Tour de Oregon (Newport + Portland)

Leelee made it back alive from Camp! And happy! Success.

He said he got the lower bunk and the chaperone got the upper bunk.  

Parents and chaperones were good about sending photo updates to us. I found it funny that two of my photo updates were lee lee in bed.

Dissecting the squid! Leelee was one of three kids who happened to get a female with an egg sac. He was so excited about this.

The caption on this one from the chaperone was "end of camp...tired"

Camp pick-up! Ready for the 2.5 hour jaunt to Portland

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, Alaina had booked a VRBO within walking distance to the kids' camp. It was pretty funny how close we were. Olin, the Kincaids and I traveled 7 hours together to Newport on Wednesday and spent two nights together. We hit the beach and tide pools and went to bed early and went out for a couple of meals. All in all a very fun time.

The shells they 'found' at the beach. And by found, I mean a bag of seashells we purchased for $5 and distributed along the sand for the kids to 'find'. They were so excited to find these amazing shells on the sand.  Alaina said her mom used to do that for them when they were kids and I thought it was a really good idea. 

Clam in rock!

Surprisingly great kite flying weather, even though it didn't feel windy.

Sand dollars galore. This is literally 20 minutes after Alaina said "It has been probably 10-20 years since I have found a sand dollar"!

Tide pools. These tide pools were teeming with starfish, sea urchins, sea anemones, hermit crabs, mussels on the side of rock.

This starfish was huge. We were allowed to touch every animal except the starfish because apparently starfish have become susceptible to some starfish wasting syndrome or something.

Heart rock! Green sea anemones galore, too.

Sleeping arrangements - Claira and Olin. They played very well together and were pretty much out of our hair the entire 2 days.

Checking out the view from Saffron Salmon restaaurant. There were lots of sea otters playing.

Portland! Celebrating Mal's 10th birthday a few weeks early with puo puo, BR cake, and Veuve Clicquot. We spent the weekend visiting 3 bike shops (Clever Cycles, Crank and Universal Cycles), going to several restaurants (the Local American, Pine St. Market which was a bust because the Israeli food was sold out, Laughing Planet when we couldn't get in to Piazza Italia, Lucca for Mal and Ev and Jeff, and Pip's donuts for Sunday morning which were scrumptious and which Jeff picked up), and going to a baseball game for Didi, Soccer game for Mal, and Softball game for Mal. 

There was major merriment in sliding down the stairs on blankets.

Mal's softball tourney in West Linn. They had a pack of Mike & Ike's to share and were happy.

Good old Empire Builder train ride home. I tried to capture the beauty of Mt. Hood  - it didn't translate too well on film. My mom also took the train from Portland to Seattle and she ended up spending 6 hours in the train station because she arrived early to the station and her train got delayed repeatedly. She got home at 2am!

Our 9pm arrival time must have coincided with Olin's deepest REM cycle because I seriously could not wake him up. I tried to wake him up like 5 times and he would just doze off again and again. Finally, I kind of told him "we have to go!" and carried him along with my 6 bags, and then told him he had to walk down the stairs himself because I knew I'd fall if I had all that cargo. He was SO out of it, his eyes were barely open, it was like one eye open and one eye shut. Poor guy! It was so cute/funny.