A Quick Note

Just to let everyone know, once our vacation is over, I will go through all the photos and post a blog of nothing but beauty shots of the Oregon Coast. There are some great shots so far, but I want to concentrate on Lon a little more then the incredibly beautiful coast. So for fans of the coast, it is coming !

South to Lincoln City

Sunday morning we woke up and went out to breakfast at Grandmas. There was a sign it was for sale at a very low price! (well it seems low, we do not know the particulars) and we talked about what we would do it we bought it almost all the way down to Lincoln City!

We drove through Cannon Beach, but we did not stop. A look at Haystack from the side instead of the overlook!

Hug Point. We had to stop and walk around. Rocky Beach!

Exploring the cave-let. Does it look cold, wet and rainy? Because it is. We did not stay long we know we had to get down the coast a bit and being wet and miserable in the car is no way to travel

A quick stop at an scenic overlook. Lon was a frozen little boy! I think there a photographs of me giving my father the same look when he got me out of the nice warm car to take pictures of me on the Oregon Coast (at about the same age)

The harbor at Garibaldi. We stopped at the Myrtle wood shop there. It is one of our favorites.

Cape Kiwanda.  Those are rain showers. They moved a little faster than I thought they would

A last little bit of playing in the sand before we had to sprint for the car!  The rain started coming down in buckets! 

After arriving in Lincoln City, we got into our hotel room right away. Two hours before the official check in. Yay Surftides!  We unloaded the car, did a little shopping Yay no sales tax Oregon!  Then we went to dinner at Lon's choice, Gallucci's Pizza. It is not bad pizza. Lon seems to enjoy it very much.  That is all that really counts. The clouds and the sun made for a lovely sunset from our room.  It was a great first day in Lincoln City, and the sunset just made it !

Fort Stevens State Park

This blog is still from Saturday, March 26! We did an amazing amount of stuff that day!

Lon found a jeep to play on! Loved that jeep. It had no engine, or even a gas pedal. It did have a steering wheel that spun, and that was worth it all!

Okay, I am out of the jeep, can I run now? PLEASE

Thanks, Mom. You can catch up!

In front of one of the defunct guns. All the working parts are long long gone.

Inside the West Command Center.  Whatever was in there, is also long gone.  It is interesting though

Inside one of the power plants. He was not always running, we did catch him once in a while

On the ground of Fort Stevens, they have an native long house. I was unsure of why the tape was all over it.

Then we went around the back. We understood

On the banks of the mighty mighty Columbia! What do you mean we can not go down to the water? I can see there is no path and lots of huge rocks, but we can figure it out. I am still not liking we can not go to the water!

But Lon was happy when we went back to the jeep. He loved playing on that jeep!

Fixing the jeep. It always needs fixing

We found a way to get to the banks of the Columbia! Lon was very happy. He had a hunk of wood, sand and water.  Nothing makes him happier

Loading up a pop bottle with black sand

At a look over where the Columbia meets the Pacific! There was no access to the water here. And even if there was, Mommy was not having it.

The Peter Iredale! Of course we had to see it. It is still there, 104 years since it wrecked

Just up the beach from the Iredale was this driftwood castle.  Lon and Daddy added some more pieces to it. It was alot of fun

There was also a cave! It did not go back very far. Just enough for Lon to sit in. I would not have let him go in any farther anyway.
After this, I have no more pictures for Saturday. We met up with Bill, (yea!) went to dinner at The Great Wall,  had some great conversation, and went to bed!  A busy busy day.

Spring Break!

This is Lon's first spring break.  We thought going to the beach would be a great thing to do, it is spring break, right?
We wanted to break up our trip a little bit, so we drove down to Astoria on Saturday morning. We made great time. The first thing we wanted to do was go up to the Astoria Column.

The stairs are finally finished being refurbished. We could climb to the top to see the view! Well, Lon could not make all 164 steps and Mark took him back down about 1/3 of the way up. (and Mark was not dealing well with the height thing either, so it was a win-win). I was determined to make it to the top! I did. All 164 twisty stairs!

