Friendly Saturday

With our beloved friends, the Peterson's, in town we have been having plenty of fun. Yesterday, we decided to make a little trip to turn our Saturday morning into a CarFinPet Reunion, with the lovely Finlinson's. That meant meeting up at a half way point between Salt Lake City and Elko... the blossoming beautiful hole in the earth... Wendover, Nevada. This is the farthest west along I-80 that Caleb and I have ever been. So it was fun to see more of the salt flats and venture to places we've never been. While I have been to Vegas, that experience gave me no warning of what I would find in Wendover. Let's just say that is a place that I will most likely never find myself in again. The company was great, even with all that was lacking in the ambiance.

Caleb, Lauritz and Wade enjoying a casino buffet... using "enjoying" quite loosely.

Gavin did enjoy having bacon and corn on the cob, and learning a new word- Brunch.

Henry taking a swig of his apple juice from the awesome huge mug. He was in heaven.

The cute pregnant ladies- Misty and Michelle.

After a while at the restaurant Gavin told me that his "head feels like someone is smoking." (sad, I know) So we went and found a park that had this awesome swing!
Lauritz and Wade

Gavin and Me

After our super fun visit, we headed back across the Salt Flats. The boys in the other car stopped and took a few super salty and flat pictures.

Utah Natural History Museum

Friday, I took the boys to the Utah Museum of Natural History. Since it is about 3 minutes from our house, it is kind of sad that this was our first trip, but we had to make it there before the "Toadly Frogs" exhibit was gone. We didn't spend a lot of time reading up on every part of the museum, but the boys really enjoyed it and we had a great morning.

Lots of the frogs were really small, but they had some cool ones that even I had never seen before... including this giant frog prince.

This dinosaur had a strange resemblance to Gavin.

I guess these two would be easily squished by a huge dinosaur... especially the one reclining in the foot print.We also got to pretend to be paleontologist and try to piece together this T-rex skull.

Super fun morning. Everyone should try it out, especially if you have a free pass. :-)

Itty Bitty Soccer

The boys are taking a soccer class this month with our friends Lexi and Drew. It is a class for 2-4 year olds and something Gavin had taken when he was 2. It is just 30 minutes once a week, but that is probably about the max that we can handle with a group of 10 preschoolers.

Don't they look super cute?

All ready to run onto the field.

One of us really likes the class... and looked pretty good the whole time.

The other one of us did a lot of this...

And pretty much stayed in this view of his mom the whole time.

Even with a crying Henry hanging on to me most of the time, he managed to try out a few of the drills. Gavin's goal before we started was 'to be the best player on my team.' And since there aren't teams, and he does work really hard, I would say he is succeeding. I am looking forward to finding a team for him to join where he can get a little competitive. After class on Thursday he was sweaty and covered in grass and mud, and looked like a real soccer player. It was just down-right cute.

Top of Utah Half Marathon 2009

I am super slow at posting this, but the last Saturday of August, I went to Logan to have a slumber party with some of my greatest running pals and get up super early to go run a Half Marathon. Half of the race was in a canyon and really beautiful.

(we are all leaning kind of weird in this one... not sure why...)

Here is the cute little house that Jessi's Aunt let us use for the night and the post-race showers, which we definitely needed.

By the time this picture was taking they said that I was standing still, but I felt like I was swaying. Maybe someday I will be able to figure out how to keep from getting sick during/after a half marathon, but for now, I was at least able to survive. I also ran my fastest time 2 hours 7 minutes, and while I had hoped to break the 2 hour mark, I am still happy with my results.

Nathan and Jake (Stacy's brother) ran too. Jake smoked us all, and I think Nathan would have beat my this time if he hadn't been heaving at mile 11. Since he runs faster than me, I know he is just nice to let me finish first.

The last few days in Oregon

You can guess that since I have fallen so far behind, it was finally time to make a slide show of just a portion on the remaining 150 pictures of our trip (Yes... we are obsessed with the Oregon Coast). I narrowed it down a bit and here are some of my absolute favorites. It was great. The sun actually came out. We toured and hiked and had roasted mallows and jumped in the sand and had an all around great time. We can't wait to go and do it all again.

