Sunday June 6th

 I have a good excuse for missing last Sunday...I was on vacation! 

May 28th was our 33rd anniversary so we took a 9 day trip to Oregon to celebrate. It was relaxing and beautiful and pretty much perfect!

We spent the first weekend in Hood River and Cascade Locks which are both on the Columbia River.  Our hotel was right on the river and had an amazing view. The mattress was super comfy and wee had blackout curtains too so we found that we slept in every day. It was awesome.

View from our balcony

We drove to Hood River and spent some time watching the wind surfers/kite surfers. It was a lovely sunny day. I kept thinking that I could live in this beautiful place. Then I remembered that it's a place for wind surfers for a reason...it's always windy! I hate wind especially in the winter so probably not the place for me! But it was a lovely day. It made me want to be more physically active, that's for sure. Those people are strong.

We did a bit of hiking also and just enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Then we went to Diana and Rob's house and spent the rest of the time with their family also. We had Sunday at their house and then the rest of the week we spent in a beach house in Yachats, OR.

The house was right on the beach (though up higher) and had amazing windows and views.

The weather was practically perfect too! We had over 60 degrees every day and only one day that was overcast and sprinkled a bit. Overall, perfect!

We walked on the beach, hiked, saw weird plants, ate yummy food, made s'mores, saw a lighthouse, saw a whale playing in the water and played lots of games.  

Generally, it was extremely laid back and relaxing.

Diana and Rob were a good influence on us and we ate out way less than we would have if we were on our own!  (Though we still had quite a few good meals out) Cooking together was actually quite enjoyable too.

I love chicken and waffles and this was a really good one!

These weird looking plants are called Darlingtonia and they eat insects. They are huge...like 2 feet tall!

S'mores by the fire pit!

S'mores over the stovetop when it was rainy.  Worked really well! ha!

Our most exciting (non-whale) moment: had a toilet/water disaster that James was home to find, thank heaven..we were out hiking but he had school.  Water dripping from the light fixtures in the basement and everything. Luckily, not our fault, just a random water line leak. And he caught it pretty quickly. If it had gone on for the hours of our hike, it would have been really bad. 

We spent the last afternoon/evening back at Diana's and we helped remove some wallpaper they've been meaning to remove for, oh, about 11 years!  It's always nice to work on a project with family.

On Saturday, when we returned, I went to a big family dinner at Diane's house to cap off a wonderful week. Daren and Berit's family were in town and so were all of Doneen's kids so it was a really great time with family and good food.

Life's good.