So much has happened in such a short space of time that I scarcely know where to begin. In less than a month we have gone to Summer Family Camp, then headed down the coast to Manzanita Beach, then come back around to our old home at Sierra Ct., finished packing it up, followed by a Labor Day weekend move to a rental home. Right now we are in the process of going back and forth between the two homes settling into one and spring cleaning the other in preparation for the new family to move in. Vacation this year truly felt like the eye of the storm preceded by a whirlwind of packing and followed by more packing and a move to a new house.
After all that...I've decided I'll start by catching y'all up on our vacation in Manzanita. As you can see, I've put a lot of pictures on again. There are so many beautiful ones that I had to pick and choose and couldn't post all of the ones that I would have liked to. If you're wondering how we could possibly have more pictures than the ones that I've posted, well...all I can say is that you just don't know my Daddy and his camera. :-)
On our first day at Manzanita, we went down to the beach and then walked back through town and got milkshakes. Jonathon and Ania got a little bit affectionate right outside of the ice cream shop.
We took our traditional family picture right near Haystack Rock and I even managed to get a picture of Daddy and Mommy. It's hard to get the camera out of Daddy's hands, but occasionally we get to snap a picture of him.
One of the days, we headed over to the Tillamook Air Museum. It is an amazing place! The building is about 10 stories tall and was built as a hangar for air blimps during WWI. Inside they had a huge display of fighter planes most of which were from WWII. They were all authentic planes used by the American, French, and German military.
While I was wandering around looking at pictures and reading little biographical sketches on some of the pilots, an older man walked up to the display board and was searching for the name of a pilot, Leanord Hays, on one of the pictures. I was in the middle of reading Leanord's biography at that moment and I asked him if he knew Leonard. He said that Leanord was his older brother.
Later when I saw him again, he pointed out a picture of the housing sight near where he grew up. I got to introduce him to Daddy, Mommy, and Jonathon and we got to talk for a while. His older brother, of course, had fought in WWII and he had fought in the Korean War. It was so fascinating and I felt so honored to be able to meet him.
They even had the front half of planes complete with all of the buttons and meters that fill the cockpits of real planes. I think the plane halves had been used in pilot training and they were there for the children (and grown-ups :-D) to climb in and explore.
Ania gets a double kiss
We walked down to Ecola Beach again. It's a beautiful beach that is very popular with surfers. With the rumors of Great White Sharks moving into the coastal waters around Oregon, however, I would not have been too eager to be out that deep.
Ania loved the ocean! We tried to instill in her a healthy fear of it's power and danger, but it didn't seem to deter her. She loved to run out and jump the waves.
Austin got to go out and practice his bike riding skills. He is getting quite good. When he was first learning how to bike, he could not get the hang of the brakes. When he was headed for a wall, instead of applying the breaks, his arms and legs would shoot out from the sides of the bike and he would spread eagle himself against the wall. He seems to be doing much better now, though.
Climbing the Column in Astoria was a fun experience. The Column is located at the top of a tall hill and then the column rises up about 160 or so steps beyond that. The views are breathtaking!
Daddy had a special devotional with us 6 older ones in the evening and he and Mommy both had devotions in the mornings with the 3 younger ones.
During the evenings we went through Dicken's Little Dorrit as our marathon movie. Being 8 hours long, it kept us busy for a good 4 nights. The second to the last night we sat around the kitchen table and played a competitive game of Settlers of Catan.
Leisel and Lynnae Plotting and Collaborating
The picture below was a repeat of a triangle picture that we took several years ago. Except this time half of us were adult size and so it was not the most comfortable picture I've ever been in. It was pretty funny, though when we started stacking on top of each other and you have someone's knee digging into your hip and you're yelping and instructing them on how to shift their weight into a less painful position and then the next person gets stacked on top and the load gets that much heavier and everyone's giggling. I'm sure we looked quite a sight to everyone on the beach. After all it's not every day that you see a family of 11 piling on top of each other. A kind young lady ran over and offered to take the picture for us. She commented that she assumed we were forming the pyramid for a picture not just for the fun of it. You betcha, for the fun of it I would rather be jumping the surf instead of gaining a bruise on my back. :-D
