Summer Fun: part 1

We have been up to quite a bit this summer. We have definitely stayed busy to say the least. Because of this, the blog has fallen behind quite a bit. I have tried to get Sarah to update it, but I think she's overwhelmed by the amount of catching up there is to do. So it's time to take matters into my own hands. This is Ray by the way if you haven't already realized that. So here goes an attempt to update everyone on just what we've been up to. It will take more than one post, but I figured it would be easier if I broke things up into smaller chunks.

Presenting: Summer Fun - part 1

We started the summer by taking a marathon road trip. It really was a marathon road trip for two reasons, first Sarah ran the Newport Marathon as part of our trip (more info on that in a later post) and two because our road trip lasted over 4,000 miles and 3 & 1/2 weeks! Needless to say we were glad to get home. We had tons of fun while we were gone, but it is hard being away from home that long, sleeping in uncomfortable beds, living out of a suit case and loading and unloading all of your belongings every couple of days.

The kids at the Portland, OR Temple

Rylee just chilaxin' at the hotel snaking on some fruit loops

We left the weekend after school got out and traveled up to Newport, OR (where I grew up). We made it there and attended church with my parents in the Waldport Branch where my dad is serving as the branch president, even though they don't live there. It was interesting being in a branch, it was really small and between our family and my sister's family, we almost doubled the size of the branch. It was fun though and everyone was really friendly. I got to see Sister Thueson and Sister King who are from the Philippines which is where I served my mission. It's always fun to get to practice a little bit of Tagalog, even if am not as good as I used to be. The following day was Memorial day, and we attended the annual Newport Ward Memorial Day Picnic. It was fun to see old friends and play at the beach with the kids, and just like always, it never rains on the Memorial Day picnic. I don't know how that's possible, because it always rains in Oregon, but somehow, the weather always clears up for at least a couple of hours so we can have our Memorial Day picnic. Later that week, we went back down to Waldport and had dinner with the Thuesons. Sister Thueson always insists on cooking Filipino food for me, which I don't mind. I love the food and she is such a good cook! And as always the Thuesons were such great hosts.

While we were in Oregon, me and my brothers-in-law worked at the radio station cleaning up and remodeling one of the back rooms. It was a lot of work because we ran into problems almost every step of the way. We had to seal the inside of the cinder block walls so the moisture would seep in and ruin the new drywall we put up. We had to cut out and replace sections of the rotting floor. We had to redo pretty much all of the electrical wiring back there. It was a night mare! Good thing there were so many of us, because we would not have gotten it done otherwise.

This was the room before we started, full of junk

And these two are the room after we got the drywall done, still needs textured and painted.

The second weekend we were there, Sarah and my brother-in-law Trevor ran the Newport Marathon. I won't say too much about that right now, that will be it's own post later. But they both did great, Sarah particularly did really well beating her goal time by almost a half hour. We had fun watching and cheering them on.

BEACH TIME!

The following Tuesday, June 7th, my brother Alan came home from his mission. It was really fun and exciting to see him again. He and I are almost 8 years apart in age and didn't really do much together growing up, but over the last few years, we have really done a lot together and he is now one of my best friends. So I missed him a lot and couldn't wait for him to come home. It was really fun just hanging out, being silly and goofing around just like we did before he left. The kids were all really excited to see him too. He came home to 3 nieces and 1 nephew he had never met before, each one of the other siblings had a kid while he was gone.

First time meeting

Alan and all the nieces & nephews

After a few days of Alan being home we had to leave and continue on to part two of our marathon vacation. It was time, because we had been in Oregon for 2 weeks and were ready to go, we only wished we were going home instead of continuing our vacation elsewhere. It was too bad that we only had such a short time with Alan there, it would have been nice to spend more time with him. We had several days of playing at the beach and doing fun stuff like going to the aquarium and things like that in between which were all fun. I have to mention the amazing views we had from our hotels while we were there. The first hotel we stayed at was the Shilo Inn, it is ocean front and we could just look out our window and see miles and miles of ocean and beach in all directions. It was so beautiful and hypnotizing to just sit and watch the waves roll in. The second hotel we stayed at was the Embarcadero Resort. Here we were on the bayfront so we couldn't really see the ocean, but we had an amazing view of the bay with all the boats and the bridge. It was amazing and one of my favorite parts of the trip.

View from The Embarcadero

That's one big crab!

Oregon Coast Aquarium:


Awesome Jellyfish

Shark bait!

Oh yeah, and it was my birthday.

Seeing if I still got it.

From Oregon we traveled back to Utah and then on to Idaho which will be another episode.


To be Continued...