The World's Longest Beach

We are really loving the beach here. It is touted as being the world's longest beach and you can drive on it. Both of which I think is pretty cool. The guys are still enjoying the kite flying so much. I go along with them and fly a single line kite, but they are by far more into it than I am.They are learning to do kite ballet, but refuse to call it that, so they have renamed it synchronized kite flying. I like to just sit and watch them. It's been a great bonding thing for them to do this together.And today, while I am sitting in a chair taking pictures with one hand and flying my kite with the other I see this running on the beach:It is this little ball of fluffy cuteness, owned by one of the women who is camping right next to us at the campground and had all kinds of interesting stories and facts from the area to share with me.This is her other beautiful dog and since I'm missing Ace so much, I wanted to sit and snap pictures of this one for hours. I decided to stop after a few though. Don't want to scare the neighbors too much!
Living the life in Washington!

Discovery Trail

We are loving our location here so much because we have beach access and in between the Thousand Trails park and the beach is this fabulous bike trail: Discovery Trail. It is a wonderful thing to feel the breeze on your face while biking and be able to see and hear the beach too!
We really enjoy biking and to be able to do it on a path this nice is a treat. I've enjoyed every moment of it, except for the time that Nathan stopped short and I ran into him and fell off my bike which ended with me scraping my arm and hurting my hand. I would never mention that though, because he feels bad enough that he has hurt my in every single sport we've ever participated in. The man is consistent if nothing else! LOL
Living the life in Washington!

Seaside OR to Long Beach WA

Today we moved from Seaside, OR to Long Beach, WA. A very nice one hour drive!

Nike Hood to Coast Relay

We were delighted to be able to see the runners in this neat race as they came into Seaside, which was where the finish line was.

Some interesting facts about this race:

• Nike Hood To Coast Relay
• 197 miles
• 12,000 runners
• 28th Annual Year
• 3,500 volunteers
• August 28-29, 2009
• Largest Relay in the World!
• Incredible Adventure with Unbeatable Scenery
• Fundraise for Charity of Choice: American Cancer Society
• From majestic Mt. Hood to beautiful Pacific Ocean in Seaside

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

We have hoped to visit the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum since Jaci told us about it. Today, we finally made it there. It was even better than we envisioned it might be. The Spruce Goose is spectacular, both for its size and for its history. According to a volunteer there, this is the largest plane made out of wood and largest sea plane. Henry Kaiser partnered with Howard Hughes to build this single hull flying boat capable of carrying 750 troops. It is hard to capture through pictures how huge this thing is. Since I beat up on Lola the other day, I think it's only fair that I come back and share what we discovered on our trip to this place. We couldn't figure out why she kept telling us it would take 12 hours to get there and routed us in the same odd way as before. Then I checked the settings and realized that the Boy had changed it to "bike mode". Obviously, our bad-and not Lola's. The settings are correct now and order is restored!

Tillamook Cheese Factory

Today we attempted to go and see the Spruce Goose, which we want to be sure to do before we leave this location. But because Lola apparently is being passive aggressive again, we ended up in Tillamook instead and she was telling us it would be 10 hours until we got to our desired city. We have learned not to argue with Lola, or we end up paying for it so we pretended instead that we wanted to go to Tillamook and thanked her profusely for showing us the error of our ways.

It ended up being a great move, because we went on the cheese factory tour that we've been wanting to do but didn't think we'd have time. It turned out to be very interesting and unlike Ben & Jerry's, they allowed us to take pictures here. Not that I'm hating on Ben & Jerry's, but really-did they think we'd crack the secret code just by snapping a few pictures? I think not! Anyways, back to Tillamook. We loved the cheese samples, especially the garlic flavored cheddar. What we really loved was the ice cream! Wonderful, very reasonably priced ice cream. Cones, sundaes, floats and all other sorts of creamy goodness. Yummy! How could I not know how good their ice cream was? Nathan swears we've had their vanilla ice cream but I don't remember. I will be adding it to the list of ice creams I love after this trip!

We had a fun day!

