July 2011

Day 1 - tearing up the yard

Day 1 - digging the enormous hole

Day 2 - building the steel walls

Day 3 - laying down the pool krete bottom

Day 3 - putting in the liner

Day 4 and 5 were spent doing electrical and gas
Day 6 - they laid out the form for the concrete patio around the pool

Day 7 - they poured the concrete, the white pipes are for umbrellas
and they will be cut down flush with the cement

Day 8 - almost ready we just have to wait for the pool to be turned on and cleaned
Should be ready this weekend, can't wait to jump on in!

Well I have decided to continue to blog about my family.  The last time I blogged we were headed back to Minnesota.  My husband was flying back and forth for job interviews and is now in a new role with a new company.  That is why we came back earlier than we expected.
Since being back the kids have really enjoyed seeing and hanging out with their friends.  Jake is back golfing in tournaments, Rees is doing gymnastics, and Trent is now involved in Karate.  For me I am back to taxi service and keeping up the house.  I am finding that having a house is way too much work!!!  I miss the trailer, which by the way has been in the shop trying to get fixed!  What a surprise, huh?
We have managed to add one big addition to our back yard...an in-ground pool!  It took only 8 days to complete the process...WOW!

Home

Happy Easter!  We arrived home on Tuesday, April 19th, such a bittersweet feeling.  It's been busy trying to unpack, get ready for Easter, celebrating Rees' 9th birthday, and just settling in.  I will be writing a summary soon of our trip and give some final thoughts.  I still cannot give you our reason for ending our journey early, but I will hopefully be able to do that real soon.  It has been an amazing time in our lives!  Looking forward to more...

Bozeman, Montana

We arrived into Bozeman, Montana late in the afternoon yesterday.  We came through beautiful Coeur D'Alene, Idaho and even encountered some snow.  As we were trying to unhook and set up camp...this dam trailer broke again.  The landing gear would not come down or up, so we cannot get the trailer off the truck.  We had to have a mobile repair man come out and jack the trailer up so we could get the jacks back up.  We were going to just leave and head home, but decided we really wanted to spend some time here with our friends, so we rented a car so we could get around, and we are leaving the trailer hooked up to the truck.  It was really cold here yesterday and last night, but this morning looks to be a beautiful day.

Leaving Oregon

We are leaving Corvallis, Oregon tomorrow.  We will be headed back to our home in Minnesota, a little sooner than expected. ( I will explain more later).  We have had a great time hanging out with the family.  But it's time to get back on the road.  We are headed up through Washington and then through Idaho and Montana.  We will be stopping in Montana to visit some the same friends we started out our journey visiting, I guess we are bringing our journey full circle.

Corvallis - Oregon

View from our room

Here we are again, back hanging out with my mom, sister, and her family.  We arrived on Wednesday, March, 30th.  This time we are parked in the driveway across the street...her neighbor has a large, graveled in area for our rig.   The kids are enjoying staying in their Mirma's(grandma) house at night.  This last weekend was girls weekend...yahoo!  My mom, sister and I went over to the coast and stayed in my dad's condo that he has there.  It over looks the ocean, it was absolutely beautiful and relaxing.  My mom only stayed one night and then headed back to check on the rest of the gang.  While she was there we had a great time eating, drinking, and relaxing, and doing some facial masks.  On Saturday, my sister and I went glass blowing and made these beautiful glass floats.  It was so great, it was interesting, relaxing and extremely fun.  We then spent the rest of the day shopping and then stopped in this little bar called the Sea Hag.  We were not prepared for how much fun we were going to have,  we were just going to stop and have one drink, but that turned into a few drinks.  The bar tenders break out in song by playing all the bar bottles with wooden spoons, it was awesome!  There was then some live music and then another round of bar bottle playing and this time it was done to the chicken song/dance...so of course we had to get up and participate in the chicken dance.
We then headed back to the condo for an enjoyable evening of movies.  We were sad when we had to leave and head back.  I was glad we had that chance to hang out and enjoy each other!

Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium - Tacoma, Washington

Getting ready to be fed!

