in on me! I'm looking forward to reconnecting with everyone, and I have lots of great projects planned for the fall.
We have had such a busy and wonderful summer. We went to Washington for my grandma's 80th birthday. I did lots of gardening and painted all of the trim in the house. Almost. I also decided that the ceilings needed painting too. I know, what kinds of crazy pills have I been taking?
The main highlight of our summer was having our dearest friends from Florida come to visit. We did lots, and took tons of pictures. My most favorite memories of their visit were going whale watching, and just sitting in our back yard around the fire, visiting in the evenings. The great thing about whale watching was anticipating the sea sickness that was sure to ensue. Especially for my friend MT. She gets serious motion sickness, even when she's the passenger in a car. I've never been whale watching before, but I've seen our ocean off of the Oregon coast, and it is not smooth. But she was not going to miss whale watching, so we doped her and everyone else up on motion sickness medicine and headed to the boat!
We all walked down the stairs to the dock where our little boat was waiting for us. Then we headed through the teeny harbor to the choppy ocean.
Under the bridge, and between the rocks.
At times it felt a bit like a roller coaster. I couldn't stop laughing. I was also so thankful that our motion sickness drugs worked! Phew.
Fellow whale watchers in a smaller boat. Look at the dog! So cute, and how about a big 'no thank you' to the smaller boat. Crazies.
Everyone enjoyed whale watching. Except big sis. She HATED it. It freaked her out. Here's my favorite picture of the kids. You can tell which one is my first born. She's the one who's face says "I will kill you in your sleep if you don't get me off of this devil barge".
This is what our boat looked like. It was nice because the water is so deep right off of the coast line that we didn't have to go out far to see the whales. I was pretty happy about that because they didn't give us life jackets. Seemed weird to me and believe me, we held on to the boat and our kids for dear life.
Here's the best picture I got of a whale.
There is the gray whale's back. He didn't come much further out of the water.
Me, Little Sis (mini me), and MT's sweet girl.
Oh that was fun! And then it was back up these stairs and back home. We were all tuckered out after this adventure.
Time to relax.
The kids enjoyed setting up their fort. Or as I like to call it, "The hobo village".
See? Total hobo village.
Random found junk....or carefully placed fort furniture?
Hey, a hobo has got to eat, and have a well set table.
Just looking through these pictures makes me want to cry! It has been years since our last visit, and we have missed them so much. We are so blessed to have such friends. Wonderful friends that are truly more like family.
I hope you all had a great summer too! x