Sabbatical Week 4

We spent this week in California.  We spent a few days in San Jose where my parents still live in the house where I grew up.  I attended church with my parents and enjoyed seeing some familiar friendly faces I haven't seen in years, as well as meeting some new folks who have moved into the area.  We went with my parents to Monterey Bay Aquarium, which we last went to while Liz and I were dating.  We particularly enjoyed seeing the many varieties of jellyfish, the sharks, and the tidal waves.

We then traveled to my parent's cabin in the mountains for a few days.  The area is very quiet and peaceful, and there are loads of activities both inside and outside the cabin.  We enjoyed playing air hockey and other games, working on art projects, having dance parties to music from the digital piano, going for walks through the forest, visiting the lake and catching frogs, going from a train ride at a nearby apple ranch, and topped off our stay with a boat ride on Pinecrest Lake.  Each child took turns driving the boat, and towards the end the three oldest children jumped off the boat and swam in the lake.

We finished our California adventure in the Sacramento area visiting my two oldest brothers and their families.  One of them has a swimming pool in their backyard, and the children couldn't get enough of it.  They stayed in their swimming suits all day Saturday and basically left the pool only at mealtimes.  Whitney and I celebrate our birthdays next week, so we had a BBQ and birthday cake and pie to celebrate.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Enjoying a tidal wave without getting wet

Cover's Apple Ranch near the train and playground

Train ride at the Apple Ranch

Mikey and grandpa looking stylin' on Pinecrest Lake

Everyone had a chance to drive the boat.  Here's grandma taking it for a spin

Sarah's turn to show us her stuff

Whitney was a natural

Spencer loved to take the boat in circles

Mikey got to steer by himself for about 3 whole seconds so we could take his picture

Even Brookey got her own turn

Sabbatical Week 3

This week we drove from the Seattle, WA area down the Oregon coast to Crescent City, CA.  We woke up at 3:30 in the morning on Tuesday to get an early start and miss the traffic.  We hoped the kids would sleep in the car in the wee hours of the morning.  They were too excited to sleep at first, then too hungry, then too grumpy to sleep.  So it ended up being a VERY long drive, both in terms of time and crankiness!  The Oregon coast was beautiful, but driving it was much slower than we expected and you don't really see the ocean very much while you're on the highway.  However, the times you do see the ocean the views are spectacular.  Even still, if we were to do it again we'd probably save ourselves a few hours of driving and skip the coast.

We stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory along the way.  Liz and the kids are huge cheese fans, and we took the self-guided tour of the factory and tasted the free samples.  We bought Tillamook ice cream cones for everybody, and soon regretted it.  The workers messed up our order, Whitney almost lost the ice cream off her cone, when Liz tried to show Whitney how to hold a cone so as to not lose her ice cream, the ice cream fell off of Liz's cone, Brooklyn was screaming hysterically, Michael kept losing his balance and falling down with his cone, ice cream kept getting everywhere including all over Liz, ... Before I had even finished straightening out our order, Liz had had it and rounded up all the kids and took them straight to the car (where ice cream proceeded to get all over everything else).  When things had settled down a bit we had a good laugh about it and remembered that when you have your hands full with young kids, something as simple as getting an ice cream cone can be a major undertaking!

We finally made it to our beach house in Crescent City and had a blast!  The beach was a block away, and the kids just couldn't get enough of it.  They'd play there all morning, come back to the house for some lunch, and go back and play all afternoon or evening.  There is a lighthouse that is only accessible during low tide, so we visited the lighthouse and the nearby tide pools, finding all kinds of hermit crabs and sea snails.  The current lighthouse caretaker and his wife are volunteers for the summer and have a special vehicle that can get them to and from the lighthouse at high tide in an emergency.  The caretaker said of course he uses the vehicle responsibly, but joked it's amazing how many emergencies you can come up with when you have access to such a fun vehicle.

The redwood forest was only minutes away as well, so we spent half a day hiking among the huge trees, climbing the fallen ones, and even drove through a particularly large tree on our last day.  We had so much fun in Crescent City we ended up staying an extra day.  It's a quiet little area with so much to do and not crowded at all.  One of the mornings we had the whole beach virtually all to ourselves.  The only real downside was finding a mouse in the master bedroom as we were getting ready for bed!  I caught it with a cooking pot and a baking sheet, and let it go out by the road.  The house was clean and well maintained so we're still not sure how it got in there, perhaps through an open window is our guess.

