Sun River Vacation

We had an amazing time at Sun River last week with Justin's family. Sun River is in central Oregon along a rift zone. There were several cinder cone volcanoes in sight which I loved - of course! It is beautiful country, but it took 6 hours to get there so...not sure if I'll ever go back ;)

No I didn't take this picture but it gives you an idea what it looked like

Wednesday Justin and I arrived before the rest of the family to get dinner ready. Jon booked a guest house for us to stay at and it was amazing! It was one block from the river and just a few miles from the resort. Anyway, we agreed that each family would take a turn making dinner for everyone, so Jon had the idea to turn it into a competition where we would score each other based on how good the food and service was. It made us all step up so we had amazing food every night! We served the family homemade Cafe Rio and made a sign that said "Cafe Rosa" ;) We were very happy to be first and get it over with! 

We had shirts made and split the family into teams for different games we did. Team names were based on inside jokes of the family which made it extra fun!

Thursday morning we made breakfast casserole for everyone. After that we played our first game as teams. I did a scavenger hunt and each team had to put together a puzzle. This family is competitive! It was fun to watch everyone get into it. We went to the resort and rented bikes to do a 16 miles bike ride to a water fall. That was the highlight of the day! We got home and rested our sore muscles in the hot tub, and Jon and Laura were on for dinner. They made pulled pork sandwiches and had cheese cake for dessert: yum! We also had a ping pong tournament that night.

Deciphering clues for the scavenger hunt

Putting the puzzle together

Ready to ride! These bikes were the right choice!

The "waterfall" AKA a slight downgrade of white water rapids...lol

Silly face!

I sure love this guy!

Ice cream!!

Clara loves her uncle Justin/Us-Jah!

My handsome man :)

Enjoying family games

Yummy dessert!

Ping pong battle! I didn't stand a chance...

Friday we had waffles for breakfast and took the canoes out. Justin, James, Bonnie, and I went out first...we were able to canoe upstream so we didn't have to walk the canoe back which was quite the adventure! Then Papa Jon, Joe, and Jon went to give it a try. Joe lacked proper balance causing everyone to tip into the river: hilarious! I was so upset we didn't have a camera! Needless to say, he wasn't allowed back in the canoe ;) That afternoon we swam at the pool. Papa Jon, Judy, and Joe had dinner that night. They did gourmet hot dogs and had pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. Joe had hot dog trivia prepared for us while Papa Jon took our orders, so that added a fun factor.

I got a huge spider bite and this picture doesn't do it justice! There was major swelling...sad day!

More Rose family games

Saturday I was determined to float the river one way or another, it just took us forever to figure it out. We went to the resort to look at a few things and see what renting a tube would be like. We didn't want to pay a lot of money, so we drove up to Bend and bought some tubes, blew them up ourselves, and did a short float. The river water never gets above 60 degrees...brrr!!! But we enjoyed it anyway. James and Bonnie made enchiladas for dinner with tres leches cake: yum! We did our talent show that night which was so fun to watch! James rapped along with Vanilla Ice, Bonnie played her "happy song" (as Jon puts it) and sang to us, Jon gave us a history lesson, Laura recited everyone's birthdays (including the year!), Papa Jon, Judy, and Joe told jokes, and Justin and I danced. From there we played Calvin Ball (a Rose family creation) and baseball, then spent the rest of the night visiting.

Shaved his beard! Haha...baby face...;)

Ready to roll!

Papa Jon is ready to kill!

Because of copyright issues, the audio was muted when I uploaded this to youtube! So lame...I'll see what I can do and maybe post it with music so you get the full effect.

Sunday we cleaned the house up and were on our way around 10:00. On the way home we stopped by to see Chase and Rachel in Hillsboro. We had terrible traffic getting home and didn't pull into Puyallup until 6:00. Overall it was an amazing week! We had so much fun.

I wish I could tell you we were moved into our house. The original closing date was June 11th, but it's taking much longer. We hope to sign either today or tomorrow...we are at the mercy of escrow! Pray that the paper work all comes through and hopefully we'll be moving this weekend.

Longest Week Ever!

Upon preparing to write my blog update I asked Justin, "What did we do this week?" to which he replied, "Uggh! It was the longest week ever!" Haha, I couldn't agree more!

Jon and Laura went to Washington D.C. this week. They left last Sunday morning and got back late Wednesday night. We agreed we would take care of Clara while they were gone. It mostly entailed getting her ready for daycare and picking her up, feeding her dinner, and putting her to bed. She is the smartest two year-old I have ever beheld. Her vocabulary is off the charts! She communicates really well, and she loves to flip through her book saying nonsense as if she is actually reading the book.  She refers to me as "Towsey" and Justin is "Us-jah!" I remember when Corbin used to call me "Towsey" so it's fun! We took her out to ice cream on Tuesday night mostly because I was DYING for some and we couldn't BELIEVE it was only Tuesday. Time goes so slowly when you're closing on your first house! We sent her parents this picture ;)

Clara loves my sunglasses!

I subbed at a high school four out of five days this week. It was pretty exhausting. Teenagers are foul. You wouldn't believe the garbage coming out of their mouths! I only had one or two students give me any real problems to which I quickly put them in their place... but MAN...no respect! It strengthened my testimony of how important it is to have family prayer and scripture study! Our kids NEED spiritual armor to protect them from their vile peers. Ha!

I didn't pack a book on one of the days I subbed, so I balanced chemical reactions from a chemistry book and drew pictures. Ha!

Thursday we were supposed to close on our house, but the paperwork is so backed up it hasn't been signed off yet. Our realtor said hopefully Monday, but it looks like we will have to wait another week. Bummer! But we go on vacation this Wednesday so it won't be too bad to wait while we're exploring Sun River Oregon! :)

We had to get into our storage unit last week for a W2 for our home loan....not fun!

Saturday we got up early and went to the 6:00 session and afterwards met up with Papa Jon and Joe to see Jurassic World. I was bothered by some of it, but I loved the dinosaur parts and the Chris Pratt parts which was 75% of the movie so yeah it was good. We ate yummy Mexican food and Ben and Jerry's after the movie: yum!

In preparation for our family vacation, Justin and I have orchestrated a lot of on-going games for the family. To introduce everyone to the games, we created "pre-vacation packets" and sent them out. We are excited! Next week I will have some awesome pictures/videos to upload! We'll be in Sun River from Wednesday to Sunday. It's going to be awesome!

Opening their packets!

I teach the 16 and 17 year old Sunday school class at church, and some of my students graduated last week. I went to a party for them hosted at the Bishop's house, so that was fun to see some ward friends. :)

That's about it for our update! Lots more coming in the next few weeks with our vacation and closing on our house.

p.s. we played tennis and had Chick-fil-A for date night last week and here are the pictures