Happy Birthday Gabriel

Today is our grandson Gabe's birthday. These are the days when I get very emotional about being away from family because I want to be there in person to say the Happy Birthdays. Phone calls just don't cut it with this stuff.

A little background on our being grandparents to Gabe. We became grandparents very early in our lives, much sooner than we'd expected to. It has been an unusual path, and one filled with things that have been very hard for us. It has also brought more pure, unadulterated joy into my life than any other single thing has. It has been the extremes of both ends of the emotional spectrum, and perhaps that is why it is so dear and so deeply branded in my heart.

Our first grandchild to enter our lives was Olivia, and like a first time Mom, I wondered if I would love future grandchildren as much as I adored her. Gabe entered our lives three years later and I quickly realized that like being a Mom, the love just multiplies. I love Gabe in different ways than Liv, because he is a different person, and the love is as deep and as strong for sure! He and Liv are all that is good in my world, summed up in these two little people. If I start to doubt things, I just think of them and my faith is quickly restored. I not only love these kids, but I truly enjoy them as people. I say they are my sunshine and my moonlight with their goodness beaming into my life. Liv is sunshine and Gabe is moonlight.

Gabe is fun and seriousness all rolled up into one. He is bold and daring, and tender and sensitive. He plays hard and he works hard and he loves hard. He has talents galore and it is easy to be impressed by him. I mostly adore this kid because just sitting and talking to him is so cool because he is so cool. He ponders deep things and I suspect he feels deep things. When I spend time with him, he reminds me that people are important and the rest is just stuff.


Gabe, our little football star, we love you so much. Happy 7th Birthday!

Ray Bethell-Good Stuff

Ray Bethell~Good Stuff in Person

We loved each part of the kite festival that we saw and yet, it's hard to compare any other part to this:
Cool huh? That's what I thought to begin with. I'm standing there, from a distance, and can see three kites moving together. Cool. The guy next to me asks if I've been down to the sand yet and when I say no he goes on to tell me a bit about who is flying the kites. He is one of two people in the world that flies three kites at the same time. He tells me to go up close and watch the guy fly-that it is something I'll never forget. Since I always love it when the locals clue us in to the good stuff, I listen to him. And when we get up close I see this:Not quite what I expected. I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't this. So we watch him for a bit, and within minutes I realize this is going to stick with me for a lifetime.I realize that this, like great music, art, books or movies will bury itself deep down inside of me and change me. At the risk of sounding like a lunatic to those who have not experienced this in person, it moved me to tears. It was that beautiful, poetic and stunning.I look over to my right and see a grown man grinning like a fool in love and he gushes to me, "It is really something, isn't it?" I nod because I can't find words due to the huge lump in my throat. "He's an artist!", he adds. I nod again.
If you have a chance to see this in person, do it. It is so beyond cool, I have no words to fully describe it. Really. If this was the only thing we saw after driving cross country, it would have been worth every mile. It was an honor to be a part of his audience.

Find out more about this incredible man here: Ray Bethell Good Stuff


Living the life in Oregon!

International Kite Festival in Long Beach, WA

Today we saw one of the neatest things we've been able to see so far. The international kite festival that is in Long Beach, WA. This is such a magical place. Everywhere you turn you see things so delightfully fun and incredible.The colors are so bright and vibrant and the variety of kites is mind boggling.It was like Disney; this was one of the happiest places on earth.Just walking around and seeing all of this beauty in the sky, is a phenomenal thing to experience.We had a wonderful day and are putting this down as a fave of ours. A special round of applause please for the boy, who went out and boldly flew his kite alongside the greats today and had a blast doing so! He rocks!

Lewis & Clark Salt Works

We found this interesting site while strolling around yesterday:

Seaside Oregon

I'm trying to catch up a bit on blogging and having a hard time because it's so fabulous here, I barely want to be online and when I've had a bit of online time I've been spending it doing non-fun things. So just a peek into what we've been doing this past week:
This cracked me up because Austin tells me at least once a day about "Freedom of Speech" in relationship to my commentary on his choice of words. I think I'll print this one out and hang it up in his room for him.

Living the life in Oregon!