Lakeview Trip

The first week of July, we made a trip down to Lakeview to spend a few days with my parents and celebrate the 4th of July with them. We started the trip out with a bang, as within 10 minutes of arriving at my parents, Josh lost his entire lunch upon Ben and their couch. Although I felt terrible about the throw-up on the furniture, I cannot even express how grateful I was that it didn't happen in the car, as Josh was sitting right in the middle. Either way, yuck! So unfortunately, Josh wasn't filling good most of the trip and sported a 102 temperature for a little over 24 hours. Thankfully, it wasn't continual throwing up and none of the rest of us got it!

Despite sickness, we really had a wonderful trip. Here's some of what we did:

The big boys always love reading with their grandma. They seem to be getting a bit too big for her lap, though! Look at those long legs!

Josh was hot, achy, and sleepy. Poor boy!

The second afternoon, we decided Josh would be sick and cranky regardless of where we were, so we headed to a creek to explore and cool down. The big boys had a blast!

Josh's face tells us of his opinion of the creek outing.

Big boys exploring and testing boundaries of the creek

So proud of themselves

And more of what Josh did best: sleeping off that fever. Thankfully, after much bribing, I talked him into taking some tylenol on the second night and he was improved after that!

On the 4th of July, Josh was feeling better and we took my dad's boat up to Cottonwood Reservoir. It was a real neat place to explore. Look how big this tree is! 

Mule's Ear leaves

Off to catch some fish (or weeds). Josh wasn't a huge fan, but the big boys loved it.

What a spectacular day!

One of the coolest things of the day was that there were HUGE amounts of tadpoles hanging out by the dock. The boys spent lots of time catching them. We even tried to bring some home, but they didn't survive the car ride (I barely did either, but that's a story for later!) 

 

Josh enjoyed chucking them back into the water

Look at the water down by Seth's hand...that's only a small portion of how many tadpoles there were!

Everyone got in on the tadpole fun!

The boys would come up with hand fulls of them

Ben took the big boy out for another spin in the boat

Josh hung out with my mom and I on the dock a lot

This is Josh's favorite camera face

He's such a silly kid. And so terribly loved.

We actually ended up doing fireworks (sparklers, smoke bombs and pop-its) two of the nights. Also, my mom and the twins did a 4th of July craft. She is so amazing at doing special activities with them.

They even put on a parade for us while carrying their decorations and a sparkler

Josh's first experience with a sparkler. It went swimmingly until Rosie ran up and bit the flame and an ember dropped on Josh's foot. Stupid dog. Poor Josh...he had a rough couple of days.

Ben looking patriotic, Josh throwing pop-its.

I love this picture. I loved how Josh is turned the wrong way and the twins are sleeping the exact same position (as they often do).

So thus ends our visit to Lakeview and begins our longest road trip with the kids to date. It started with a 30 minute detour to look for the twins' fishing poles that we left at Cottonwood. Unfortunately, they weren't there! Next, we decided to stop at a really cool park, Collier Park, that also has a logging museum across the street. The kids all loved looked at the old logging equipment. It is a really amazing place to visit! We stayed there at least an hour and got the wiggles out.

So then, we decided to make a little side excursion to Crater Lake, because it wasn't too far out of the way. True, it wasn't. However, it was PACKED. The line of cars waiting at the pay station was probably at least 30-40. At that point, though, we couldn't just turn around. Waiting was definitely worth this view! Man, that place is so beautiful!

Some of the winter snow was still around so the kids tried to play a little in it. Seth's face says it all, however: it was cold! 

Great family picture! The sad part is, I forgot my good camera at home, so all the pictures of this trip are with my phone and aren't high quality. Bummer!

A close up. 

Just the twins (Sam, Seth). How we love these boys! So full of joy and adventure.

Couple selfie

So, after our initial look at the lake, we decided to drive on rim road a bit to a store to get some food for lunch. There was road construction adding at least 20-30 minutes to our trip. Then, the parking lot of the store was so packed that Ben couldn't even find a spot. He circled while the twins and I tried to find something to eat...the store was so full that we could barely walk. Ten minutes later we met Ben at the car with no food, but with 3 new state license plates for our car game (we've found 44 since March). We made one more view stop on the way back. How hilarious is this picture? This is Sam's "stink face." We currently have it on our computer as a backsplash and even Sam giggles at it every time we see it. 

After the long detour of Crater Lake, Ben decided he wanted to drive home via Roseburg for a change of scenery. Add another 30 minutes to our trip. We stopped at a really awesome gluten free restaurant in Cottage Grove for dinner. By this time it was almost 7 o'clock...we had left at 9 that morning...and still had 2.5 hours left to go. Whew! Ben and I seriously considered staying the night in Roseburg and going to Wildlife Safari, but we had Rosie with us, so decided to just slog out the rest of the drive. At almost 10 o'clock and 8 hours and 56 minutes of drive time in the car, we finally arrived at home. And hey, it was fun! Fun enough that the next morning Ben started planning a road trip to Yellowstone. And I said: nice try. I'm not that ready. :)