Two Trips

Two trips in ten days. It was fun, but I’m one exhausted mama and ready to stay home and prepare for this baby (who’s coming in 8 weeks or less)!

Here’s a quick run down of our final trips of the summer. First we took our second annual trip to visit Michael and Lacy Fischer in Spray, Oregon. They live on and manage a ranch that’s minutes from the John Day river—such a beautiful place! Combined with our two kids, there are 7 kids ages 7 and under, and both Lacy and I are pregnant (can you imagine what next year will be like?). Things were loud and crazy! Seth and Sam warmed up to the Fischer children much quicker this trip and spent a lot of time outside with them just playing, while the adults got to visit.   Look closely at the tractor; yep, that’s Ben and the kids in the bucket! Joel, Jaelle, Titus, Ben, Hannah, Seth and Sam It’s like a carnival ride! All the kids playing with Michael Sam and Titus riding their “daddy boats” down the river Seth, come on, it was such good lighting. Is that the best pose you can give me? Maybe a little better? They had so much fun jumping into the river off a sunken picnic table So beautiful All the Fischer kids adore Ben and he was constantly surrounded by them Especially baby Esther. She’d climb right up on his lap constantly and give him big kisses. So cute! The view out their living room windows—amazing to wake up to every morning! And to end each evening with!

 

Our second trip was the annual Morris camping trip to Crooked River Ranch. This trip didn’t get off to the best start, as the night before we left Ben got out our tent only to discover that he forgot to dry it out after elk hunting last year…which meant that it was ruined by mold. So the next morning before we left, we stopped by Bi-Mart and bought their $80 special for a tent. Then late the first night, as we filled up our air mattress, we found out it had a leak. Praise the Lord we were able to patch it and that those were the only hiccups to the trip! Crooked River is my kind of camping: my mother-in-law blesses us by providing all the food, so I don’t have to deal with coolers. We put our tents on a grassy field, so it’s not excessively dirty or dusty. We hang out with 60 other family members (many of which have camp trailers so we have lots of modern amenities), play games, swim at the pool, and there are tons of kids for the boys to play with. I endured lots of pregnancy jokes and two horrible nights of sleep, but as always, I’m am glad that we went. Sam kept waking up crying that Seth was kicking him. Now we know why. Ben loves spending time with his brothers there! (And Sam with his daddy of course) Nate, Sam, and Caleb on one team Josh, Levi, Ben and Alex on the other (playing “corn hole,” which I couldn’t figure out why it was called that instead of just bean bag toss) All 3 of my boys (it’s getting harder and harder for Sam and Seth to sit on my lap!) Sam, Seth

Seth, Sam riding their cousins’ balance bikes and wearing their cool new hats (I can’t believe that I let the boys pick out such hip looking hats!) I was so hopeful that we would make it through this year without a thunderstorm and subsequent rain shower. But nope, Saturday evening the thunderheads rolled in and we spent the evening playing a corn hole tournament in the covered gazebo. At least it was a beautiful sunset! Ben and I lost in the second round to Jeff and Diane (who went on to win the whole thing)

Until next year crooked river—which should be even more fun with a 9 month old…right?