Visit from the W family!

We lived in northern Oregon for just 10 months, but that was enough time to become friends with an amazing family, the W's. They were so supportive and helpful. We were very sad to say good-bye to them but thoroughly enjoyed a visit from the girl half of their family in August 2011. They arrived at midnight on Care Bear's birthday so when she woke up, we were all surrounded by friends! It was an exhausting trip because we played, played, and played some more. We can not wait to see them again either here on our stomping grounds or up north at their playground.

Care Bear's birthday was our most relaxing day of their visit. After opening Care Bear's gifts and catching up on our lives, we went out to run some errands and then played at Lithia Park.


The girls loved playing in the stream. Jaco quickly got frustrated hanging out with only girls but he didn't have any other choice!


After the park we got cleaned up then went to pizza together for Care Bear's birthday dinner.

Thursday the 25th we headed to a small little tourist town called Jacksonville. I had not been there yet so it was a new adventure for me. We discovered some fun stores and enjoyed walking around exploring. Once again Jaco was the only boy so he did not have near as much fun as all us girls. We ate lunch at a small little restaurant which had one of the tastiest burgers I have ever had. It is called The Mustard Seed...mmmm so good! That night, we left the kids with Justin and J and I went to see "The Help" with some ladies from church. Excellent book and movie!

J had wanted to see the California Redwoods for a long time so Friday the 26th, we took a road trip to go play among the giants.
We were able to go on a ranger guided tour where the kids explored wildlife in the water. Finally Jaco was happy because he was learning new information!

After playing and driving all day, we took our crowd of little girls (we let Jaco have some male bonding time with Justin) to the local Yogurt Hut which has karaoke on Friday and Saturday nights. We had 7 little girls and 3 women and all of us sang our hearts out and stuffed our bellies with frozen yogurt. Yogurt Hut does a great job making their karaoke very family friendly! We sang Disney songs, Mamma Mia, and all kinds of other fun happy songs.

Saturday was supposed to be the sad pack up and send them on their way day but that would not have been any fun! J had to drive north to leave, so we followed her and took a little detour to the Oregon Caves. Jaco was hiking Mt Mcloughlin with the church youth that day so he missed out. We brought our friend Craig along and we all enjoyed one last hooray playing together in mother nature!
It was such a fun whirlwind trip full of so much fun and laughter! We love company and showing off our beautiful "backyard"!