Oregon Reunion

We just returned from the Harris family reunion, held in Newport, Oregon over the week of July 14th. I'll have to post pictures of it later, but here's a run down on the events of the week.

1. The drive was REALLY long. We went up to Island Park to pick up the girls, who were staying with Aaron's parents at the cabin. We spent all day Friday and Saturday morning there. We left at about 11:45 am and headed back down through Pocatello to get to Twin Falls. and on to I-84. We reaches Baker City at about 6:00 pm and spent an hour or so with Nel, Jon, Ken, Jami's family and Grandma. We went to mom's grave and let the kids explore some of the the headstones for my relatives buried there. We took off from Baker and drove to Penndelton and arrived at about 9:30. The kids were restless and dying to run around. We got them in jammas, but Gretchen didn't go to sleep until after midnight. We left the next morning and drove the rest of the way to Newport. The Oregon coast is beautiful. We arrived at about 6 pm.
   
2. The two houses were vastly different in quality, but both had great views. Dad, April, Nel and my family ended up in the older house and the rest stayed in the newest house. We didn't spend a whole lot of time in in the houses, so it was an ok situation. The girls spent a few nights over with Jami's kids and had a great time.


3. Monday morning, Aaron and I took the girls out on a deep sea fishing trip. Unfortunately the ocean wasn't being nice and we spent the 5 hours in 10-12 foot swells. I spent most of the time throwing up over the side of the boat. :-( Gretchen and Shelby slept some of the time. Shelby made it to about the last half hour and then started throwing up. I believe that out of 8 fishermen on the boat, 5 of us were throwing up. Not a good day for us land lovers. Aaron fished the whole time. We caught one fish, but with the help of the deck hand, we ended up with 5 fish in our bucket. We also threw in 2 crab pots and let them soak for the 5 hours we fished. We pulled those in on our way back to the dock and had about 18 crabs, 10 of which we were able to keep. They cooked them right there on the dock and cleaned them up for us. Aaron, Dad, April, Nel, Jami and Leslie had a feast when we got back and said it was some of the best crab they had ever tasted. I think Aaron spent 20 minutes making a crab sandwich. We took home 5 of the 10, I believe and they are now in our freezer. We also brought home the fish they filleted for us. That night, we went to Ken and Deb's rental house and had a big pizza and kareoke party.


4. On Tuesday, we walked along the channel in front of the houses and looked in tide pools and found a ton of starfish. Later we went to town and bought a crab pot and bait and went to the public pier and crabbed until about 5. Ken and Kareen's boyfriend (Jason) were there with us. We all caught some crab and starfish. The girls stayed back at the house and played the Wii. At 5 we went to South Beach state park for a hot dog roast. We played on the beach. Getchen and Shelby got soaked. We ended up taking Gretchen's clothes off and she ran around in her jacket and a beach towel. Thank heavens Grandma April had a towel in her car. We took family pictures and went back to the houses to get some rest. Nel was leaving the next day to get back to Baker in time for work on Thursday. So, everyone came over to our house to say goodbye. Hillary announced that she's having a baby in February (yeah!) and everyone gave Nel hugs. I was sick the whole time and went to bed right after everyone left.


5. On Wednesday, we went back out to the pier, with the girls this time, and spent the whole day crabbing. We caught several star fish and a few crabs. Shelby played with the starfish and Gretchen ran up and down the pier chasing seagulls. We saw the harbor seal a few times and lost our bait bag once. I guess that seal liked the cans of tuna and cat food we were using. (Ken swears by the mink he had in his bait bag to keep the seals away. I guess it worked because his was never taken) We gave away the crabs to Ken and the Nagels. We drove up to Otter Creek and saw the Devil's Punchbowl. The tide was out, so there wasn't much punching happening in the bowl. We walked, instead, down to the beach and spent an hour or so exploring the tide pools and rocks there. We gathered for dinner that night (just the Harrison family) at Georgie's Beachside Grill. It took us 2 1/2 hours to get seated and get our food. We were all so tired after that. The food was pretty good though. (At least mine was. ) The girls slept over at the other house and we went to bed kind of early.


6. Thursday was packing up and moving out day. We were on the road by 10. We stopped off at the historical lighthouse, which was what Gretchen wanted to do while we were there, but it was too cold to do much site seeing. Instead we got on the road and headed to Boise. With a quick stop in Baker City for dinner and to say goodbye to Nel and Jon, we hit Boise at about 11:00.


7. We drove all day on Friday and got back to Lehi at about 5. Talk about exhausting. I am so glad we had Saturday and Sunday to recover. I swear I unpacked a few things and layed around the house the rest of the day on Saturday. Shelby did mow the lawn, which was like a hay field. The cat was very excited to see us and Ashes was glad to be home too.

Here are some of the pictures. I'll try to get a link out to my photobucket page so you can see all of them.