Well it rained all day on Saturday and we watched movies, played games, and hung out together.   I don't know if I could live here,  too much rain and mud.  I find it much easier to manage in the snow!   However, it was time to get out of this camper...so on Sunday, even though it was raining on and off, we headed out to the zoo.  When we first arrived, it was raining, so we went indoors and started with the aquarium.  We saw lots of fish, seahorses, sharks and they even had a touch tank full of sea creatures to touch.  By that time the rain had stopped and we were able to head outside (we had umbrellas in case it starts to rain again, which we know it will).  We saw elephants, chimps, red foxes, muskox, and lots of other little animals.  We got to see the tigers and leopards being fed, that was fascinating.  That tiger was licking his chops and just watching the zoo keeper as he was talking to us and getting ready to feed him.  We enjoyed seeing these 3 huge walruses swimming around.  They would come right up to the glass of the underwater viewing area and look right at us, hang out, and then swim off.  It was a great way to spend the day, and just as we were getting ready to leave...DOWNPOUR!!  Run to the car and fast!

Seattle

Lots of hands on experiments

Optical Illusion...is Rees floating?

Butterfly Cocoons

Creating our Harmnograph piece

Our Artwork

I took the kids into Seattle yesterday.  We went to the Pacific Science Center.  However the tickets for the planetarium part was sold out...too bad, that was something I really wanted to take the kids to see.  Anyway we had a blast!  It was very hands on.  We saw an insect exhibit, there are some truly gross big bugs in this world.  I have to say that I am glad I don't live in some of those places having to deal with those bugs.  There was also a butterfly house that we went into...that was very cool.  All the butterflies just fly around you, we watched them eating...using their long tongues and seeing that up close was fascinating.  We also saw all the different cocoons.  There were sections on the body, water, dinosaurs, space, a tide pool, and reptiles.  One of our favorite activities was taking a piece of paper and putting it on this machine called a harmnograph...its like a Spirograph, you swing it around and place a pen in and it designs a picture on the paper...we were very proud of our creation.
After we went to look at the Space Needle, just look...the kids don't like heights so we didn't go up to the top, maybe next time.

Gig Harbor, Washington

Arrived we have...into Gig Harbor, Washington.  What a beautiful area!  A little rainy and cool.  We are in a quiet and lovely campground here.  Bryce left to go to Montana and Minnesota, so we are going to be exploring on our own.  My mom is going to come up and spend some time with us here.

I am stressing a little about the kids schooling.  We are getting ready for some testing and I just hope I have prepared them enough.  We did dissect a frog yesterday!  It was good, not my favorite thing to do...but Jake and Trent loved it, Rees, not so much.  She ended up crying and I let here go back into the camper while we finished.  I did video tape it, but it's about 15 minutes long.  I might try to post it later.  Well we are all caught up to date...I promise to keep on top of it!

Heading to Washington

So on March 18th we left beautiful California and headed up towards Washington state.  We stopped in Corning, CA for one of our stops, we just pulled into a campground later in the night.  We then headed up to Corvallis, OR.  As we are headed that way we tune into the travel/weather news because the lights were flashing on the road sign regarding travel and the weather that was approaching.  We are getting ready to go over the mountains by Mount Shasta, but chins are required...are you kidding me...it's MARCH, isn't this suppose to be over.  Anyway, we bought some chains just to show the highway patrol so we could go over the pass.  So many people were turned away due to no chains.  We had to wait in a long line of traffic while highway patrol checked each truck and car for chains.  Why would you wait in that line(it was like 45 min. of waiting) and not have your chains, only to have to turn around and go back!  It was snowing up towards the top of the pass, all I could think was...what are we doing, we have been staying away from this stuff since we left, yet here we are right smack dab in the middle of SNOW!   We watched the temperature continue to go down as we sat in 31 degrees, YUCK!  We hit traffic again at the top as the truckers were pulled over and putting on their chains.  It took us about 2 extra hours just to get over the pass.  After we got over the pass we thought it was going to be smooth sailing...not so fast, let's just add a little hail storm before you get to your destination!!!  Anyway we made it and stopped at my sister's house to hang out with them and my mom.  We had called ahead to let them know when we would be in and to request that my mom whip up some tuna casserole, a family favorite.  Of course she did and we had a very comforting dinner with family.  The cousins all got to hang out and have some fun before we took off the next day.