We continued our drive down the coast to San Jose to spend some time with my parents.  Our drive took us across the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  We spent more time listening to the Harry Potter books on CD.  Our oldest two children are finally old enough to get into the books, so we've been listening to the first few books and then watching the movies (fast forwarding through any parts that are too scary).  We've made it through the first two books and movies so far.

Tillamook Cheese Factory

"Five little monkeys sleeping in a bed.  One fell out and bumped her head." 

Splashing in the ocean in their clothes

Catching more waves (in swimsuits this time)

Plenty of sand to go around

Whitney the mermaid

Daddy and Mikey on our way to the lighthouse

Stout Grove in Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park

Driving through a tree

Approaching the Golden Gate Bridge

Sabbatical Week 2

This week we visited the beautiful Northwest.  We started off with a few days in Portland Oregon.  I lived in Portland for a summer many years ago as an intern and have very fond memories of the area.  One of my favorite places in the whole world is Silver Falls, near Salem.  I've always wanted to take my family there and finally did it!  The trails take you through beautiful forested areas to ten of the most stunning waterfalls you'll ever see.  You can actually walk behind several of the tall waterfalls.  It was just as beautiful as I remember it all those years ago.  It was an exhausting hike with young kids, especially having to carry Brooke and Mike for much of it.  But definitely well worth it.

We also visited the famous Rose Gardens in downtown Portland, which happens to also be next to a large children's park.  The park is handicap friendly, which allowed Michael to explore it easily and safely without us having to monitor him closely.  He still falls easily, so we usually have to keep an extra close eye on him when we take him to parks.

Our hotel was about a mile away from the Portland temple, so we took the family to see the temple and the visitors center.  The temple is very beautiful and our older children in particular commented about how peaceful and wonderful they felt on the temple grounds.  They particularly enjoyed going to the quiet indoor garden area just inside the temple.  The flowers on the temple grounds weren't quite as plentiful as those in the Rose Gardens, but they were just as beautiful.

After Oregon we traveled to the Seattle area to visit my brother, Steve, and his family.  We watched the fish throwing at Pikes Place, visited the infamous gum walls covered in used chewing gum, saw the Space Needle up close, and soaked in other sights and sounds of the area.  On Saturday Steve challenged me to racquetball at the YMCA (he's gotten pretty good since the last time we played) and we attended church with Steve's family on Sunday.

Upper North Falls, Silver Falls

North Falls, Silver Falls.  We are in a cave behind the waterfall.

 

South Falls, Silver Falls.  You can see the path that takes you behind the falls.

Behind the South Falls waterfall

The kids found a fun tree to climb into on our hike

Behind the falls at Lower South Falls, Silver Falls

Admiring the roses at the Rose Garden

This one smells nice

Portland Temple

Portland Temple

Pikes Peak market in Seattle

The lovely (and disgusting) gum wall in Seattle

The space needle in Seattle

Trying to take a selfie while driving past the space needle

Sabbatical Week 1

One of the great things about my job is we get an 8 week sabbatical every 7 years.  My sabbatical started around the 4th of July, so we decided to take a "little" family vacation.  It started off with a Wheeler family reunion in Yellowstone National Park.  It's probably been 6 years since we've all been together as a family.  Other than my brother Scott's three oldest children who no longer live at home, we crammed the entire family together--48 people in all--into two beautiful cabins in Island Park, Idaho, near the west entrance to Yellowstone.  After spending a week in Yellowstone and playing in a river near our cabins, my parents and five of us siblings drove to Meridian, Idaho for our nephew Nathan's mission farewell.  He'll be leaving this week to serve a two year mission in Phoenix, Arizona.  It's amazing how quickly he has grown up.  He'll be a fine missionary.

Celebrating Mikey's 4th birthday just prior to our sabbatical!

  Mikey has come such a long way in these four years and we are so thrilled he is still cancer free!

We're on our way to Yellowstone!

We found a bison trying to make a break for the exit

The bison was just outside our window, close enough for us to touch!

Hiking down to see a waterfall

"Chuck" Norris Geyser Basin

We carried Mike and Brooke on our backs for part of our hike, but tried to let them walk as much as possible.

Mammoth hot springs

On some of the off days from Yellowstone we went paddle boarding near our cabins

Liz got the hang of paddle boarding rather quickly

Whitney paddle boarding with her cousin Josh

Hanging out after a hike to Lower Falls in Yellowstone

Old Faithful

Wheeler Family 2015

Are we done taking pictures yet?

The cutest kids ever!

Family photo just outside our cabin

Mikey and Whitney drinking from one of the water features at Settlers Park in Meridian, Idaho