The view from the top! There were two Asian ladies behind me and all they kept saying was She is beating us up the stairs. Come on! I HAD to go and go up faster!  When I got down I went to the gift stand, paid my dollar and got the button that proudly stated I made it to the top.

A rainbow over the bridge.

We drove down the hill to the Columbia Maritime Museum, and as we walked in we all realized we were so very hungry. We asked about a place to eat, the volunteer told us that most places to eat were about three blocks away, but to leave the car here and walk since parking was scarce on the streets.  Which is what we did!

Driftwood on our way to town

At the Sea Breeze. It looked like it might be good. It was. Everything is made right there, tarter sauce, coleslaw, the batter! The fish was fresh and good.

After Lon ate his lunch, all his fish and some of his fries, I told him he could try the deep fried twinkie. We had never had one before. Perhaps if this one had not been fried in the same oil as the fish it would have been better. I was not impressed and neither was Lon or Mark. It was presented nicely though

Into the Columbia Museum. Lon loves the place. This time he looked at some of the exhibits

Before he started playing in the pilot house with some other kids. He would run between there and

The bridge of the USS Knapp. The kids loved whatever elaborate games they were making up as they went along. It was so much fun. Mark and I took turns watching the drama, so we both got to look at the museum. It took alot of effort to get Lon to leave the bridge. I only got him away to show him a volunteer teaching people how rope was made. He had one person (the stronger one) hold this piece of brass that he had some twine resting on. He threaded the twine over four different cup hook looking things on a platform in between Lon and I. Lon was sitting down on a no back chair with a board in front of him that the twine pieces were tied to. He turned a crank and the twine started to twist. It got harder to me to hold the forming rope straight and as long as I could get it.  Then he removed the center platform, and gave me a hand crank, which I turned as he ran the brass piece down toward Lon. He tied a special knot at the end and we had rope! (Daddy did have to help Lon crank his part toward the end) Lon is so proud of his rope. I will insert a photo of him and his rope soon. Then it was time to leave. Lon was happy to go so he could show off his rope.

I am going to end the blog for today here. Our next stop was Fort Stevens, and I will get that up tomorrow.

A Man of His Word

In the mail today was a large box. I was glad Lon was at school! The Portal of Atlantis arrived from Grandpa Andy.  Thank you so much!
Lon has yet to see it, mainly because I do not want him to play with it just yet. Spring Break is next week.
Thank you  very much. This is going to be lots of fun, our biggest Lego project to date!

Leap Day

Today is what is known as leap day at Lon's school. That means he gets the day off! We decided to have some fun.
We started off our morning watching some cartoons that Lon never gets to see when he is in school. Then we went across the lake to Borracchinis!
We made a quick stop at the Seattle Goodwill in search of lego pieces, but we did not find any.

Hence the sad-ish face. So we left and went on to our real destination!

BORRACCHINI'S! It is such a wonderful place. SO much wonderful food, it is hard to chose just one or two things to eat on the way home. Lon got a few pastries, and a Limonata. I got a cannoli, a Limonata (which Lon got for me when he got his, such a nice boy!) and some pasta salad. I also got Mrs. Borracchini's cookbook, Shamrocks in My Pasta. I can't wait to go through it. The place just smells  so good!

Lon took this picture going through the tunnel. The I-90 tunnel, the one that every time I got through it reminds me of launching vipers from Battlestar Galactica (the old campy one) yes, I am old and geeky

Then we were back to our side of the lake. Lon took this photo out his window. Lon was disappointed there were not any boats out. I explained to him that it was 41 degrees (f) with windy rain. It was really cold out there on the water!  He mumbled something about wimps.

We could not just go home! We had lots of day left to play.  We thought lunch sounded like a good idea. We went to Big Daddy's over in Woodinville. Great food! They had a halibut and shrimp special today, two halibut fillets, and 9 shrimp for 8 dollars. NICE. ( with salad, fries or soup) I opted for salad. Lon had fries and a hot dog. 
His most favorite game is the Candy Crane. We got some quarters and he had a great time!

