OUR little VACATION

This week Josh is off for Spring Break and Mom and Gene are here,  so I was determined NOT to sit around the house and waste our time together watching TV and not having anything enjoyable to remember....so we went to the coast.  I knew that it would be cold and rainy but we got a SWEET deal on a condo and I knew we'd have a blast....

It was cold and VERY rainy but we had a BLAST anyway!!!  

Haylee coloring on a rainy day at that beach!!  May I note how my barely TWO YEAR OLD is holding her pen!!!

What we did when it was TOO rainy to go play outside!!  The condo had a rec room and no one was using it, so we had a BLAST!!!  We played pool, air hockey (of course Josh beat us all!!), Garrett shot some bears (pre-tending to play a video game), and Haylee and I danced!!

Along the coast they are famous for their salt water taffy and in several shops you can watch them make it.  We happened to show up at a perfect time.  We got to watch him make it basically from start to finish.  In this picture he is putting the color on the taffy.  The kids we so amazed!!

This picture is hard to see because I'm taking it through a window but the taffy is in that machine spinning.  At the end of the machine it cuts off the taffy and wraps it in the paper!!  How cool is that??

One of the lighthouses we went too.  You could climb to the top but you had to be 42 in and Haylee was very upset she couldn't go with us and Garrett was right at 42in but the lady said he couldn't go, so then he got upset...so we decided it wasn't worth it!  It was absolutely gorgeous though from the outside...but cold and rainy!!  

BIG LIGHTHOUSE.....little jody

You could walk down to the beach and look at some tide pools below the lighthouse.  The beach was called cobble beach....

...can you tell why!!  The kids kept falling so we had to end up carrying them, but we did see some pretty cool ocean creatures!!

Jody looking down below!!

We got a chance to walk down a couple of neat streets right on the bay.  The coast is such a neat place to roam around.  Cool shops, lot of sea food, and wildlife!!

This is another lighthouse we went too but it was closed and raining VERY hard so we took a picture from the car and went to Walmart....yes Walmart!!  What can I say....we don't have a Walmart around here!!  I dare you to shop at local stores and not step foot into a Walmart for FOUR months and then see if you don't think it's pretty awesome!!  TRY IT!!

On our way home from the beach we took a little detour and stopped at Silver Falls State Park.  It's an amazing park that has over 25 miles of hike trails with 10 waterfalls!!  We didn't have much time and to tell you the truth we were all a little bit tired from our coastal trip, but we stopped and hiked a little to this one AMAZING fall....South Falls!!  You can walk behind it......but you do get SOAKING WET!!!

This picture does NOT do her justice!!  She was dripping water from EVERYWHERE!!!  Her chin, her nose, her glasses....she couldn't even see because her glasses her so wet....you would have thought we went THROUGH the waterfall, not behind it....but it was so much fun!!  We laughed SO hard!!

Walking behind the falls....(Haylee missed out....she fell asleep as soon as we put her in the stroller!!)

So I wish this picture was a video, instead of a still shot but you can get the idea!!  Gene has been working with Garrett on playing with bugs and not being afraid.  He found a warm and got Garrett to hold it but right as I was going to take a picture Garrett dropped it and then was too afraid to pick it up.  We kept after him to just hold it and after a few minutes of him getting close and then running off he finally put it in his hand and SQUEALED!!!  

He then became good friends with "Wormy" and we found him a nice little home by a tree as we left!!

PS:  I have some more pictures of us around the house and Gene's birthday but I'll have to get to them later!! I'm TIRED and we have another adventure planned for tomorrow!!  I'll try to post a little everyday!!  ENJOY!!!