Oregon Days

Like Rachel and her family, we had a busy time of road-tripping, sightseeing and beach bumming in Oregon last week. We’d been planning this trip with 3 other couples for months and it definitely did not disappoint! Brad and I headed down with our brood to Portland last Sunday. We stayed at the Silver Cloud Inn in Northwest Portland (free breakfast and parking, bonus!) for 3 nights and, although it wasn’t in the downtown core, we were a short walk to transit and our kids were so excited each time we boarded a trolley or hopped on the MAX Light Rail…our youngest two hadn’t even been on a bus before! Talk about suburban upbringing…

On Monday, we made our way to the Portland Children’s Museum and our kids absolutely loved it! Everything was totally hands-on from the miniature grocery store (it even had a check-out till that the kids could man themselves!), to the clay room, to the water room and oh so much more! After several hours at the museum and a little wandering around the Pioneer Square area, we  had a very late lunch at Rock Bottom Brewery. We were all pretty wiped after that so headed back to the hotel for a little siesta before strolling around our Nob Hill neighborhood for some pizza by the slice and late night gelato…

The next day, we were off to the Oregon Zoo. We were initially pretty excited to discover that the second Tuesday of each month only costs $4 admission per person. Not so excited, however, when we stepped out of the train to see the crowds and came up the elevator to see the enormous lineup leading to the entry! Thankfully, it only took us about 15 minutes to wind our way in. There were a lot of fantastic exhibits and, although I’m not the hugest fan of animals in captivity, the zoo did seem to do a great job with the animal habitats and keeping the critters entertained. Despite the crowds, we all had a lot of fun and spent most of the day there. We wandered around downtown a little bit (ok, we got lost because of my sketchy navigation skills!) before making our way back to our neighborhood and a delicious dinner at Besaws…I highly recommend the Original Mac!

On Wednesday, we headed to the coast to find the beach house that we’d rented with 3 other families . It was just North of Seaside in the adorable town of Gearhart and I so wish that I’d taken more photos of all of the other amazing cottages in our little neighborhood! I found our house on VRBO and let me just say that the website photos did not do it justice…this house was to die for!

Isn’t the orange front door gorgeous? Not to mention the rest of this like-new home! It fit all 4 of our families wonderfully, thanks to the amazing bunk room…check out those orange stripes on the ceiling! It was about a five minute walk over the dunes to the beach but we had our own little path leading right to our back door. We even had a herd of elk visit our dunes at dusk one night…so stunning to see their silhouettes against the sunset!

And once we were at the beach, it was hard to leave. Even on the usually overcast and chilly mornings, all 11 kids were gung-ho to get wet…brrr! But it warmed up every afternoon and our last day finally felt like summer. This picture of my youngest daughter, Lilah, really sums up how much fun we all had…note the sand all over her mouth from rolling down the dunes!

And just like that, it was over. But we’re already planning our next trip! Thanks so much to the Kessi’s for opening up their gorgeous beach home to our giant group! There’s nothing like spending quality time with great friends…so many great memories of our time at the coast!

And now, Rachel and I are back to work in a big way. We’ve received almost 50 applications to Fieldstone Vintage Market, more than double the number we had at the schoolhouse, and we are so excited to have a little wine and cheese night with our jury committee on Wednesday to make our final vendor selections. We’ll keep you posted…