July vacation

So sorry it has taken me a while to post about our vacation, but summer is such a busy time! The weather in the Pacific Northwest has finally turned and we are enjoying summer temperatures and the sun! It's been a long time coming, but we are spending as much time outside in it as we can before it decides to disappear again.

We took our annual 4th of July camping/riding trip a few weeks ago. 10 days at the Oregon coast doing one of the things we love most as a family. Riding our quads and hanging out with some of our besties. The weather was amazing for our whole trip, and except for some barking dogs camping right behind us our trip was pretty good. And the riding was amazing. Since I don't have a lot of time, I'll just post all the pictures of our vacation.

See the sandy trail in the middle of the photo? That's the trail to the beach. We actually saw people walking all the way to the beach from behind where this photo is taken. It's a good 2+ miles one way I'd say. We just ride our ATVs and get there in no time!

Some of our play area. You can see our tracks in the sand, plus other people playing at the bottom of the dune.

Here's most of our group for the week. Plus Nick's friend's Dad on my quad. He brought Riley down a couple days after we got here, and we just had to take him out on a ride with us!

Gabi loved jumping her quad. Look at that air she got! She wasn't so good on the hill climbs. Still needs some practice there, but she'll get it eventually.

Nick & our friend Larry trying to jump together. Great job guys!

Nick's friend Riley showing how NOT to land. Rear tires first bub! Luckily he stayed on his bike.

That's better!

Some silly person thought he could drive his 300M onto the sand to the beach. That's as far as he got. We found him sitting in his car waiting for a tow truck to pull him out. Not sure what he was thinking, but we had to snap some photos of it!

Nick & Riley wishing they could drive this and go pick up some girls. Never going to happen boys! Our friend's son & Fiance bought this just before the weekend and are so proud of their new toy. The only reason the boys got in there is because they happened to be gone at the time. And no, they didn't leave the keys behind!

The rightful owners of the Razer. It's a pretty cool toy. Goes anywhere our quads will, but sits 2 people. Fun fun fun!

So there are some highlights of our trip. It was a blast and we were so lucky to have great weather the entire trip. (minus 1 day) 10 days is a long time to be camping, but we just don't get a chance to get out and ride much anymore so we really enjoy the longer trips where we can relax and have some great family time. The kids are turning into such great riders and some of the skills they are learning should help them when they reach the driving age as well. As long as they don't try jumping my car we should be in good shape! LOL

Next post... The Wild Animal Park one of our favorite places on the Oregon Coast!

Camping - Memorial Day 2010

We went camping and riding in Florence for Memorial Day weekend. The weather turned out to be perfect for most of the weekend which was wonderful. We are so tired of the rain we were glad to get some much needed sunshine. Here are some highlights of our weekend:

Our group on the beach taking a break & enjoying the beautiful weather.

The water had such a beautiful blue-green color to it. Haven't seen the water so beautiful and calm in a long time. Almost felt like it wasn't the Oregon coast!

Climbing the hills are fun.

The little energizer bunny never stops. He doesn't back down from any challenge.

Sometimes climbing hills doesn't work out so well. He didn't quite make it up the hill and got himself wedged against a tree stump. Of course I took photos instead of helping get him unstuck. I'm helpful like that!

The energizer bunny up close. Such concentration on his face.

There is nothing the kids love more than jumping.

Nick's friend Riley is just as brave as Nick is.

Gabi is not to be outdone by the boys.

She shows no fear on a quad, but bicycles are scary. Go figure.

The boy can jump! Look at that air.

I love the little humps of sand all over covered by sand grasses. Very cool.

Love the yellow scotch bloom (or is that Scott's Bloom?) It was all over the place and blooming like crazy. Such a bright yellow. It was pretty.

We rode in the annual poker run which is always a blast. A poker run involves riding around trying to find different checkpoints. You then draw a card for every checkpoint you find and attempt to create a great poker hand from your cards. Prizes are awarded for highest hand and lowest hand. We never seem to draw very good hands, but we scored on the raffle drawing. We purchased 8 tickets and won 5 things. Not bad! 2 of our prizes were the matching yellow hats. We won them at different times. What are the odds of actually winning matching hats?

One of our favorite places to ride. There is a quiet secluded lake set back on some awesome trails. It is always so beautiful back there. We always mention how we'd like to go swimming there sometime. 

You can access the lake from a short hike at the campground too, but riding the quads there is so much more fun!

Nick almost went swimming here - quad and all. He hit some tracks when riding around the edge of the water (About halfway up on the photo) and they caused him to bounce and head straight for the water. He barely stopped in time. It was a little scary for my poor heart. It's fairly steep and I wasn't sure how we would have gotten him out of there, but luckily that boy has some serious skills and prevented a major catastrophe! You can see the tracks I'm talking about. They are on the right hand side of the photo in the upper 3rd of the photo. They look like 2 lines heading from the top straight down to the water. Then the little squiggly lines along side the water are from him taking off and getting out of there. I think we'll leave this area alone until some of the water disappears again!
 

