Winter in NYC

We actually left Colorado on vacation in the winter!  Who could believe it!  Today we traveled from our home base at Grandma Chris and Grandpa Don's house near Hackettstown, NJ via their car service and headed into Manhattan to see the Rockettes Christmas Show.   

 Magnificent!  The kids loved the dancing and the singing - and the 3-D Santa sleigh ride.  We were all in awe - it was amazing.

One of the neatest things was the living Nativity.  The girls went bananas over the live camels.  There were at least 20 Magi/Kings/Wise Men in the show worshiping the Christ Child.  Isa leaned over to me and whispered, "That's a LOT of wise men."  Her intonation made it truly hysterical.

 Afterwards we headed over to Rockefeller Center to see the tree and the skating rink.

And on the way back to New Jersey we got some great views of the skyline.  Here is a picture of the Empire State Building all dressed up for Christmas.

For our final stop, we stopped at the Tick Tock Diner.  Chris tells us it was in the Sopranos.  I never really watched the Sopranos, so I will have to take her word for it.  What I can say is they made a great French Dip Sandwich, a big Mickey Mouse pancake, a yummy buffalo chicken sandwich, and a gigantic fried shrimp basket.  I don't understand how great diners can make so many dishes and all the food is yummy.  I have been to lots of restaurants that only make one type of food and they can't even get a few dishes right! We loved the Tick Tock!

The day was so exciting - and Michael and I can't wait to go back for New Years Eve in a couple days!

Vacation Statistics

This year's vacation was a lot of fun.  To remember all the details is challenging from one year to another, therefore I always make a stats page.

2014 "America the Beautiful" Vacation

Vacation Length:  38 days

Miles driven:  4900 +

States Traveled: 9

Days spent at the beach: 14


Junior Ranger Programs Completed: 6 (Arches, Kings Canyon/Sequoia, Grand Canyon North Rim, Yosemite, Olympic, Olympic Ocean Stewards)


Wild Animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, 3 bears, sea stars, anemones, hermit crabs, harbor seals, deer, banana slugs, sea urchin, Stellar seals, Stellar jay, a bunch of different kids of mollusks, jellyfish, ravens, yellow bellied marmot, buffalo, elk


Cumulative Insect Bites:  31 - with Luke still immune and Isa only getting one
Worst Medical Issue: Gabi's mysterious half hour welts

Favorite Food:  Burnt Almond Cake

Places We Hiked:  Arches NP, Grand Canyon NP, Sequoia NP, Pfeiffer Falls, Yosemite NP, San Francisco, MacKerricher SP, Humbug Mountain, Ruby Beach, Sol Duc Falls, Seattle

Number of hours spent on a boat:  1/2

Number of hours on horseback: 1


Funniest Kid Quotes:

Luke: (after sitting through half of Rachel's convocation at BYU Idaho):  Mom, is this a Mormon school? - they sure are saying a lot of church stuff.

Isabel:  (speaking to dad when he mentioned he had to go to the bathroom) If I can handle it, you can handle it.  (Insert big, proud smile here)  See, I am practicing to be a mommy.

Gabriela: (while hiking) I hate trees, I hate rocks, I hate roots.  I like sidewalks.

2014 Favorites:
Michael's favorites: Seeing a bear while hiking, watching the sun set over the Hood Canal, tidepools at Ruby Beach

Debbie's favorites: Giant Sequoias and Redwoods, tidepools at Ruby Beach, horseback riding on the beach

Luke's favorites:  Eating seafood, visiting friends, seeing a seal while horseback riding on the beach

Isa's favorites: Seeing seals, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, tidepools at Ruby Beach

Gabi's favorites: Horseback riding on the beach, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Chinatown in San Francisco

Spanish Fork

All the munchkins holding still!

What a relaxing time we had in Spanish Fork! We drove into town to visit with our long time friends Lans and Chatti, only to find out that Lans had been called away to manage a fire.  So frustrating!  While he was off fighting the fire, we held down the fort with Chatti and our combined seven kids, who joyously ran a muck. Chatti always makes us scrumptious food - and this time was no exception.  And we almost always make sushi - Chatti is the reason we love sushi.

