Visit to the Northwest

At the beginning of August we took a fun family vacation to the Great Northwest. 

 I have a brother near Portland, and another brother near Seattle, so we decided to go visit!  They all showed us a spectacular time and were the greatest of hosts and hostesses!  

It's a long drive to Portland.  We got off around 5pm on Friday, and stayed in a hotel that night in Ontario, Oregon, then continued on our journey.  Most of the drive took us along the Columbia River, which was very beautiful!

Yeah!  We're at our Cousin's house!

Saturday night we went on a little hike on this beautiful nature trail.

I just had to put this in...isn't he just the cutest guy ever???

On Sunday we toured the Portland Temple Visitor's Center.  

So beautiful!!

Monday morning we drove out to this beautiful island and picked berries.  I'm pretty sure there are berry patches in Heaven!!!

We toured Portland.....

....in a very unusual way!  :)

 

After visiting with Aaron and Melissa, we headed up the 101 and stayed at a condo in a little coastal town called Gearhart.  The coast was really foggy, but it was super fun collecting sand dollars, and playing in the sand dunes.

The water was freezing, but my die-hard boys played in it anyway.

When the cold ocean got to be too much, we came and swam in the condo pool.  Hotel pools are one of the most look forward to parts of our vacations...go figure!

This is a view off of our deck.  Such a cute town with the ocean just at the end of our street.

On to Gig Harbor!  We were welcomed with lots of open arms!

My little princess Sutton!  I love this little thing!  

Sean has some friends that own this beautiful home with a pool over looking the Puget Sound.  We felt very spoiled to swim in this super warm pool, eat snacks and watch the beautiful sunset over the water.

Our little TWINS!  Ashlyn and Avery are great friends, definitely two peas in a pod!  I felt like I was seeing double the whole time!  We took a ferry across the Sound to Seattle for a day.

Pikes Market was super fun, crowded and lots of crazy people, but fun!

We enjoyed playing at a park near the Space Needle.  

On Friday we spent the day at a beautiful state park.  (Can't remember the name...)  The kids are looking at a live starfish.

Sean and I.  I can certainly understand why he has chosen to plant his family in Washington, it was spectacularly beautiful!

We celebrated Connor's birthday in Washington. 14yrs old!!!

 His real birthday was the following day which was just going to be a travel day, so we bought doughnuts, lit a candle, sang and presented him with an awesome present (besides his new cell phone)...a trip to Denver with me!  He has never been on an airplane, so I found some cheap flights and we'll head out to visit Allyson over Fall Break!  Yeah!!

The town of Gig Harbor is as quaint and as beautiful as you can imagine. 

On the way home Taylor was sad he hadn't found a birthday present for Connor, so I took his little hand, and we went to the nearest grocery store vowing to find something cool!  And we did it, Taylor found a Pez of the little alien guy on Toy Story...Connor loved it!!  Whew!!

Exhausted but happy.  We had a fantastic vacation to the Northwest!!