Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, To The Coast We Go!

Does anyone know what happened to the months between last Halloween and now? I sort of feel like you do when you have driven your route and get to your destination only to realize that you did the entire thing on autopilot; With all the busyness, I think I may have blown through a few stop signs along the way.

The month of May itself has been crazy busy. We are still adjusting to Steve being (choir of angels rejoicing) employed once again. He is on-call so his hours are as random as can be, but so far as this pay period goes, he will have twice as many hours as I do, and I work full time. The weekends especially can feel very long since that is when I also work-we end up imitating a cart-wheel- I do twelve hours, he does the next twelve hours and so on and so forth.  There is a half an hour overlap in between where we share about the kids and have to specify whether or not it is our children we are talking about, or the 'kids' at work.I am very proud of him though. He has come into a new situation and is adapting so well that our superviser made it a point to mention it to me the other day.

 He is a keeper in so many ways.


Despite our busy acrobatic performance we also managed to break away and go to the Oregon coast for five days. The first time in about 9 years, and it has been calling to me the entire time. It was my birthday/Mother's Day treat and it was made even better because we were able to share it with Steve's brother's family and his parents. It worked out so that we were able to stay at friend's house while their family was away visiting in Central Oregon. Such graciousness made us feel right at home.

On the way over our baby got 'car-sick' (we later figured it was probably a stomach bug since others of us got it upon arriving home while nowhere near a car) and we had to scramble to find a place to clean her up. Do you just take a pukey baby into your nearest fast food place and fix her up in their bathroom? Steve pulled over into a church parking lot and I noticed a car there; The gentleman was just walking into the building and I quickly got his attention and threw myself at his mercy. Other than the tear-inducing wind, the rest of the trip went smoothly considering it was our first time taking all five of out kids out of town. Normally I am all about packing light, but for this trip I was glad that that-something told me to bring lots of clothes- about 35 pairs in all, not including PJs.

And yet somehow I still managed to forget hats. Those would have come in handy, this being the Oregon coast in May, after all. Above is a picture of my oldest son snubbing his cousin because he had just fallen in the water. I am pretty sure he was thinking about finding me because he knew that I knew where the suitcase was.

This is my youngest son who, for me, did not cry because I had spent so much time before our trip telling him how much fun the beach was.

Even though honestly, there was some misery involved.

This was taken on our last night there, and in order to keep some cheer in the group, we bribed them off the sand with ice cream. We had not had dinner yet and so I prayed that we would find a place that served both Tillamook Ice Cream and dinner and this is what we found:

(Notice baby's wind burned cheeks and nose? And yet I could still eat HER up!)

We called this dinner 'Happy Birthday, Mommy!'

Why, thank you!

Even with the 'car sickness', miserable wind and extended recovery time due to a household of sick kids, we still had a great time. We definitely won't wait so long to go back!

 Thanks again Tucker family for opening your home to us.