Trip to Oregon

Our annual trip to the Northwest began at the Anchorage airport. Our flight was delayed five hours, so we ended up leaving after midnight (but we got flight discounts and survived) and we got to see a rainbow from the airport. The girls also went completely insane doing crazy dances and crawling under the chairs until we could finally board.

We got to Seattle around 6am and were able to get a couple hours of sleep before hopping our train to Portland.

Here was Sabrina during those few hours.

Once in Portland, the cousins all bunked together.

And then we all headed out to Oceanside.

We visited the cheese Factory - and even Caleb was excited to take a ride in the mini loaf.

We had several lovely days at the beach.

Tom and Sabrina win for "best photobomb ever," as Tom ran Sabrina around on the skimboard.

We also did a lot of kite flying.

And enjoyed some sunsets.

Billy and my dad went into town to get groceries with the two big kids. They were really too big for it, but they still wanted to ride in the car together.

We enjoyed the blackberries from the bushes by the beach house. Tom made some blackberry cobbler. I do love that they grow like weeds in the northwest.

Caleb had his series of adventures. He got to meet cousin Ivory who is just a few days younger than him. He got right to work making sure she didn't have any teeth yet either.

Cousin Elena liked to see how many toys Caleb would tolerate on his back.

And the sleeping babies and the rest of us enjoyed a visit to Grandma and Grandpa Trusty.

We had a big cousin party at the beach house and had fun showing off all our kiddos. So many new cousins!

We tried to take a giant family picture of all of us...

...but ultimately ended up just getting a good one with the parents and grandchildren in a miracle shot.

Instead of going for the 4th of July as we usually do, we all met up in August and went to the Tillamook County Fair. Now the claim-to-fame of the fair is the annual Pig and Ford race. This started years and years ago and my Great Uncle Jack actually used to be the announcer. Basically there are some Model T's. The racers have to grab a pig, crank up their car, drive a lap, change pigs, and do it all again. This gets pretty crazy. Celia and Sabrina posed as drivers this year. They've really been working on biceps.

All of my kids posed as Dairy.

And here we are, waiting for the races to begin.

The shot is fired, the drivers have grabbed their pigs, and they're headed to crank up the cars.

Definitely a very entertaining event. And that summarizes the Oregon portion of the trip before we hopped the train and headed back to Seattle.