Goodbye Vancouver....Hello Salt Lake

Today we are leaving Vancouver and heading home. We are kind of bummed, we have liked it here a lot, maybe even more than ABQ. And sadly enough, the place we have liked the most we spent the shortest amount of time here. No option for extending and even the other travelers that the hospital did extend had their contracts canceled. So since I am on a list kick I will list what we are going to miss the most.

1. Tillamook Cheese being cheep. Here, it is cheaper than any store brand out there. Soon we will be back where I can only dream about buying it.
2. The trees, it is so pretty here.
3. The weather, I really can't complain. It was never really cold and I actually like the rain a lot.

4. The park just across the street. It was so nice to be able to take Keegan to the park anytime it wasn't raining.
5. The fun things to do here, the zoo is gorgeous, Multnomah Falls, the beach was close enough to do in for a day trip.

Anyway, we will be hitting the road later today, wish us luck.

Happy 4th Birthday Keegan!!

Where did the time go???
How is he already 4??

He used to be so little
He used to let me put diapers on his head as a hat.

And now he is such a big boy.
I'm pretty sure he won't let me put diapers on his head anymore.

Happy Birthday Sweet Boy
Hope we can have a great day!!

Cannon Beach

After what seemed like forever in the car we managed to get to the beach. Keegan was so excited. We got to a beach called Hug Point. It was really rocky but sounded really cool when the waves pulled the rocks back down the beach. We listened for a really long time, so long that we almost didn't notice the waves getting closer, we would have all had very wet feet.

Here was the cave on Hug Point

The rocky beach

The scenic viewpoint before you actually get to the beach

Keegan at Cannon Beach

All he did was run, and run, and run

Standing with Pa watching the waves

More running

With Pa and Grandma

Holding still for just a sec.

Winter beach attire, rubber boots are a must.

We ate dinner at a place on the beach called Mo's. The sun came out just in time to set.

We had a great time and were able to see a lot of fun stuff.

State Champion Spruce Tree

We decided to go to Cape Meares Lighthouse. So after the cheese factory we headed out on this little road to go to this lighthouse. Well as we get to the turn off we see that the gate is closed. We head up this little trail hoping that we will be able to see it. And as we are walking I remember that this is the lighthouse that was vandalized 1 week before and that is probably why it was closed. So no lighthouse but this trail was the trail to the BIG Spruce tree. Now I have never seen The Redwoods but this thing was the biggest tree I have ever seen.

Here is Keegan going under a tree root. It wasn't The BIG Spruce but a pretty big one anyway.

Tillamook Cheese Factory

On our way to the beach we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory to take the tour and eat some yummy ice cream.

It was a little piece of cheesy heaven. At the end of the tour there were cheese samples. I have to admit that we all went through the line more than once.

Farmer Josh and Keegan the cow

The cheese slicing and packaging room.

Weighing the baby loafs, some of them seemed to be a bit on the light side. So they got an extra little slab on top.

One of the best parts of living this close to the Tillamook factory is that my favorite cheese is cheaper than the wal-mart brand. Yummy!

Multnomah Falls

On the same day as the zoo we also went to Multnomah Falls, since it wasn't raining we decided that we probably wouldn't find a better time to go, so off we went.

Keegan the tour guide showing the falls to the grandparents..

A visit to the zoo with Pa and Grandma

Paul and Tari flew in last Wednesday for a visit. The first place we headed to the Oregon Zoo.

Here is Pa and Keegan outside the gift shop.

Keegan having a good time outside the lion exhibit

Keegan the baby eagle.

Mount St. Helens

We decided that since Josh had a few days off we would do some sightseeing. Since Mount St. Helens is relatively close we headed up there. It is a nice drive and everything is of course sooo GREEN. We were only able to visit 2 of the 5 visitor centers/observation points since it is the off season but oh well.

Here is Keegan outside of the visitor center and museum. He was just happy to be out of the car. The museum was really neat. We all had a good time going through.

This is from the 2nd visitor station further up the canyon. This is the Toutle River Valley. This is one of the areas that was most damaged by the eruption. According to the museum, a mudslide/flood that reached

200 feet in height came rushing down this valley.

