Jon * Betsy * Sean * Matthew: July Fun

A whole month has gone by without updates. Sorry, we've been busy partying it up!

4th of July weekend we went to Portland to visit with family because Paul and Ally were in town. It was nice to see them. We also got to stay at Nicki's new house for the first time.

Silly cousins sword fighting

The four Brady boys

watching fireworks

It was a quick trip, but still nice. We had to get home to get ready for our next visitors! Bethany and her kids came to see us for a few days. It was so good to see them again!

We went for a walk on the Clear Creek Trail:

We didn't lose anyone!!

Matthew got hurt on his ankle. It was a scrape and it was pretty bad, but not really bad enough for this excessive bandaging. I did it anyway because it helped keep his bandaid on and keep some dirt out (since he kept playing in our digging pit). He was so funny about the wrap. He kept calling it his cast and limping along.

I don't know who had the idea, but one of the kids started writing everyone's names on pieces of tape and putting them on Matthew's "cast." He loved it. You can see that it didn't last too long, but it was fun for a few hours.

We went to Point No Point so we could play at a sandy beach. It was a lovely day. The sun came out right when we got there. Jon had made little sail boats for the kids in the morning and they had fun with those. We also brought Sean's bigger shovels to make a pretty nice sand castle.

We had some ladybugs join us for lunch.

They stuck around for a long time. One sat on our cooler for hours.

It was hard on my kids to have their cousins leave, but we kept promising that we would see them again soon because we had an Oregon coast trip planned for a week later. When it was finally time to go to the beach, we drove through Brady, Washington and took some pictures at the fire station. The boys thought it was pretty cool to be in a town with their same last name.

I feel a bit lame that I took ZERO pictures at the beach house. I got sick while I was there, and the beach was windy, and I was lazy. So I have no footage, but it was an amazing time. The kids loved being with their cousins! I loved being with my super fun family. We played games, had fires, soaked up a little sun, ate yummy food, did a little shopping, and laughed a lot. It was wonderful!

We planned to stay a few extra days in Portland after the beach. That was loads of fun too. I met up with some good friends from Corvallis at the zoo. It had been a couple years since we've been together so the kids took about 2 minutes to get reacquainted and then we were off to enjoy all the animals.

Sean had said earlier in the day that he really wanted to see a flamingo. I told him I wasn't sure that any zoos have flamingos. While we were there, I looked at the map and there were flamingos on there. He was pretty thrilled. I also learned that Matthew's favorite animal (besides stingrays) is a hippopotamus. It was adorable to have him keep asking to see them because he calls them hippo-ma-potamuses. So dang cute!!

We went to the children's museum the next day. It was lots of fun. We spent tons of time with cousins. We played at a couple parks. We had another round of baseball camp (that started at the beach house). On the way to the park for baseball, the 7 kids all rode in the back of the truck and I guess Sean (the rule follower) asked "If this is illegal, why are we doing it?" It was only 3 blocks! Jon had a mini OSU reunion. We introduced Chris to Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail. I got to see Noreen again. I stayed up late and talked and laughed lots more with the fam. It was fun for me to have Jon take so much time off work and be with me on a long vacation. I can't even stand how much I love my family!!

This next part was technically in August, but it's from the same trip, so it's going in this post!

I went to the Oregon Garden with Lorainne and Bethany and our kids. It's always beautiful there!