Last Days in California

Our first house in Canyon Country, CA

We got married on this grass overlooking the beach

Bryce, Me, John and Christine Bjerke

Well my husband has said that I have been slacking on keeping up with our blog...okay he's right!  So I am going to try to keep up better.  So our last days in California were spent hanging out with some old friends and visiting some sentimental places.  We took the kids by our first house in Canyon Country, it looked exactly the same.  We ended up getting together for lunch with Bryce's Aunt Peggy in Ventura. It was wonderful getting to see some of his family too.   While we were up there, we took the kids to Mandalay Beach where we got married over looking the beach.  It was still very beautiful.
Then I had an old college friend, John Bjerke and his wife Christine, come up to our camper and have lunch.  We enjoyed catching up and seeing each other...it had been 12 years since we saw each other last.  I had a blast seeing them.  We then spent one more meal with the Crawfords...which was fun as usual.  We talked about how we felt like we never left, we just picked up where we left off, that is such a great feeling to have those kinds of friendships.  I can't believe we didn't take any pictures while we were with them.  I am usually very good about that, but I guess I was too caught up in visiting.  We are very lucky!!

Valencia, California

After we settled in Valencia, we decided it was time to look up some old friends and check out our old stomping ground.  We had dinner with the Crawford-Castan Clan.  We went to a pizza place where the kids could run around and play games while we caught up.  It was great seeing them and how grown up everyone has become, time sure flies.  Their kids used to babysit for us when Jake was little.  They have 6 kids so its always fun and entertaining to hang out together.   The Valencia area has grown a great deal.  We even took the kids by our old house where we lived before moving to Minnesota, it still looks the same.

California

Mike, Karen, and Ty Sexton with the kids

Papa and Grammy with the kids

I know, I know, I keep getting behind on the blog.  On Sunday, March 6th, some family friends took the kids to an indoor fun place.  They played laser tag, games, climbed all around, had pizza and drinks.  Needless to say they had a great time.  This gave Bryce and I a chance to get on the bike and spend some alone time together.  We ended up staying with my dad until Tuesday because the people at the Camping World did not do their job and get our camper fixed while we were in Mexico...they had it for three weeks.  Anyway the kids enjoyed spending time with their grandparents.  They went bowling, golfing, hiking, shopping, and just enjoyed spending time together.  We left there on Tuesday and are now in Valencia, CA at the Valencia Travel Village.  We plan on leaving on Friday the 18th for Washington State.

March 5th - Universal Studios

Bethlynn and the kids

Bryce and Marilyn Monroe

The Family headed out to Universal Studios on Saturday.  Wow, did we get a treat.  We got free tickets through a family friend of my dad and his wife Deb named Bethlynn.  Thank You Bethlynn!!!  We greatly appreciate her hooking us up with tickets and front of the line passes, what a way to go!  We really enjoyed the tram ride, brought back lots of great childhood memories.  It takes you through all different movie sets and props, we even saw the Desperate House Wives set, where they actually film it.  Here are just a few of the things we did:  Simpson virtual roller coaster ride, Water World stunt show (you even get a backstage access tour with the front of the line passes), Jurassic Park water ride, haunted house, special effects show, etc.  We then enjoyed Universal CityWalk after the park closed.  Even had a star sighting...Wayne Brady from Let's Make A Deal. 

Water World Set

Bates Motel - See Norman?

Eva Longoria's House on Desperate Housewives

Whoville

Knight Rider Car

War of the Worlds Set

City Walk

Wayne Brady

Cabo San Lucas

Did you miss us?  Well we took a little break from the traveling when we arrived in California.  My mom owns a time share down in Cabo San Lucas so we decided to fly out of Los Angeles and join her for eight days.  The internet was very weak, so I was not able to update our blog.  And of course while we are here we are having that lovely trailer of ours fixed while it is still under warranty.

View from our room

Pool

Whale's head, this was the only time we saw it.

Famous arch

Let's see, what did we do while in Cabo you ask?  Well of course we soaked up the sun and enjoyed beautiful views.  We did water aerobics almost everyday.  We went into San Jose, the other city part of Los Cabos to do some shopping.  We did some pottery painting.  The boys went out fishing twice, the first time they caught six fish and the next time they caught 20 Bonita, wow!  They had a lot of fun.  Then Bryce, Jake, Trent and I went on a four seater dune buggy for a couple of Zodiaks.  It seats only ten people and we got as close to the whale as you can without being dangerous or disturbing the whale.  We saw both humpbacks and grey whales, wow, what a way to end our trip.  We had a great time!

We arrived back to Los Angeles on Tuesday to rainy and yet not so warm weather!  Oh I miss that sunshine!