Sunday, August 29, 2010

Oregon Coast, Redwoods and Lake Tahoe!!!

Hiking at the Redwoods!

Kylee and Zac touching their first redwood tree.








Zac's favorite part about the redwoods was the huge slug that he found.

Crossing a little bridge



We stopped at this aquarium in Newport and the kids had a blast

There were all kinds of fish, starfish and jellyfish to see. They also have an octopus that you can touch, but it had died a week before we got there, so we were kinda bummed about that.



There was a starfish back inside this cave.

There were tidepools full of sea anemone, sea cucumbers, coral and other stuff that the kids could touch.



This chair thing was in our cabin at the coast. Ben is such a dork!

We had been driving for 3 days and when we got to our cabin Kylee had just fallen asleep in the car. We put her in her bed and slept for a few more hours. Ben woke her up at 6 and I was nursing the baby, so I kept telling her to come upstairs, but she never did. When I finished nursing this is how I found her. She must have been pretty work out because she slept on the floor for another hour. Ofcoarse getting her to go to bed that night was not fun.

What a cutie pie. My little tiny newborn isn't too little anymore.

We shared a cabin with Josh and Erin and their kids. Kylee and Eliza were very excited to see each other. They played good together one minute and the next minute they were hitting and scratching each other. They both had scratch marks all over their faces. Kylee is pretty fiesty, so it's good Eliza can hold her own.


The famous Tillamook Cheese Factory.

Most of the cousins in their cousin club shirts eating tillamook icecream. I really wish they sold their ice cream and yogurt around here. It is soooo good.

Zac and Luke thought it was pretty good too.

Zac played at the beach everyday for hours with Luke. It was nice having someone for him to play with. You wouldn't believe the amounts of sand this kid got all over his clothes and hair... It probably didn't help that choncho poured sand on everyone.

Kylee loved the sand too, but her favorite thing to do at the beach was to run out into the waves.



Kylee, Ben and Eliza playing in the water.

Choncho is getting in on this action. Kylee is soaking wet because she fell while running away from the waves. It didn't stop her though; she kept going back for more.



Erin got Eliza and Kylee twinner pj's and they were realy cute! Thanks Erin

Adam is probably wondering who that crazy person laying next to him is?


Playing at Haystack Rock and the Sand dunes. I didn't get any pictures of Ben and Zac and all the rest of the cousins running down the sand hill because Ben had my camera. Me, Kylee and Eliza only made it about 1/4 the way up.



Ben had to carry Zac across all these rocks so he could get to where the starfish were.




Kyla is the same age as Kylee and Eliza and she is such a sweetie.

Zac really wishes he could take a starfish home.

I laid Adam down on this chair for a sec while I was doing something and the next thing I know he is totally tanked out.

Kylee had fun playing with her older cousin Josh Fernandez.

Playing ring-around-the-rosies out by the camp fire.

Uncle Dave caught a lot of crab this year. We didn't go with to catch it, but the kids got in the boat after with their cousin Carl and looked at the crab. We also got to eat some after it was all cleaned and cooked. It was yummy!



Ben caught little rock crabs for them to hold. Zac remembered doing this when were there 2 years ago and he couldn't wait to do it again. There weren't nearly as many little crab this year though, but all Zac needed was one.

Adam was so good on the whole vacation. He never cried and pretty much slept most of the time.

The famous octopus tree.

We played "war games" and split into 3 teams. Zac and I were on the same team and he had so much fun. Kylee was a little upset she had to stay back with the other little kids, but she got over it. We had to find all these different clues which led us to a flag; we had to collect 6 flags and bring them back to our home base and if we got touched on the back by someone on another team we were put in jail until one of our own team members let us out. Our team ended up winning and most of us never got put in jail because we stayed together in a big group (and we didn't cheat like the other teams haha!). Grandma Diane made us crepes for winning. Zac was happy about that because he loves grandma's crepes.





Kylee playing in the sand.

Zac roasted about 5o marshmellows. Even when I told him he couldn't eat anymore he kept roasting them for other people. Im sure Kylee ate about 50 marshmellows herself. She didn't eat one descent meal on our whole trip.

It got pretty chilli at night, so I had to bundle little Adam up.

Kylee didn't want to play with Riley until I told her that their names rhymed.

We took our kids and Luke on a hike at Munson Falls. It's perfect for kids becasue it's short and it is so beautiful.







Zac didn't even care about the waterfall. He just wanted to look for tadpoles in the stream.

On the way home from the falls we stopped at a fish hatchery and let the kids feed the fish, which were huge. There was also a little swampy pond and we caught a little tree from, lots of newts and some slugs. Zac wanted to stay there all day and look for critters. Kylee was even getting into it.

After we left the fish hatchery we went to another place to catch crabs. Kylee fell asleep in the car, so she missed out, but we did see a few crabs.



Kylee and daddy dancing at the family "stomp". We had a family pot luck, which was kindof a madhouse and then they had a talent show and a dance afterward. Zac and Kylee both sang a song for the talent show.

Kylee sang the "Little Dolly" song that Grandma taught her. You could hardly hear her becasue she was being pretty shy.

Zac sang this Frankenstein Halloween song and he wasn't shy about it at all. He belted it out like crazy.

Killer family photo. I'm sad we didn't get any family pictures taken on the beach.

The "cousin-club".

The original Volmer clan. Becky, Amy, Andrea, Diane, Cathy, Mindy, Jenny, Dave, Ben, Carl and Josh.

Dork alert!

The awesome in-laws. Raquel, Me, Erin, Mike, John, Graydon and Manuel.

Lake Tahoe




We went to the Oregan Coast for Ben's family reunion and it was sooooo much fun. We drove, which was an adventure in itself because it's about an 18 hour drive. We split it up into 3 days on the way there and took the long route through the Red Woods and took the scenic drive down the 101 coast for a long time. The kids did pretty well considering the numerous hours on end in the car. Zac watched a lot of movies; Kylee complained a lot and tried pulling the i've got to pee card a hundred times, but she survived and Adam slept like a champ. We were at the coast for a whole week and did lots of fun stuff with all the family. Zac played at the beach for hours on end with his cousin Luke and Kylee played and fought with her cousin Eliza a lot. We took 2 days driving home, which was crazy too because we were all sick (me and Kylee were throwing up and Zac and Ben had fevers and pink eye, luckily Adam didn't get sick at all). The good part to all that was that both Zac and Kylee slept a lot on the way home. We ended up getting to see Lake Tahoe because of my navigational errors, which probably added about 4 hours onto our trip home. I'm already looking forward to our next oregan coast vacation in 2 years. If it wasn't so far away we would go there every year for sure. It is such a beautiful place!