Eat your heart, everyone else - I'm on vacation

I'm writing from the house we've rented on Devil's Lake in Lincoln City.

We've been vacationing  after the wedding before our big honeymoon trip with my brother Dan, his wife Kacie, and their children Bethany(10), Brynlee (3), and Kaitlynn (2), who are all adorable. Yesterday I went on a long canoe ride around Devil's Lake with Dan, Brynlee, Andrew, and Katie while Kacie, Jen, Brianna and Bethany went for a horse ride on the beach in Pacific City.  I'll write more about the horse ride later when I get the pictures - lots to tell.  During the canoe trip we found an awesome playground on Devil's Lake where the kids could play.  It has a really cool wooden structure with all kinds of nooks, crannies, tires, and so on for the kids to run around and have fun on.  The little girls loved it.

Fun stats from the trip:

30	Times (so far) Andrew has played "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers on his guitar, which my brother Dan just taught him
7	Miles we paddled around Devil's Lake yesterday
2 (about to be 3)	Views of the movie "Coraline" during the trip
3	Meals consisting of left-over wedding food (I'm still loving Salmon, beans, corn on the cob, and cornbread)
4	Times Andrew has asked me whether or not we can rent a Jet Ski
4	Times I told Andrew no
9:30	Average time I've been waking up in the morning
At least 5	pounds gained so far on my part
2	Guitars brought along on the trip
3	Times we had to stop on the way here to fix the canoe from slipping around on the roof of our car (we finally resolved the root cause thanks to Dan)
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10	The numbers I can say with Katie to get her to give me a kiss
1	renewed birth control prescription - no coincidence

Rafting the Klamath River

On the weekend of July 26th & July 27th, just after we got back from our trip to Colorado, Jen and I packed a tent and some gear and headed down past Grants Pass, which is in the very southern part of Oregon, so that we could do some rafting on the Klamath River.  We were camping at Valley of the Rogue State Park, which is a fine state park but kind of an RV-fest because it's right off of I-5.

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We were there with some of our really good friends and had a great time camping.  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from the rafting trip but I can tell you that it was _great_.  We used this place called Arrowhead Adventures and they couldn't have been better.  We had a great guide, Cristina, who made the trip a lot of fun.  It was a pretty intense river, and we did almost flip at one point, but we didn't lose anyone during the trip and for the most part it was just the right amount of excitement.  The trip goes all the way from Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon to Lower Klamath lake in California.

The day after the trip we did a quick geocache before heading back to Portland.

Colorado Vacation - Phase Two

After the tent trailer debacle Jen and I decided that we weren't quite ready to give up on our Colorado vacation just yet.  We got home and with a little advice from my sister-in-law we booked ourselves four tickets to Colorado on priceline.com.  We got back to Oregon at 5:30 in the morning one day and left for Colorado at 8:00am  the next day.  My folks let me borrow a car so we pretty much got into town, went to my folk's house to say hi and pick up the car and headed out for camping.

We were camping in Buffalo Creek, which is in Pike National Forest, about two and a half hours southwest of Denver.  It was a great tent camping area, and kind of on the rustic side, with no water save for a spigot that served the entire camp.

We were camping with my brother and his wife, Kacie, and my three nieces Bethany 9, Brynlee 2, and Katie, who is 1.  Here's a picture of Brynlee and Bethany with Andrew and Brianna:

 

Brynlee is at a great age and I had a great time getting to know her better. 

One of the nights at the camp I made a fire in the pit and she was hanging out with me.  She wanted to help so I asked her to find me little sticks and told her if she gave them to me I would throw them in the fire.  Over and over she'd say "Here, Uncle Dave. I have one.  Here, put it in the fire!  Put it in there!" and I would take the stick and throw it in the fire.  Sometimes she'd pick up something that wasn't a stick and I'd say "There's something wrong here." and she'd say "Oh!  That's a rock." and throw the rock on the ground disgusted.   One time I was waiting after she gave me the stick, just holding it in my hand and she goes "Throw it in there, Uncle Dave!  The fire loves it!  Go ahead!"