Chatti and I

Our first night we had the great opportunity to see most, though not all, of my Utah relatives including my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Glenn, my cousins Dave, Liz, and Michelle and their gorgeous families, my cousin Mark's wife, Bree and their TWO sets of twins, and we even talked to my cousin Catherine online while we were there.  If I counted right there were 22 second cousins!  My cousin Dave's wife Julie graciously hosted this crazily large group and it was wonderful - my heart was so happy to see them all again.

Our final evening in Spanish Fork we got together with my friend Melanie Anderson, who I knew in high school, her family, and her parents.  It was great for both of our families to get acquainted and they treated us to venison and elk burgers.  I wasn't sure if the kids would go for that - they love to watch deer and elk when we are camping - but Luke and Isa gobbled up the venison.  They LOVED it.  Gabi didn't even need to consider what she wanted to eat - there were hot dogs available.  All the kids got along great and I think would have played all night.  After we left I thought about how wonderful love is - we learn to love people once, and all through our lives that love exists.  I hadn't seen Melanie or her mom or dad in almost 20 years, but I remembered how much I love them the second I saw them.  That really is a beautiful thing.

Dads Blog

Dads Blog....

Now that we just got home I put together a map of our travels. I love looking at maps and so I thought I would put one on. Also I must say that after all these miles I drove 0 of them. My awesome wife drove all of them. I just had to pump gas and drain tanks (all the smelly stuff). I feel so blessed that we are able to see all of these amazing things. However, my bed does feel good right now.
Link to map

Rexburg – BYU Idaho

We had a very long drive to Rexburg – but it was so beautiful!   There isn’t much to say about it besides that it was a long drive.  We arrived in Rexburg on Wednesday morning to spend the day with Michael’s sister and her family.  Our niece Rachel was graduating from BYU- Idaho so it was a day to celebrate!

 Rexburg was an interesting place.  Definitely a small town - not too much to do - but we enjoyed our family anyway!

Our newest graduate!

Seattle # 2

The gum wall is pretty interesting - the fruity smell of all that gum
was kinda funky though!

It was a SUNNY DAY in Seattle today!  Today we caught a bus, to catch another bus, to take us into Downtown.  Our agenda:  Eat some fabulous seafood, find the gum wall, do something new, eat ice cream, shop a bit, and go back to Everett.

The girls have fallen in love with fish and chips this summer.

Luke was overjoyed to get a big bowl of steamed clams for lunch.
That bowl was overflowing when he started.

We also wanted to do something that we had never tried before, so we ended up on the Seattle Underground Tour.  The guides are funny, and they tell about the challenges faced by early pioneer settlers in the area.  When we told the kids we were going underground, this was Gabi's reaction.  None of them were sure what to expect.

I had a hard time believing that the buildings were
standing on these foundations.  

One of the glass "skylights" for the underground sidewalks
they were closed in the early 1900s.  We banged on it from below
to freak out the people walking on it on street level.  Hysterical.

The tour was a lot of fun, and very amusing.  I appreciated how they talked about adult topics in ways that my kids couldn't decode - my children think that there was a large population of seamstresses in Seattle and that the loggers in the area spent a lot of money in Pioneer Square having clothes repaired.  Sounds good to me.

Hello mossy walls. I will never look at a city
the same way again.

Michael bought me a lovely bunch of flowers at Pike Place Market just before we left to go home. That market is so eclectic - we watched the fish being tossed of course, bought ice cream and flowers, went to a rummage sale and bought riding helmets and pink baseball gloves, and we could have stayed there all day just gawking at things!

We then headed back to the bus hub and caught the bus out of town.  It is one of the longest bus rides we've ever done on vacation - took about 2 hours to get home.  Excellent people watching on a bus - and a good opportunity for five year old little girls to take a nap.

Tomorrow we sadly turn away from Hwy 101 and start heading South and East - but we look forward to seeing family again in just a couple days!

Seattle

Oh the joys of new experiences!  For Michael's birthday we headed from Sol Duc towards Seattle.  We took the RV on a ferry.  The kids couldn't understand the concept - where were we going to park the RV to go on the ferry?  Blew their minds when we drove on that big ship!  We had taken a ferry before in Wisconsin, but none of them apparently remembered it well enough - and that ferry was tiny compared to the one we used to cross the Puget Sound.  We took the Kingston/Edmunds ferry for all my NW friends, just for reference.