This is Oz. The boxer who thinks he's a lap dog. He's pretty cute but seriously thinks he fits in your lap like he did when he was a puppy. Did I mention he weighs around 70 pounds? Good thing he's so cute!

Mother's Day Adventure

I had a glorious Mother's Day with a family outing to the Columbia River Gorge. I wanted to go somewhere fun for the day that was a little out of the norm for us, and gave us an opportunity to enjoy the beautiful weather we finally had. I finally decided on a trip to see the beautiful waterfalls in the Gorge. We haven't really spent much time there as a family and it sounded like a good idea to get out and be one with nature. 

We took the scenic route which takes you by all the waterfalls and gives you the picturesque breathtaking views of the gorge. My absolutely favorite time to be there is fall when the leaves are turning colors, but spring is equally beautiful when the wildflowers are blooming and everything is such a bright shade of green.

The Crown Point Vista House is so incredibly old dating back to the early 1900s, and was recently refurbished back to it's original glory a couple of years ago. It has exquisite views, and they have all kids of fun historical facts about the building and scenic highway throughout the years.

Here is the view from the Vista House looking across the river to Washington. Bryan asked Gabi what separated Oregon and Washington and she said "a border". Nick pipes in with the Willamette River. Yes, I know. Geography still needs a little work. They both knew the correct answer, just took a couple of times to get it out of their mouths.

Here is the view looking east up the gorge. 

The first falls we hiked to was LaTourelle Falls. A beautiful location and one of the higher falls in the region.

The bottom of the falls. 

I actually got to be in a picture!

My favorite falls was Bridal Veil Falls. The upper portion falls into a pool, then drops again to the creek.  Very cool. We wanted to swim in the pool, but since the water is melted snow we decided that wasn't such a great idea.

Here is the creek & trail leading up to the falls. Just a beautiful spot.

Of course no trip to the gorge is complete without a trip to Multnomah Falls. Apparently half of Portland had the same idea because it was crazy crowded there. We didn't run into a lot of traffic or people anywhere else, but because you can access Multnomah Falls from the scenic byway & I-84 it gets more traffic I think. Plus it is the 2nd largest waterfall in the US, and one of the iconic landmarks in the Portland area. I was hungry by the time we reach the falls so wasn't up to the mile long hike to the top so we skipped that. 

Horsetail Falls

We were going to head into Cascade Locks or Hood River to eat and window shop, but there was a major traffic jam and I didn't feel like waiting in the long line of traffic for who knows how long so we headed back to Portland. Gotta love the road construction season in Oregon! We ended up eating an early dinner/late lunch at Famous Dave's BBQ since we worked up quite an appetite with the hiking we did. 

All in all it was a great Mother's Day doing exactly what I wanted to do while spending some great quality time together as a family. And we got home just in time before the rain started. At least our weather was perfect for our adventure!

So it's been a while

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything, and that's because we've been really busy! Not only did we take a great vacation to San Diego for Spring Break, but we also started some house projects, and Nick broke his wrist in the middle of everything too. Just more craziness in the Geddis Household. So here are some photos of what we have been up to. I will try to get back to more regular postings as we have some big house projects on the near horizon!

The sunset from our Hotel window

The fam at the Flower Fields in Carlsbad. Beautiful Ranunculus flowers as far as the eye could see!

Crazy boy!

Our new teenager! Can't believe she's 13 already!

What a sweet couple!

Overlooking the San Diego Wild Animal Park - These are the lions.

Took the tram tour to see most of the animals in more natural habitats.

He's really yawning. But I love this picture!

Flamingos were everywhere it seemed!

The cheetah was purring the entire time he was out. Didn't get to pet him. Kinda like my arms the way they are, but we were really really close to him!

All of us at the Wild Animal Park.

This statue is awesome! Huge and way cool!

The Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum. We toured most of it. Took us over 3 hours! But a very cool thing to see.

Here are Nick, Gabi & Bryan in the sleeping bunks on the midway, pretending to be sailors.

Sea World was cool!

Fed the dolphins at Sea World

Watched the Shamu Show. Way cool! Such amazing animals!

The Sea Lion show was also very funny & entertaining.

The San Diego zoo was way too amazing for words, but I'll sum it up with this: PANDAS!

They were so adorable! Loved finally being able to see pandas first hand.

There were other animals too - like baby giraffes!

And baby Orangutans. Oh wait. That was mom posing as one!

I have so many more great photos and video of our trip, but I think that's a pretty good over view for you guys. Don't want to bore you too much with our vacation photos.

All in all it was an amazing trip. The weather was great, the food was amazing and the company was pretty great too. So many great memories from that trip. Can't wait to go back! Maybe when Nick doesn't have a broken arm so maybe the kids can learn to surf. Cause what trip to San Diego doesn't include a little ocean time?

Next post will be an update of the house and the newest project we are working on!