Our second round of visitors/movers arrived on August 8th. My family (minus Isaac and Jonah) brought up the rest of our stuff in a small Uhaul trailer and stayed to visit for a few days. After unloading, we had pasta for dinner under the grape arbor.
We toured the property and picked apples after dinner.
The tour ended in the blueberry patch, so we picked some of those too.
We enjoyed our first fire.
Brownies and ice cream for dessert.
Saturday morning we had breakfast in shifts.
We got to tour the University of Oregon, so everyone saw where Joshua will soon be spending lots of time. It is a beautiful campus with lots of trees and cool looking old buildings.
After the tour, we had a picnic lunch in the mostly empty parking structure where the echos were great. Then we got some tasty ice cream.
We went on a short, but challenging hike nearby.
It was beautiful walking through all the trees.
Emery fell asleep while Michelle was carrying her, so we passed her around for awhile.
Finally, it got too steep and rocky for us to climb with Emery, so Mom stayed with her under a tree while the rest of us finished heading to the summit.
We got pretty dirty from all the dust on the trail.
A group picture after we were all back close to the beginning of the trail. We were pretty tired after our exploring, so we quickly cleaned up at the house and tried a local barbecue place for dinner.
The next morning we started off slowly.
Later in the morning, we headed to Alton Baker park to go canoeing; Joshua wasn't feeling well and had to stay home.
We rented two large canoes and had lots of fun.
There was a spot where we had to portage our canoes to get to more of the river.
We found some blackberries to pick along the river, and then found more when we portaged the canoes again on our way back.
After a fun time on the river, we headed home for lunch.
Joshua asked the kids to decorate his school notebooks for him.
Despite the heat, we decided to check out the u-pick blueberry farm that is just down the road from us. The berries were delicious and we had fun picking together. They even had a Chandler variety!
We had a family favorite, gingerbread, for dessert after dinner.
Then we went on a walk and enjoyed the sunset and a few sprinkles of rain.
We had another fire; the above picture is Evan blowing on the embers as the fire died down.
Monday we headed to the coast to stay with Isaac's parents for a couple days. Joshua and I got to have the boys in our car.
We arrived at Dennis and Diana's house and got to have a tour, then Diana's famous tacos for dinner. I had only heard about her tacos in the past and was excited to finally try them; they were delicious.
Joshua and I slept on one side of the sun room with Heather and the kids were on the other side.
The next morning we headed down to Bandon.
Our first stop was the wild animal park. These little guys were pretty cute.
A lot of the animals roam around freely in the main part of the zoo.
You also can pet many wild animals in special petting times. I wasn't sure what to think about that. Of course, it was exciting to get to pet a tiger, bear, and lion, but it didn't seem like teaching people to pet those animals was a great idea.
There were lots more little creatures to pet and hold at the nursery; the ferrets were a favorite.
So was Todd, the fox.
We walked around the zoo to see the other animals that were there.
After eating fish and chips for lunch and a trip to Cranberry Sweets, we headed for the beach. It was pretty chilly, but of course the kids didn't mind.
We sampled cheese at the Face Rock Creamery.
Back at Dennis and Diana's, the girls headed out for some blackberry picking.
Then Heather and I got to make a batch of jam together; always fun to jam with your favorite canning partner (and one of the few people who understands your fruit picking/preserving obsession).
Evan caught a fish that morning, so he got to have that for dinner. The rest of us had barbecue chicken, zucchini, and baked potatoes, although Evan generously shared his fish with those who wanted to try some.
We had a fire after dinner and made s'mores with the huge marshmallows Diana got for the occasion.
Wednesday morning, Emery and I had matching outfits. That was a hard morning; my family was heading back to California, while Joshua and I went back to our new house. It was hard to say goodbye knowing we won't get to see anyone from either of our families for quite awhile. It was especially hard to see the kids having such a hard time. Emery didn't know what was going on and Evan did pretty well, but both Micah and Natalie were crying hard. I miss everyone a lot.
One last group picture with Dennis, Diana, and Trish before we headed home.
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