Oregon Day 5

Last night after we put the kids to bed Austin and Zack started having croupy coughs that continued to get worse. Zack's turned in to an asthma attack and luckily I had brought our nebulizer with, but I unfortunately had forgot my stethoscope. So I couldn't tell after I gave him a breathing treatment if he was having a hard time breathing from the croup or if he was still wheezing. So we spent Monday morning talking to our pediatrician in Utah trying to figure out what to do and getting prescriptions for steroids and more Albuterol and then we got to figure out where pharmacies in Florence were and one that would fill the prescriptions since our pediatrician has a Utah license. The pharmacy in Florence didn't have any Albuterol so we had to have them transfer it up to Newport so we could pick it up that night; what a pain!

After getting all of that taken care of we headed to the Sea Lion Caves. They are the world's largest natural sea caves. Of course about 3 days before they had moved from inside the sea caves to about 100 yards away on some rocks which coincidentally were the sea lions we had seen the day before after leaving Heceta Beach. We decided to pay anyways hoping that the boys would be able to see them easier, but unfortunately the brown sea lions blend a little to well with the brown rock. It was still cool, I just wish they would have been able to see them easier.
Skeleton of a female sea lion
Sea lions on the rocks
This is where they usually are, it would be really cool to be there when they are in the caves because it's really close.
Then we headed up to Newport and went to the Yaquina Bay lighthouse. It was cool to see, but the whine factor was at an all time high from the boys not feeling good and the lack of sleep we had all had did not help matters. So it was a quick visit and then we headed to the hotel and put all of the boys down for naps.
So happy to be out of the car!
After naps we went to Nye Beach because the ocean makes everything better. Austin and Zack had fun playing in the sand and then we went and looked at the tide pools.
Cute little crab
Then we ended our wonderful night with dinner at Georgie's Steakhouse. The best clam chowder ever!

Oregon Day 4

Sunday was probably one of my favorite days of the trip. Blake and Kristin took us to Heceta Beach. It was such a cool beach. The sand was like powdered sugar and there were these little caves in the rocks that were really cool; not to mention the Heceta Lighthouse on the cliffs.
I didn't think there was anyway the boys would get in the water because it's Oregon so the water is cold and it was kind of windy and chilly that day. They played in the sand for a few minutes and then Blake and Aaron walked down to the water and so they wanted to go with them. Surprising to me they loved it. The first time the water hit their shorts I thought they would start crying, but they thought it was great. They would stand there waiting for the water to hit them and say "it's coming, it's coming" and if we would try to lift them up at all when the water was higher they would get so mad. By the end they had gotten in the water up to their necks. We played there for 4 hours and we all had a blast!
Zack
Aaron and Gavin
Me and my "Zackter"- I love that you can see us holding hands
Gavin, Aaron, and Austin
A cool bridge that was there
As we were leaving we saw all of these people pulled off to the side of the road looking at the ocean so we decided to see what they were looking at and we saw all of these sea lions on the rocks. You could hear them barking clear from the road over the noise of the ocean and cars.
Then we headed in to Florence and went to Mo's for dinner- how I miss the seafood already! After dinner came the worst part of the day- saying goodbye to Blake, Kristin, and their kids. The boys thought that if they got stuck in the porch we might not have to leave. I kind of hoped for that too! We miss them already, but we are so glad we had the chance to spend a few days with them. Thanks for letting us crash your house and sharing your food with us. We love you guys!

Oregon Day 3

We woke up this morning and went to a farmer's market. We were excited to see all of the things Blake had told us about, but it was rainy so it was a slow day at the market. It was still fun to walk around and we got some yummy Oregon hazelnuts.

