The Tale of Two Vacations--August *2014*

Alright, I found this post from last September in my drafts folder.  For the sake of posterity, I'm publishing it.

This is an overdue post on our family vacation which happened way back at the beginning of August. We went to Rockaway Beach, OR.  We spent the first few days of the vacation with Matt's side of the family and the last few days with my parents (thus the two vacations).  The weather was great and the kids had a blast playing on the beach with their cousins.
First, though, we had a looong drive to get to the beach.  Before that, there was much preparation in order to ready our crew for half a dozen days away from home.  The kids and I worked hard to get a bunch of meals prepped and frozen and to get everything packed the week before we were to leave.

In all of our studying about Lewis and Clark, I can say I felt I could relate in a smallish way to the enormity of the task Lewis faced in preparing for the expedition.  Packing a family of ten for six days with all manner of accoutrement and eventualities is no small feat.  In fact, I missed the mark.  I hadn't expected the kids to get sopping wet and sandy multiple times per day and I forgot how much fresh ocean air increases appetites.   I didn't pack enough changes of clothing (I was trying to pack as lightly as possible, hah!), so I ended up doing several loads of laundry a day while we were at the beach house.  I also did not pack enough food (I know!  Hard to imagine.) and I ended up driving to Tillamook several times to buy more groceries.

Anyway, when the big day to leave for the beach finally arrived, I think the kids were nearly ready to explode with excitement.  We piled into our very loaded van and were on the road by 8:30 a.m.  Pretty incredible for us. (Matt's brother and his family--13 in all--beat us by a landslide.  They succeeded in leaving by 6 a.m. on their day of departure.)  Our family listened to The Frontier Adventures of Elinore Stewart during the drive.  The whole family loved it.  Victoria Botkin has such a soothing reading voice.

 We stopped at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in the Dalles on the way.  We got there just in time for their morning falconry demonstration.  My boys especially liked seeing the hawks and Bald Eagles up close.  They asked many questions of the faconers.  Later, a woman who had been to the show stopped me in the bathroom.  She said she had been an educator for thirty years and she had a question for me.   "Are your kids homeschooled?"  I answered, "Yes, they are."  She said, "I thought so.  I said to my husband, 'She homeschools those kids.' "  That was nice to hear.

 Of course, we all enjoyed seeing the Lewis and Clark cargo exhibits.  However, we did miss not being able to see the life size reproduction keel boat that we saw when we visited the Discovery Center the year of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial celebration.  The boys had a blast in the kids' room dressing up and playing with the long rifles.  We had a hard time convincing them that it was time to hit the road again, but promises of playing on the beach before dinner finally worked their magic and we got everyone loaded into the van again.

We made one more stop on the way.  We stopped at the Tillamook Forest Center.  We all climbed up to the lookout tower, where (mostly) young people took summer jobs watching for forest fires. Matt's grandfather used to be a forest fire spotter, so it was neat to tie that bit of family history to what the kids experienced while we visited the forest center.  The exhibits inside the main building were really interactive and very well done.  And it was free!  Highly recommended.

Our family was the last to arrive at the beach that evening.  Our family and Matt's brother's family stayed in a very large duplex.  Matt's parents and sister and her family stayed in the house next door. The kids never lacked for playmates.  We enjoyed big family dinners, lots of beach time with kite flying and sand castle building, eating smores', playing golf and getting to sleep in bunk beds (that was my boys' favorite.)  We managed to get a family picture with most all of us wearing the traditional Macduff family vacation T-shirts.  For this trip, Matt's sister designed a shirt with a picture of the big rock of Rockaway Beach and this verse from Genesis, "I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the sand on the seashore."

When my parents arrived, we visited the Tillamook Air Museum, got my mom on the beach with a beach wheel chair loaned to us by the local Lion's Club, collected shells and played some wild poker games (the kids and grandma).

We also visited Fort Clatsop.  It was neat to hear the older kids' memories of our first trip there.  The boys' loved the long rifle demonstration (what's not to like?) and the picnic lunch.  Joel, Jude and Isaac all filled out the necessary paperwork to get their junior ranger certificates.  Lydia wasn't able to finish hers before we had to leave (it was surprising difficult) so when she got home she finished, mailed it back to Fort Clatsop and then they mailed her a badge and certificate.  I thought that was very kind of them.

Alas, all good things must come to an end.  The kids didn't want to leave the beach, but I told them to best time to leave is when you're still having fun so that you want to come back the next time.