Another cute thing she does is whenever she is trying to get a grown up to do something she says "It's good!".  Since we got back from Colorado I've been doing the same thing to Jen whenever I'm trying to talk her into something.  "Go ahead, Jen, it's good!"

Katie was also just as sweet as she could be.  For those that aren't familiar with this part of Colorado it's super dry in terms of very low humidity and pretty dusty, not dissimilar from eastern Oregon.  The whole week we would clean the kids with baby wipes and just about the time we finished with the second kid the first kid would be just as dirty as when we'd started.  We were all covered in dirt for most of the time.

We did a fair amount of hiking while we were there.  We went up to Crystal Lake during one of the days and had a great walk around the lakes there.

The day after our Crystal Lake hike we went with one of our neighboring campers on our first geocache.  It was a great one because it was situated out in a burn area that was remote enough to be a fun, somewhat challenging hike, but wasn't so difficult that the kids couldn't have a good time too.

Andrew was one of the first up to the geocache and was super excited to show the box when we found it.

  

The view from the location was incredible and really let you appreciate the effects of a forest fire.

 

It was a great trip and we had some really special memories of our families together.

Colorado Vacation - Phase One

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.  Things have been very busy at work since I got back from vacation, so all other activity has slowed, but we're getting things back on track and I can finally catch up on the blog.  I have *a lot* to catch up on so let's get right down to it.

The Agenda

In July we took a two week vacation to Colorado.  The original plan was to drive with our tent camper through eastern Oregon to Idaho, where we would stay for the night at a place called Three Island Crossing State Park.  We were then going to continue on to Strawberry Reservoir in Utah for two days and then meet my brother to go camping at a remote place in Colorado called Buffalo Creek, which is in the Pike National Forest.  We were then going to hit Willard Bay Utah on the way back and bring it on home.

The Trip with the tent trailer

We had a great, albeit long drive to Idaho the first day.  We listened to an entire audiobook "The Teacher's Funeral" by Richard Peck (which is great, by the way) in order to pass the time.  The kids did a great job and we were very excited to make it to Three Mile Crossing.  The park was nice, but there were a ton of mosquitos, which kind of makes sense because the states park people obviously water the lawns a lot and it's likely the only source of moisture for a good ways for many of the insects.  Thank god we had bug spray so it wasn't too big an issue.

If you notice in the picture we had a bit of an issue with the tent trailer because the bed there is kind of falling off of the rails.  We worked around it though and the kids slept where the dining table folds down.

The next day we headed out.  Jen got some time behind the wheel so that she could get some experience pulling the tent trailer, and she did a great job.

Unfortunately we had an issue just as we were approaching the Utah border.  The brakes on the tent trailer seized up and caused us some problems.  We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  Jen was a little excited that she got to use the caution triangles she had purchased for the trip.

 

We had the tent trailer towed to Burley, Idaho.  The guy there said he couldn't figure out what had caused the brakes to seize, so all he could do is disable them for use. Given that we were scheduled to go over the Rocky Mountains and we had the kids with us we decided it wasn't worth the risk and headed back home.  We got back to Portland at 5:30 the next morning.

Not to be deterred we made a new plan, and like a phoenix from the ashes our vacation rose again... more to come soon.

Summertime and the livin's easy

With the exception of the broken arm we've had a pretty kick ass summer so far.  The kids are doing great.  Brianna is taking swimming lessons, and tennis lessons.  Andrew is on swim team, as well as taking tennis and fencing lessons.  In between times we've had barbecues, dinner with friends, and bike rides.   As a matter of fact, we bought a bike for Jen last weekend, which she loves.  It's a Specialized Stumpjumper with a super light frame.  We put some commuter tires on it for now and Jen is good to go.

As for the arm, it's healing just fine.

Jen, the kids, and Jasmine had a good trip with one of Andrew's friends and family to the Oregon Zoo.  The pictures aren't the best - it looks like something may have been on the camera lens and one of the settings wasn't quite right.  But while the fidelity may not be 100%, of course the content is.

Brianna and Jasmine both got to hold a bird:

 

The kids goofed around on a tractor:

This picture cracks me up because it reminds me of a picture of Supergrass, minus the beer bottle: