In the end of January the weather was pretty darn nasty here and I kept seeing how beautiful it was at Oregon. Phoebe just happened to be out of school on break so it made for one great spontaneous trip to Oregon. The drive to Oregon was sent mostly in very cold nasty freezing fog.
We were finally thrilled to arrive at Grandma and Grandpas house and see our usual reserved Ferguson Family parking sign.
The first day we mainly relaxed, explored the big backyard of grandma/pas house with the doggies and then surprised Uncle Rob at my favorite Pizza parlor ever, good old Wallery's!
The next day we took a little adventure out to some of our favorite spots& activities which included the carousel, a picnic in the park and my favorite Kondettori for Mounds cake and an extra black out cake for my B-day!
We timed the trip over my birthday so this was the first time I got to see my parents on my birthday in 8 yrs!
After we opened the awesome gifts we all packed up and headed for a mini jot to Seaside Oregon. Cory had never been to the Northern Oregon Cost so we got to do all the fun touristy stuff. We stopped for a tour of Tillamook Cheese Factory, & had yummy cheese (of course), ice cream and also PB fudge!
A couple short miles from the cheese factory is the very small and much less known about Tillamook smoke house where you can buy the most delicious and cheap jerky is almost any flavor you would want.
We stopped off at some of the famous over looks and Cannon beach (Oregon most famous beach) to see the gorgeous day!
My goal for the day was to make it to the beach before the sun set and take a pic! We didn't exactly make it before the sun was hidden, but close. A couple coves away Oregon was having a wild fire in January (unheard of) and so it hid the sun a bit prematurely behind the smoke. I do LOVE these b-day pics sun or not. I think it was one of the most unique b-days I have had in over a decade or more!
After it was finally too dark to play on the beach we headed up to a warm dinner and DELICIOUS Barney's Blackout cake at the condo. We had a slight oversight at forgot to bring candles and since I insist on having something to blow out I blew out a match.
The next day we checked out the free shark exhibit downstairs where Cami kissed up on a great white (hopefully the only time she will ever do that again)!
We stopped off at, what I am sure is, one of world's smallest aquariums to visit the see life. the kids always LOVE seeing the octopuses there especially this time since they also had a baby octopus on display! After the aquarium we played on the beach and then warmed up in the condo's big hot tubs.
On the last day we had to make one last visit to the beach in the cold rain, but the kids didn't mind too much Phoebe was thrilled to collect shells for one of the YW neighbors who asked for them.
The day after our beach trip we headed home, which was a a day too late to miss the storm that was rolling on through. Two thirds of the drive home spent white knuckled, ever since we saw nearly 150 semi trucks lined up for about 1 miles chaining up, we thought, "Oh Crap! what are we about to get into?!?!?" It was nearly as bad as we worried about at one point we saw a double trailer semi spinning and spinning and not moving forward at all and at another point we got cut off by a semi and we were sliding up the mountain.
After we got into Idaho we could put on smiles again for making through the terrifying snowy passes.
Sadly right after Boise we head the Mother of monsoon rains and I could hardly see no less pass the tedious semi's because I was either driving 100% blind in the rain or hydroplaned. It was a LONG trip home due to the really bad weather conditions, but thank goodness we have awesome little passengers who don't mind the long drives! If we knew everything ahead of time I am not 100% we would have risked the drive in January, but I am really glad we got to go.