Lon got really good at picking up optimal candy. He got some toys with the candy too.  I put most of it away.

We had a great day today, hanging out, driving around together.  Tomorrow we stay home and work on cleaning out the guest room so we can remodel it!

On the Town with Lon

Lon and I decided to walk around downtown Kirkland today. (sadly, Mark had to do a little work so he stayed home). Our first stop was the jewelers, I have had these gemstones since I was 16 and it really is past time to get them set into something !

Lon was a good boy at the jewelers while I picked out a ring setting for my tiny tourmaline and a pendant for my triangle shaped amethyst.  Since Lon was such a good boy, we walked over to ...

We like Zeeks!

Being goofy while we wait for our pizza. It was crazy in there. They had a youth basketball party going on at the same time. We thought they forgot about us! It took almost an hour to get our pizza. Lon and I had fun, we drew pictures. We picked out which Mariner's game we wanted to go to. The criteria for that was, a day game during the week. There were only two. Both against Baltimore. At the beginning of May. (we will see if we really go). I wrote out sight words for him to practice. He was not all that amused by the sight words part.

Finally, our pizza came! whew! Just in time for a starving boy!  We got a small pizza, I had basil and tomatoes on my half and Lon just had plain cheese.  He ate almost all his half of the pizza. Very good

We walked through the parking lot, and was thinking we might be here longer than our allotted time in the parking lot. We saw a spot almost exactly opposite of where we were that was open. We jumped in the car, moved the car and went on to our next stop! Eastside Trains! Lon loves that store. He looked at the trains, he helped me look at some stuff for our Christmas train! There are two expansion packs we looked at. There was also a station, a billboard, a water tower all sorts of fun things!

The lure of Thomas was strong, so I let Lon play with their set up for a little while. Then we had to be on our way.

We walked around the block to Sweet Cakes. I would love to say it was wonderful. It was also very expensive. The small sugar cookie and water was almost 4 dollars. I was going to get a raspberry oatmeal bar, but that 2 inch square bar was 3.65, so I passed.  Lon did not finish his cookie, he said it was not as good as the ones I make him. 

We walked over to the frozen yogurt place and Lon got a chocolate with sprinkles and oreo bits. He really liked that. I got a plain with fresh raspberries and pineapple. Happy I passed on the oatmeal bar. We both got kid sized yogurts and they were plenty big!  Those were very good.
I thought this was going to be our last stop of the day. Lon was thinking it would not be our last stop! He wanted to go to the lego store to look around and get that Lego pull apart tool.  Not really having been to the mall on a saturday in YEARS, I thought really, how bad can it be? oh my...

Lon at the lego store! He was having so much fun looking around and seeing all there was to see. It was a fun, but very very crowded little store.  We will go back, on a tuesday morning. Not really going to go back on the weekend.

On our way to the mall, I called Grandma just to say hi and tell her we were on our way to the lego store, but we were just going to get the pull apart tool and be on our way. In the background I heard, HA! You can't do that. I replied, oh yea? Then the gauntlet was thrown down, Grandpa Andy said, I BET you can't do that. (Lon will whine, you will cave and you will get a lego set) I took the challenge and asked what I would get if I did not get a Lego set. Grandpa Andy told me that HE would get Lon a lego set, while Grandma chimed in, a $100 dollar set. SO, we did not get ANY lego sets, we got two pull apart tools and the ice cube tray (Lon's party). NO sets. Lon is pointing out the set he would like Grandpa Andy to get him.  PORTAL to Atlantis.  Thank you Grandpa Andy. I was tempted to get some Easter sets, but I did not. I might go back on get them on a random weekday morning. We stopped by Harry and David, checked out the new flavors of moosemunch, went to Williams Sonoma (I was very very good there). It took us 24 minutes to get out of the parking garage. This was nuts, it took us longer to get out of the garage then it did to do our stuff  inside the mall.  We both decided we needed a piece of good chocolate candy, so we did a little detour into See's. Lon and I got two pieces of candy each. Then we went home! Just as Daddy was done with work.
It was a good day all around!