Oregon My Oregon Summer Va-Ca Pt 1

Every July brings one of the biggest joys of the whole year, the annual homage to Oregon! We have also started the tradition at stopping at exit #76 to take a pic with our ever growing Rowena (Sophie).

Phoebe, our monkey toe girl, enjoyed eating her treats the whole way to Oregon with her toes; gross I know, but for a kid it could be worse.

When we got to Oregon we started the fun immediately by hitting up garage sales, where we got some cool things & visited the black-hole high school stadium (a HS by my parents that made news with ESPN for the black astro turf they have). The kiddos, however, stayed behind while we shopped to paint grandmas nails, which turned out awesome.

This year we finally made it to one of the happiest places of my whole childhood, the Enchanted Forest. This place hasn't hardly changed in 30 years, it is the Disneyland of Salem and is based on all things fairy-tales. Luckily, Uncle Robert and Aunt Lucy were able to join us on this fun kids trip.

Cory learned some great architecture pointers from the man in the crooked house. While the kids got some shooting tips at the range from Uncle Robert.

We got to stop and see one of the most "special" versions of Pinocchio ever, which is already a lame-o story to begin with, if you ask me, but the kids loved it.

After our snack and a show the kiddos got to ride on the Candy train and bumper boats. This was the biggest thrill of them all and caused some tantrums when we eventually had to leave.

The kids also got to pan for precious"jewels" which are used as trading currency among the themselves.

The Old Lady in the Shoe slide was one of my favs as a kiddo and I think I can safely our kiddos also absolutely LOVED it by the 12+trips they took going up and down it!

On multiple occasions this trip we made it out to play & picnic at local parks. The park I loved taking the kiddos to the most is an old park and therefore almost always empty across the street from my old elementary school. They kids got terribly filthy every time we played, but it was totally worth it not to constantly panic over where all your kiddos were in the big busy park. 

For past several months now Grandpa has been talking about taking the kiddos fishing and Phoebe was super excited to finally get to go. All the kiddos were excited to catch a fish, although I am not sure they really know what it meant to go fishing. We found a local pond stocked with fish to cast our lines in and bought a pack of night crawlers for our bait.

The fishing was actually action packed, unfortunately, all the bigger fish were already caught so all we got were TINY blue gills and catfish, which we all caught released back in the pond. Everyone, (except for Cory) reeled in their own fish, even Sophie believe it or not!

Fishing, aka just sitting on the bank, turned out to be too strenuous for Cami so she had to stop early to catch a few Zzzzs. Eventually, she and Josh mustered up enough energy to break out the cookies and snack in the shade on a chair. Cami also made sure to visit the "cool" potty, a nasty almost full outhouse, a couple times where she just nearly fell in butt first down the hole, good thing she caught herself by her armpits on the toilet seat. The kids overall had a blast fishing and it might have to be a new yearly must do event.

Another must do event at Grandma/pa Potts' house is to go swimming in the "hot pool" on a daily bases! It was amazing to me to see how much Sophie has grown since we were last there staying with grandma/pa Potts this winter. Sophie can now walk on the bottom where in February when she attempted such, it meant she was under the water and needed rescuing.

On a side Note Cami is reading this mini Indian book of sayings or scripture that Phoebe found last winter when we were staying there and the girls all fight over who gets it, claiming it to be their scriptures and they sit there and flip through every page and pretend they're reading it.

Hangin' Out in Afton with Afton

The day after all the firework fun we still managed to get up early and heave up to Afton, Wy for the day to visit Gory's Grandma Wilke's and Aunt Carolyn. It is always fun and relaxing up there, but this year is was even more so because we went with Cory's brother Dennis and family. The kids had a blast playing in the fields going on walks and pretending in grandma's play house.

As we entered the driveway to grandma's house the Shadowbrook sign was always the first "sign" of home, but they recently had to take it down due to aging and before it left Cory wanted one last pic with the beloved sign before it found it's new home with another cousin .

For lunch we of course went to Burger King a staple of any Afton visit, as is a pic with grandma even if it involves a bunch of kids who won't cooperate and look up.

On our way home this year we were for some reason we were travailing extra slow so when we got to Evanston we were starving and needed to stop for dinner. Non of us were in the mood for fast food so we looked up a local Denny's to eat at. We were a bit confused when the address that we were given lead us to a neighborhood and then eventually to some random guy's house. We laughed and laughed because we were supposing that the address was so some guy who must just be named Denny. Eventually we found a JBs, which had the largest kids menu I have ever seen, and enjoyed a yummy home style dinner.

After dinner we were treated for the rest of the ride with beautiful skies for gaze at everything from fun rainbows to gorgeous sunsets, these pics don't do any justice of the beauty, the sky was neon pink and then red as the sun sunk down behind the mts.

This was just a fun day trip to grandma's, but it was probably on of the funnest our family has even had, since we took our time and stop to enjoy a few more of the sights along the way; this may just had to be a new norm for this Fegry family.

Fergy Family 4th of July Festivities '13

We started off our 4th of July off early with a delicious breakfast at Grandma/pa Fergys! The kiddos had a blast eating yumm-o pancakes while relaxing and watching Cars to prep for our car party later that morning.

My kiddos tried to dress in patriotic colors for the 4th, but I let it slip and forgot to get them their normal fun festive clothing, well Sophie had some because they were Phoebe hand me downs.

After breakfast we began our awesome NASCAR party which meant all the Fergy gandkiddos got out their boxes and made their own cars. Josh really had a "flare" for making his car one of the coolest. I forgot to get close-ups of Cami's car, but you can see her in the big group party shot with most all the cousins.

Grandma had all sorts of fun car themed games for the kiddos to play, like at the tire rotation station

Lastly we ran them all through a "car wash" involving us spraying them all down  (spraying them with squirt bottles) & then soaping them up (Running through bubbles).

At the very end all the the dads gave their kiddos awards like the fastest (Josh-because of the flames), the spyiest (Sophie's - because her plate was 007), the rosiest (Phoebe- because she had Purple rose on her license plate), & I forgot Cami's but you can see she is sure proud of it in this pic!

After the car festivities we enjoyed a yummo Training Table style hamburger bar complete with great sides!

Since this was also a grandma Fergy party it wouldn't be complete if we didn't have lots of fun food themed to the party.

After lunch we came home and threw all the kiddos in bed for a nap them enjoyed a relaxing evening before all the excitement of firework watching. We have never spent money on fireworks and I don't know that we ever will there were TONS and TONS of large fireworks to watch going off all around our house. We just took a blanket out front and made some popcorn and enjoyed the free shows. We also had the our fun new neighbors across the street come over and play and bring us all pop-cycles.  

Our kiddos were in heaven after all the fun of the day and night and I can for-sure say I LOVE our new house and area, it is going to be fun having the kiddos growing up here in this neighborhood with all this 4th of July fun!