Beach Trip!

We finally made it to the beach yesterday!  It's sad that we only live 1.5 hours from the coast, but only get there a few times a year.  The temps had been in the high 90's in Sherwood on Thursday and Friday, so we were hoping for some nice, sunny beach weather.  Our curse held though - it was a cool 62 and very foggy when we first got to Lincoln City.  We weren't about to miss out on the fun though, so we changed into pants and jackets (we've learned to always bring clothes for cool weather) and headed down to the water.  It didn't take long to adjust to the coolness though and we didn't even notice it the rest of the time.  We had a picnic and spent nearly 3 hours just playing in the sand.  It was such a fun afternoon!  It's not often that we have that big of a chunk of time to just play without any distractions.

Spencer is usually a very clean kid.  He hardly ever gets dirt or mud on anything besides his shoes.  Not this time, however.  He was practically swimming in the sand and loved it.

After we had had enough sand, we kept up with our tradition of ice cream cones from Snack Attack.  I think Spencer liked these chairs almost as much as his ice cream. :)

The day would have been perfect if it had not been for one incident that reminded me of one reason why we will never get a dog.  As we were playing, a dog came up and peed all over the side of the bag we keep our sand toys in.  Gross!  And, his owner did nothing besides shrug and say a lame, "sorry."  Luckily, it wasn't a bag I cared much about, but Spencer cried when I told him we had to throw it away.  Oh well, I guess every trip needs a little comical mishap, right?  Still a very successful beach trip!

Pre-Pike

Spencer just finished his first swimming lessons!  We get a good discount at the YMCA since I work there.  I wasn't sure how he would do since he's always been very nervous in the water until recently.  Like most things with him though, I shouldn't have worried.  Once he met his teacher, he did great!  His teacher was awesome: silly and fun.  Perfect for this age group.  Spencer loved going every morning and improved a lot during the 2-week class.  He can now put his whole face in the water and float on his back.  I'm proud of him!  He'll be moving up to the next class in September.  Good job buddy!

This was supposed to be the picture where he held up the paper that said he passed this class and showed how proud he was.  I guess I'm more excited about it than he is.

Champoeg Cookout

Alan needed to camp at Champoeg State Park last weekend for a race.  Spencer and I didn't camp with him, but we did drive down for a cook-out on Saturday evening.  The weather couldn't have been nicer and I was sad that we could only stay for a couple of hours.  Doing a cook-out was spontaneous decision and we didn't even have time to build a fire, so we just cooked our hamburgers and hot dogs on a camp stove.  We even forgot our roasting sticks and had to roast our marshmallows for s'mores on a butter knife over the propane stove.  At least we didn't burn everything this time though!

We had time for a short walk on the trails after dinner.  Spencer wanted to play card games rather than walk.  I managed to keep him going by helping him collect leaves from all of the different trees and plants we found.  His favorites were the maple leaves that were bigger than his head and ferns.

Champoeg has great biking/walking trails and a good Frisbee golf course.  We will definitely need to spend some more time there next year when Spencer has learned how to ride a bike.

We Heart Summer!

These are the kinds of days that I live for.  I just can't get enough of the lovely weather and sunshine and I'm already starting to dread the end of it.  After Church this afternoon, Spencer and I read The Friend and played Crazy 8's on a blanket in the back yard.  Heavenly.  Here are a few of our other favorite activities lately:

Beaver Bay Camp Out

Last weekend, we got to go on our first camp out as a family.  Alan and Spencer have been camping together several times, but this was the first time I got to go.  I think Spencer was a little skeptical of my camping abilities before we left, but I hoped I proved that mommies can camp.  There are so many awesome places to camp in the NW.  We chose to go up to Washington, near Mt. Saint Helens.  It's another place we've always wanted to visit.  Alan is quite proud of the fact that it's last eruption took place two days before he was born. :)

We left Friday morning and arrived at Ape Cave about lunch time.  After a picnic, we hiked through part of the cave.  Ape Cave is a lava tube created from an eruption 1,900 years ago.  As lava ran down the mountain, the outside cooled and hardened, forming a tunnel for the still molten lava to travel through.  We hiked the lower portion, about 3/4 of a mile, since it was easier than the upper part.  It was dark, cold and damp and not super exciting.  Spencer was nervous at first, but thought it was cool to have his own headlamp.  Alan carried him all the way down, but then he relaxed and wanted to walk back out.

Still resists almost all pictures.

We headed to Beaver Bay camp ground right after the cave to make sure we got a campsite before it filled up.  I realized that I have never camped in an official campground before and was slightly dismayed at how little space and privacy there was between camp sites.  We managed to find one that was a little better than most and set up camp.  Spencer loved helping set up the tent and gather kindling.

This campground was super fancy by my standards - flushing toilets and showers, a playground, a swimming hole, and a ranger program in the evening.  It was right on a reservoir so Spencer was in heaven throwing sticks, rocks and anything else he could find into the water.

No camping trip is complete without Car's "eye guys."

I attempted to bake dutch oven biscuits for dinner.  Luckily, our dutch oven is so tiny that only four biscuits could fit inside because we nearly burned them to a crisp!  (I need some dutch oven lessons Dad!)  Alan made fun of me for roasting the rest of the dough on a roasting stick, until he realized the ones I cooked that way were the only edible biscuits we had.  Our kabobs got rather crispy too, so we had a charred dinner that night.  Lesson learned: always bring some extra food in case of burning! 

This was during the ranger program.  The forest ranger taught us all about salmon and had the kids pretend to be salmon swimming to the ocean and back in an obstacle course at the end.  I learned a lot and was impressed that such programs exist.

We had s'mores that night then all went to bed pretty early.  Spencer was exhausted and fell right to sleep.  I did too, but Spencer woke up cold in the middle of the night (because he refuses to sleep in a sleeping bag) and I laid awake until morning. 

Alan made breakfast burritos in the morning and didn't burn a thing.  They were yummy!




We packed up right after breakfast.  Spencer loved helping deflate the air mattress.






Spencer wanted to visit the playground and swimming hole once more before leaving.  It was sunny and such a pretty view with the mountains bordering the reservoir.  We threw lots more rocks, Alan tried to teach me how to skip rocks and Spencer waded in the water for a few minutes.








We had planned to go to the Mt. Saint Helens visitor center next, but changed our minds when we realized that it was another two-hour drive from where we were.  We picked a random water fall called "Lower Falls" off a map and headed off.  I'm so glad we did because this is what we found:



This picture doesn't do justice to how pretty or how big the falls were.  The power of the water was rather scary.  We saw a few crazy guys cliff jump off the top.  We had another picnic and hiked around a little before heading home.







I had forgotten how much work it is to go camping and I missed my bed and shower, but it was so worth it to have that time to just be together as a family without any distractions.  We had such a great time together and can't wait to go again next summer.

PS:  Another lesson learned: bring LOTS of extra underwear for Spencer.  Camping is way too fun and exciting to make it to the bathroom on time.