Devil's Punch Bowl and Otter Rock Beach

First thing on most days was a run on the beach.  I loved it!  And I found a perfectly secret beach for us to visit later on that we loved, but that's later on.  It was just so great to run on the sand with the ocean right there.  I loved it.  I also loved this tree that I saw the first day.  It was basically completely off this rock and yet it was still holding on and thriving.  Pretty cool!

Tide pooling on the Otter Rock Beach side.

We actually kind of planned this trip around the full moon in the hopes that the tides would be bigger.  I don't know if that was it, but the tides were awesome!  We planned our day schedules around the low tides on a few of the days and it was so worth it.  The kids were really good at finding things.  They remembered a lot from our trip to Cambria with Uncle Matt.

We also found this super cool cave.  We could see where the water came up frequently and had rubbed everything smooth.  That was fun.

A sea star, one of many we found but it was cool to find the first one!

It took a while to convince Abby to touch the things we found, but she finally got brave enough and then touched them all.  She loved the anemones and how they suction up around your finger.

Devil's Punch Bowl side

We went around the point to the other side and continued tide pooling.

The tide was coming in at this point and I so wished a big wave would have come right at this second and soaked Matt! It was crazy how quickly it would come in.  By the time we were done on this side, this rock was totally covered.  Matt found a ton of sea stars under this rock.

Jerry is in the punch bowl.  When the tide is high this is all filled with water and it swishes around like a punch bowl being mixed up.  We came back another day at high tide just to see it.

Abby thought this baby sea star that we found was pretty cool!

The Beach!!!

We made it to the beach!!  We stopped in Lincoln City for dinner and then headed on to our beach house.  First item on the list once we got to the beach house...get down there on the sand!  We were so excited to get down there and we were so happy with our house.  It had a private access to a beach and the thing we discovered that makes Oregon so great is that it is NOT crowded!  So we oftentimes had the beach to ourselves!  Even if there was someone there we didn't have to go far to be away from them.  It was glorious!

It was foggy the first night we were there, but we knew it wasn't going to be hot in Oregon so we were prepared for the weather and were even excited for it.  It was just so great to be on the ocean.

Sometimes these kids actually get along and it's pretty fun to see.

The kids were really excited to have hermit crab races.  Abby loved catching them.  The crabs weren't super cooperative though and just kept burrowing back down in the sand!  Abby tried all week to get them to have a race.  It was pretty funny.  They were still fun to catch and they were everywhere!

Multnomah Falls

On to Oregon!!  We were so excited for some beach time and some cooler weather.  I was especially excited to see some places we'd never seen before.  We wanted to drive through the Columbia River Gorge so that's the direction we went to get to the coast.  It was really pretty and the river was really amazing.  We looked forward to stopping at Multnomah Falls and it definitely didn't disappoint.  The sun was in the worst possible place for pictures, but it was really cool to see.  It's like the biggest falls in North America or something, I can't remember but either way it was cool and crowded but still cool.

Jump Creek Falls

I got pretty excited about planning a trip to the Oregon coast this summer.  I spent a lot of time looking up activities to do and places to see.  I was really excited for it.  Jerry was a little hesitant, but I had decided I really wanted to do it so we were all in.  It was definitely a long drive, but we broke it up by traveling to Boise and spending a couple of nights at his mom's house.  The day we were there we got up early and hiked to a waterfall nearby.  It was really cool and I can't believe we hadn't ever done that before!

Lagoon!

We love Lagoon and we love it more when we get to go with cousins! 

Quinn just loved Sara and Sara loved it!  She was so excited to have him pay attention to only her!

We had a ton of fun with cousins and Clark's family.  The best part for me was riding Wicked with Clark.  I have never laughed so hard on that ride!!!  Clark's way of screaming was hilarious!!!  We also laughed about how the kids came down off of Cannibal and then Steph's brother realized he'd been sitting right next to them and he said, "I'm so sorry, I didn't know who I was sitting next to and I may have said a bad word!"  We laughed so hard.  The kids said yes they had heard it but wasn't anything bad so we laughed so hard how dumb he must have felt when he realized who was in the cart with him!  That ride will definitely make those words come out!  The kids thought it was hilarious.  They rode that ride several times.  Crazies!!

We would never laugh at Matt...

Matt loved the mountain biking team pretty much right from the start.  He got really excited about it and recognized that he had some talent and then got even more excited about developing that.  It was fun for Jerry to have Matt love something that he loved and I loved watching the two of them "geek out" about bike stuff! One thing Matt saw that was different about the top riders was that they had shoes that clipped directly onto the peddles which gives more control because your feet aren't slipping and it helps on the uphill too.  So he decided he was ready to upgrade to that system.  There is definitely a learning curve and Jerry and I may have had a little fun with that!

Girl's Camp

This year for girl's camp we got to go up to the Heber Valley campground.  It was really cool to be up there in this place that was specifically set apart for girl's camp.  We had a great time.  The best part was that Kate got to come along!  It was really cool to be up there with her.

I dragged the girls on a hike around the camp.  It got a little hard at times but it was good to push them through it.  They all made it and had fun...when it was over!

We had a ton of fun playing on the lake too.  It was fun splashing and playing.

Everyone's favorite part was the ropes course.  They had to climb up this 40 foot pole, walk across a tight rope and then they got to do the zipline down.  It was hard for some of them, but everyone did it, even the leaders.  It was cool to cheer everyone on.  I took lots of pictures and videos of Kate.  She doesn't love heights but she did great!

Hovenweep

I wanted to take one more adventure on our way back to South Jordan and the kids were game.  I love that.  We stopped at Hovenweep National Monument.  It was cool to see the ruins and talk about the past and what it would be like to live there.  I'm glad the kids will check stuff out with me.

Cattle drive 2017

I gave the kids a choice of not going to the cattle drive this year and going to Durango at another time when we could do other activities.  They all said no way, that missing the cattle drive was not an option!  Ok, fine.

Taking the cow herding seriously...

or not so seriously.

Matt loved driving the four wheeler.

Sara was in heaven on the horse.

Matt had fun riding the horse by himself and not having someone lead her.  That's a pretty big deal.

Abby didn't ride a horse, but she had fun petting them.  They are awfully big animals.

I thought this was so sweet!

This too.

We reenacted a Studio C and got 14 cousins on a 6 wheeler.

The kids were all excited about these animal bones they found.  The put together a lot of the skeleton.  Jay had a ton of fun telling them it was a skeleton of the rare "New Mexicosaurus".  They really wanted to believe him.

The kids also had fun at Grandma's house.  I thought Abby was having so much fun on the trampoline and that she was making up some game all by herself.  Turns out she was sobbing because she couldn't get off the tramp by herself!  Oops.  The girls were supposed to have helped her...

Abby made really good friends with Grandma.  She loved talking to her!