Mommathon

My car got very dirty on our vacation, both inside and out. We didn’t take care of the inside mess (pebbles and mud) on this trip to the car wash, but the boys did a great job of washing the outside…they had fun, too.

We saw the smoke from this fire from a long ways off and Colm was especially excited when he realized we were going to drive right by it. Don’t be alarmed, it turns out that this was just a training for firefighters. However, I would also like to add that this fire was HOT. We could feel the heat from it in our car with the windows rolled up. That being said, this fire was RIGHT next to a gas station. Does that seem very safe to you? We didn’t think so. Gas vapors alone would be a good reason to perhaps find a better spot to train let alone what if something went wrong.

Sean and Liam went on their own hike today because Colm and I were too lazy to go with them. (It was hot and I wasn’t going to climb up that steep hill.) Colm and I did manage to get in this picture though. Do you see us? We are in one of those teeny tiny cars at the bottom.

Back behind Wheeler High School in Fossil, OR is a fossil gold mine. The high school has all of the tools you need, they just ask that you pay a donation fee and off you go.

We were the only ones there digging at the time and so we settled into a place that it looked like other people had been digging. After a while, someone from the high school came out and yelled at us from across the football/baseball field to move down closer behind the baseball diamond’s backstop. Wow! Was he right…fossils galore!

We have seen Oregon’s beaches, forests and mountains, but Oregon also has a desert. It was neat to come over the mountain, drive just a little ways further and have the landscape turn to this. It looks a lot like Arizona.

We took a very impromptu trip to a new beach today and I think I just found my new favorite beach. It’s a little out of the way, but the pay off is worth it. First of all, there is a HUGE sand dune that the boys ran up and down several times. It also has some tide pools and fishing boats that come up out of the ocean right there on the beach. This beach also lets cars on the beach which I wasn’t too sure about at first, but the cars all seem to stay on one side and the sand dune is down at the other end of the beach, so it all worked out.

If you are wondering what is going on in this picture, I think Colm is acting like he is going to die if he has to climb the sand dune one more time and his friend is talking him into it. 🙂

We went to the airplane museum today. This is a peek inside one of the older passenger planes. There is literally no room to walk down the aisle. Did they crawl over each other to get to their seats?

This little trick never gets old, especially when you get to try it on someone new.