Our Ultimate Life: Memorial Vacation

Last week we had our last track meet of the season. My girls did great! I had one girl win all her events, and my relay team finally took first! Two of my 6th graders got me a little baby boy outfit. So cute! It was fun coaching those girls. After the track meet I met Justin in Sumner for Jackson's first puppy school class. We signed him up for a six-week course that should help stop/prevent bad puppy habits.

I made goody-bags for my track girls for the end of the season.

Each bag had a note for them with cookies and rice crispy treats.

Ha...my phone fell out of my pocket and these hooligans got hold of it!

A while back Justin and I planned a trip to the Oregon coast for Memorial Weekend. My mom sent an email about getting together on Saturday. The majority of my siblings agreed to meet up, so I proposed my crazy idea to join them to Justin and he agreed! Friday we made all the preparations - including driving Jackson to Silverdale for Justin's parents to watch him - and Saturday we left at 3:30 AM! We made it at 12:00 MST - a record 7.5 hours! Nice. It was fun having lunch with a bunch of my siblings at Gabe's house. Later that night we had sushi with Gabe and Christy and watched the movie "Dial M for Murder" - I was totally dead and went to bed before finishing it. Sunday morning we headed to Portland in the morning. Thank you for hosting Gabe and Christy!

Justin drove the first half to Portland and as soon as I started driving the car was making a strange noise. We finally discovered the fender liner had come loose and was flapping like crazy. We duct taped it to try to hold it together until we got to Portland, but not even 5 miles later (hitting a tumbleweed didn't help) the duct tape job was no good! So we spent more time really MacGyver-ing it. Success! We got some special screws from Auto Zone, and Chase helped Justin put it together. Unfortunately, we were too stressed and frustrated at the time for me to take a picture of our duct tape job.

We spent the night at Chase and Rachel's. We got to see baby Hudson - he is the most chill newborn I have ever beheld. And holy smokes that kid is so dang cute! Well done Chase and Rachel! We watched the semi-edited "Gone Girl" thanks to VidAngel - it was good.

Monday morning we drove to Cannon Beach. It was sunny all day but soooo windy. We walked around all the shops downtown, visited the beach, and did the same thing at Seaside. We had time to kill before checking in to our room, so we spent probably an hour playing arcade games. That was one of our favorite parts! We played Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Guitar Hero, air hockey, and even had a dance off! Good times.

We went to "The Inn at Cannon Beach" and enjoyed the many amenities before our room was ready. The place was some kind of bunny sanctuary! There were rabbits and bunnies EVERYWHERE! They were SO CUTE - and they LOVED Justin. What the heck? They would all start coming toward him at the same time. It was weird and really cute. After dropping off our stuff we went back into town and had some fish and chips at a local place. We watched half of "Bridge of Spies" that night due to my inability to keep my eyes open once again.

Tuesday we had sunshine and no wind! Amazing. In the morning we drove down to Tillamook. We walked through the cheese factory, had a bunch of samples, and headed to Cape Meare. There is a lighthouse there that we hiked down to. From that high we saw a whale and two sea lions. Pretty cool! We hiked to the famous Octopus Tree. We made our way back to Cannon Beach after that. We got ourselves swim ready and spent a few hours enjoying the beach. We found a cove-like area that blocked the wind which had picked up since morning. We threw the disc a bit, read books, and played in the water. We saw at least 100 baby crustacean-like creatures burrowing in and out of the sand. They looked like they had just been born. After a few hours there we had down time until our dinner reservation. We ate at Stephanie Inn - we ate there four years ago during our honeymoon, so it was fun to go back. The food was amazing once more! We will have to go back every few years. After dinner we finished "Bridge of Spies" and went to bed.