Thanks Duane and Natalie for hosting us and showing us a great time.

Oregon Coast- Day 4

Our 4th day in Oregon was the day that we planned to head to the Coast for a few days... and look who showed up just in time to go with us!

Nana and Vatti

(they also brought Bridgett with them, and even convinced Martie (my step-grandma) to come too.)

First stop- Cannon Beach, or "The Cannon Ball Beach with the Haystack Rock" as Gavin calls it.

We were pretty excited to be there if you can't tell. We had to run in the freezing cold water just to show our enthusiasm.

Henry was not a fan of the wind, so he was a bit sullen and mopey at Cannon Beach. You can tell that he was the one born in Utah.

Next stop was a nice little hike to Smuggler's Cove. We did get lost a few times and Vatti had a root jump out of the ground and trip him, but it was all part of soaking up the green.

Caleb and Vatti watching the surfers brave the cold.

From there we headed to the beach house that Nana and Vatti had rented for us all to stay in together in Rockaway Beach. It was so fabulous to be right on the coast, and so nice to all be together. (Thanks Parents!)

Kaylee and Henry headed right into the sand to get filthy and start building castles.

Natalie showed off a few of her skills with the sand dragon. Vatti and Gavin gathered the shells and seaweed for all of his details... and supposedly Duane helped with the sculpting, but I was cooking dinner and didn't witness it.

Pretty Cool.

Nat also helped Bridgett decorate her sand turtle.

At the end of our first day is was still windy and cloudy and even rained a little, but luckily we had a diverse coast experience and have more to show as I continue to sort through the pictures and load all our readers with the full experience. :-)

Day 3- Portland Temple and Remembering

I obviously fell behind on my trip blogging, but the wait will be worthwhile.

Day 3- Caleb and I went to the Portland Temple early in the morning. Since this is where we got engaged, we had to find the time to go to a session while we were in Oregon. Duane was nice enough to take care of the boys for us, even though he had to wake up really early. We didn't take any pictures there, but here is a little blast from the past to remind us why we love Oregon so much.

At one of our favorite spots on the Oregon Coast.

Caleb called this- "Taking the Plunge" (He actually got the outfits, as you can see since mine didn't fit, and orchestrated the whole thing.) Good Times.

Somewhere there is video of the whole event, as well as some excellent footage of Joe wearing the white dress and jumping with Caleb from cliffs that I wouldn't dare. We'll round those up for another day. :-)

Sweet Home and Swimming Hole- Day 2

For the second day of our trip we went to one of our favorite places ever... Sweet Home. Here are a few of the reasons we love it so much. Some of our favorite people live here, or near here. Here are a few of the Bastings that we got to see.

Seth, Donna and Amber, and a little glimpse of baby Molly.

One of the other things that we love about coming to Sweet Home is getting to swim in some super fabulous swimming holes. The first place that we hit was a cliff jumping spot along the Santiam River. It is glacier run-off, so very cold, but usual quite clear. The water is too cold and deep and the cliffs too high for all of us to brave the jumps. So we split in to two groups.

The Spectators.

And the Jumpers!

Duane

Caleb

Our second swimming stop was to the kid friendly spot. One of the few near Foster Lake that you can walk in to the water. Amber and her boys met us there to play. Grant and Henry had lots of fun throwing rock in the water at everyone else.

One high... One low.

Henry and Dad just swimming around.

The last swimming stop was to our favorite place of all... The Weigh Station... and also a beautiful little hike to the jumping spot. This place has the warmest water (still a shock of cold), and so many jumps from all levels for everyone. It was just as good I remember it.

Look at that fabulous form.

Double jump. And Natalie's first cliff jump ever.

We also got to hang out at Donna and Jim's house, which is our other favorite Sweet Home stop. We have so many great memories of being with them. We were so grateful to get to see them and get to spend time enjoying their company.