The kids being wind swept as we glided through the water.
Luke's hood wouldn't stay on his head and he had a major
case of the giggles about it.

We had a lovely dinner at Outback (all thanks and love to the Kothe family for treating us to Michael's birthday dinner!)

Today we drove north to attend church and have lunch with my Aunt Sarah.  She is my dad's baby sister and I have always adored her.  She lives in Arlington now - and she's a Master Sergeant in the Army active reserve.  (I never know if I say that right)  Anyway, she is a career counselor for reservists and I think she's fabulous.  She cooked up not one but two giant crock pots of meat and veggies, stuffed us full, and then sent us with enough leftovers to last the rest of the trip! I love getting together with my family!  Its not something that I have been able to do too much of, so I really cherish it when it happens!

Olympic National Park - Part Dos

Our next adventure in Olympic was in Sol Duc Hot Springs.  We stayed in a “RV Park” at Sol Duc Resort – which is basically a gravel parking lot with water and electric hookups.  It was unbelievably expensive to swim in the chlorinated version of their hot springs pool, so we found a natural hot spring bubbling up from a pipe along a trail, splashed in it a bit, and then looked for a nice hike to round out our summer of hiking.  

We found a 6 mile loop to Sol Duc Falls – and ventured out on that today.  It was a great rainforest hike – I kept expecting monkeys or chimps to come walking out.  The ferns were up to 7 ft tall in some places.    It was an easy hike, at least incline-wise, though the sheer number of tree roots and rocks to avoid on every step did complicate it a bit.  Despite having to constantly watch our feet, we made it through with only a couple new mosquito bites as damages.

Our accident free vacation came to an abrupt end around 5 when Gabi fell into of some kind nasty plant.  We aren’t sure what it is, so all you Northwesterners will have to chime in – she came in with little green berries that adhere to everything and black straight pokies in her hair and clothes.  She was completely traumatized as a bunch of white lumps had popped up in her skin the moment she fell down, and they were painful. There was a great deal of screaming.  L I hadn’t seen what happened, so all I knew to do was strip her down and get her in the shower.  I have never been so thankful for running water and a RV water heater in my life – and for a mom who would ideally like two showers a day if there is time, that is really saying something!  Thankfully, the welts started to recede shortly after she was dressed again.  So strange.  It really was a short lived, minor incident, so if it is the worst thing we have to deal with, I will be very grateful.

Olympic National Park Part One

I have to separate Olympic, because the two experiences are so very different!  We spent our first night of our Olympic NP stay in Kalaloch campground on the Pacific coast.  

Here is our campsite from the front

and here is the fabulous view we had behind the RV.  I took some time to just sit back there and quilt. 

It was crazily cold, but we took the opportunity to walk on the foggy beach anyway.  Luke found a perfect sand dollar.  Did you know that sand dollars have purple tube feet when they are alive? I didn't.

 

Michael called this starfish mountain

The next morning we went on the most awesome tide pool walk we have ever done.  This time it was a tide pool walk with a ranger, so she was able to tell us lots about what we were seeing. 

Here it is up close.

Hundreds of sea stars – a couple of them were bright purple!  Green and pink anemone were everywhere, and we even saw a sea urchin which was really rare for the area.  The kids were enthralled (who am I kidding – we were all enthralled!)

This anemone was just one of the hundreds we saw. 

It seemed everywhere we walked, we
found more and more to look at!

Gabi fell in love with the purple sea stars.

Poulsbo

We visited Poulsbo, Washington to see Michael’s Aunt Lori and were able to see two of his cousins - Don and Bo.  We had a great lunch together! 

  This stop also gave us a chance to restock supplies and do laundry.  I like camping in the woods, but I really appreciate free WiFi and a clean Laundromat after a week in State Parks.  We were camping in Kitsap State Park which is along Hood Canal – and it was the only time that we actually watched the sunset over the water.  Every other night along the Pacific we have had thick fog at sunset! It was a nice change.