Back behind the mountains you can see is Mount St. Helens. ( do you see it?) lol It is a rainy cloudy day and it is snow covered. So while we can say we have BEEN TO Mount St. Helens, we can not say we have SEEN Mount St. Helens. We did drive further up the canyon hoping that the clouds that were covering the top 2/3 of the mountain would disperse. However, they did not.
We stopped at some overlook spot from which you could see the dam that was built to hopefully stop future flooding in the event that the mountain decided to mis-behave again. No picture of the dam but I did think this tree trunk looked cool. Oh well So even though we didn't actually get to see the whole mountain it was still a great day. The museum was really informative and had great pictures and a movie that you could watch, so it still felt like we were seeing it. I think Keegan was a little disappointed though. I'm pretty sure that he was thinking we would be seeing molten lava oozing down a mountain when we told him we were going to see a volcano. After me telling him that the snow covered mountain up ahead was the volcano he asked "mom, does it still work?" and "is it going to be erupted today?" I love the way his little mind works.


And here is the day it decided to snow here. It isn't really that much and it didn't stay too long. If you had been here to see the news that night you would have thought it was 2 feet not 2 inches.

Merry Christmas

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. We miss you all and wish we could be home to see you all.

With Keegan napping

and Josh at work

This is how I'm spending my afternoon. Warm and cozy infront of the fireplace with my nice warm new socks.

And 9 years later...

So 9 years ago I started a project. I was all jazzed and got half of it done right away. Then, life got in the way and this little project got packed away in a rubbermaid container. I brought it out again 3 years ago, only to do part of it wrong. Totally discouraged, I put it away again. But as we were packing our stuff for Vancouver, I decided I was determined to get this blasted thing finished.

FINALLY

done with the hard part

All that is left is to put the borders on and then find someone to do the quilting. There is no way I'm going to try to do that myself. There are computerized machines for just that purpose. I would go NUTS.

This was at the zoo yesterday. Keegan was chased by this penguin for quite a while. They played this game for at least 5 min if not longer. They would have kept going had I let them.

Oregon Zoo

Today we bundled up in our rain gear and headed to the zoo. It is a fairly good size zoo with lots of animals to see. We were deciding on the zoo or the aquarium. Until we looked up the Portland Aquarium...it may be called the Portland Aquarium...but it isn't in Portland, it's an hour away. So off to the Oregon Zoo we went.

Measuring up to the Bald Eagle.

In the zoo thay have a small farm area with goats and cows and pigs and obviously a tractor

Mr. Blue Eyes not pulling a crazy face.


Log walking

Keegan and Josh riding wooden horses in the farm area.

We were really excited to see this. We walked up to the viewing area and here was this beautiful wolf standing and almost posing for us. I think what made this exciting is that at the Hogle Zoo in Ut you never get to see the wolves. They are always hiding in their very wooded area. And then in Albuquerque they had some mexican wolves or Lobos and I never saw them either.

This is just to show how wooded the zoo is. Here is the bathroom Keegan had to use, it looks like it is an out house in a campsite. Soooo many trees.

The wolf again.

Sleepy polar bears. They didn't do much, he did open his eyes once but that is the most movement we got out of these 2.

Here is Keegan seeing how he measures up to all the different kinds of bears.

Here were the elephants, they have a baby. It was so much fun to watch him. They had water running into the pond. I shouldn't say running, it was like a fire hose shooting full force. But it didn't matter, this little guy loved it.

We watched him play for quite a long time.

And one of the last animals that we saw was who Keegan was sure was named "Mufasa" he loves the Lion King these days.

Costco

Nothing really new to report. I can say say that we have visited all of the area Costco's the one here in Vancouver and the 2 on the Oregon side. The one in Clackamas was fun only for the fact that Clackamas is fun to say. Ha ha ha Oh and the ones on the Oregon side don't have sales tax. Like I said a thrilling week. Hopefully next time I will have something more exciting to tell you all.

** Just looked it up, there are 2 more that I can visit.

Christmas Tree

So like last Christmas, because of our travels, we have a tiny tree. But it's a tree and Keegan loves it. He loves that it is just his size and that he can pug it in, and does so every morning. We kept our ornaments from last year and he was very excited to put them on.

So, here is our tiny tree

Here is Keegans "Toy Parade" they have been here since we put up the tree. If anyone falls down he takes great care in putting them back in their correct spot in line.

Keegans way of decorating. Everyday there seems to be more and more of the red ornaments hanging off this one snowflake.