Then Blake and Aaron headed off to the Utes game (the reason I was able to convince Aaron to go). He said he had a lot of fun and he liked being able to go to that stadium, but it obviously would have been better if the Utes would have pulled out a win.
Kristin and I hung out back at their house and entertained the little ones.
This picture is from the morning when the boys were waiting to leave to the market. Owen was showing them the cool way to watch TV.
Baby Ella-isn't she beautiful!
My little Gav enjoying the freedom of rolling
After the game they took us to Papa Soul's for dinner where we then had the worst dining experience ever. There weren't that many people waiting to be seated before us, but we waited over 1 1/2 hrs to be seated and it took them another 30-45 min to get us our food after we were seated. That right there would have been bad with 5 kids 2 and under, but it got even better than that. Each child had melt-downs and at one point we had all 5 kids crying at the same time. By the end Gavin had grabbed my cup of syrup for my chicken and waffles and dumped it all over my lap and Aaron had a pitcher of ice cold water dumped in his lap. Owen had a full on tantrum and we all left very frazzled. Oh and the food was amazing! We would definitely go back, just without kids.

My original plan had been to go back and have some ice cream pie with them for Aaron's birthday, but after our fun we just put the kids to bed and decided the adults would be the ones to enjoy the pie.
After I was showing Kristin how to crochet some skull caps and I caught the boys having some "guy time".
We ended the night playing Farkle, one of our favorite games to play with them.

Oregon Day 2

This morning we drove up to Crater Lake. Here is where it feels like we spent 50% of our vacation.
This was the beautiful scenery we saw the whole way to Crater Lake, it was amazing!
And here is Crater Lake- absolutely breathtaking!
Aaron and I both agree it is by far the most beautiful and amazing thing we have ever seen! Pictures just don't do it justice.
Austin and Zack's favorite parts-Every time they got out they were looking for that boat and we just kept hearing over and over, "I want to see the boat."
These cute little squirrels joined us for lunch.
It was almost impossible to narrow our insane amount of pictures that we took to these ones because it was all so amazing.

Some pictures of our family- Gavin was sleeping and that's why he isn't in any of these.When you are standing on the top of that mountain; on one side was Crater Lake and the other was trees as far as the eye could see, it was beautiful.
If you couldn't tell we LOVED Crater Lake and highly recommend it to all! After Crater Lake we headed up to Eugene to see some of our best friends Blake, Kristin, and their kids. We got there around 7 so we had dinner and then got the kids in bed. We stayed up talking and finally crashed in bed.

Oregon Day 1

9/17
We left at 3 in the morning today to head out to Oregon. We were hoping that the boys would go right back to sleep and I think Zack and Gavin did pretty quick, but Austin was awake until at least 5. They were all up by 7:30 and the fun began. They really did pretty good, other than the torturing of Gavin. We did make the smart choice of investing in a DVD player and that definitely made the trip tolerable. I thought for sure they would all take good long naps, but Zack and Austin didn't sleep at all and Gavin only had a 30 min. nap. After our 13 hour drive of ugly scenery and the roads of Nevada and Oregon that nobody should ever care to see (the last hour or so of Oregon was really pretty, but that was the exception) we finally arrived in Medford, Oregon.

We got to the hotel and everyone was absolutely exhausted! I got all 4 boys to sleep and went and checked out the hotel gym. There is nothing that energizes me or makes me feel better than a good run after being in the car so long. I got back to the room and Gavin had woke up after about 30 min. He was so exhausted that he couldn't settle himself down to sleep. He is such a happy easygoing kid normally that this was definitely not typical behavior for him. We couldn't get him to sleep, but he at least finally settled down after 30 min or so. Aaron went and got pizza and we woke up the boys to eat dinner and then went swimming in the pool. After a little while Zack and Austin started to be a little braver and were having a great time jumping to us. We didn't get any pictures because we are very outnumbered now. Then we all went and crashed in bed. Thank heavens we have such good boys!

6 month pictures

My good friend Emily took Gavin's 6 month pictures for me. I thought they turned out cute and I love that you can see his cute little teeth. Thanks Emily!
My cute boys- Zack, Gavin, Austin