Oregon Coast Aquarium

Months ago I bought a Groupon for the Oregon Coast Aquarium.  About a month ago I made some grand plans to go to the coast for the weekend as a family, swim at the hotel pool, go to the aquarium, do some shopping...and then reality hit.  I completely overlooked the fact that it was Josh's drill weekend.  Major bummer because we could have really used that family time.  It has been so busy around here with Josh's hunting, both our work and the kids, having more than 45 minutes with all four of us in the house is hard to come by and pretty sad actually.  I'm becoming very frustrated about it.  Something has got to give.  Anyway, fortunately we were able to get a refund on the hotel and Tami agreed to go with us and take Josh's spot so we just went down for the day on Monday.  The weather held out and didn't rain on us at all really and I think the kids had fun, minus a pretty long car ride.  I've never been to the aquarium, but I do have to say that I'm glad I got the deal on the admission.  I don't think I'd have been happy to pay those prices for what we got.  The kids had fun though, Joshua just hung out and looked around.  After the aquarium, we went to the bayfront and found the sea lions on the dock, had lunch at Mo's and got some candy at the candy store.  After we loaded up in the car, both kids were asleep within 10 minutes or so and we had some silence for about an hour on the way home!  Thank you Tami for coming with us, I know the kids and I all appreciated it and had fun with you!

Cowgirl Up!

Megan was invited to Natalie's 5th Birthday Party at a horse barn.  I got her a new shirt and a cute sparkly horse camo hat to go with.  She had the rest and quite the little country girl attitude.  We didn't have to ask twice to take pictures of her before we left, she was however pretty sick if the pictures after we were at the party for awhile.  When we got to the party, she was given a cowgirl hat and bandana to add to her look and then it was horse time!  She is very comfortable on a horse from all of her practice with Aunt Kathy taking her to a nearby barn.  She was right at the front of the line and probably got to ride 4x more than all of the other kids just because she didn't let an opportunity to jump on pass her by!  There were five horses of all different sizes and I think she got to ride four of them.  After that it was present time, I'm not sure if Natalie got to open one of her presents with all of the elbowing going on by her fans, but hopefully she had fun anyway!  Happy Birthday Natalie and thank you for inviting Megan!

Megan's Birthday Wish List

Megan's birthday is just around the corner believe it or not.  Here are a few things our soon-to-be FIVE year old would like.  I'll update this list as I hear from her!  If you want dibs on something, let me know and I'll take it off the list!  Thank you!

• Anything "Tangled", a cd soundtrack for her to sing along to would be great
• "The Parent Trap" original movie
• "Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken" movie
• Skechers Twinkle Toes shoes size 11-12
• CD player/radio with a microphone for her to sing along
• Our Generation Doll - (Doesn't have to be this exact one)
• Our Generation Salon Chair
• Disney Princess Fairy Tale Songs (she just saw a commercial for this and freaked out!)

National Guard Company Family Picnic

Josh had drill this weekend but this time we got to join him on Sunday for his company's family picnic.  It was at Aldersgate Retreat Center in Turner, OR.  It was a beautiful, hot day but thankfully there were also a lot of trees that kept us shaded when need be.  It was still pretty warm in the shade though.  It was very well planned and they had a lot of activities for the kids at different times throughout the day.  Megan got to jump on a hydroulic jumpy thing (for lack of a better name), run in a sack race, have a waterballoon toss which then turned into a fight and slide down a 125 ft. water slide in the forest.  Mister got to crawl and walk all over, eat watermelon, get filthy dirty and in the end, have a sucker. It gave us a lot of opportunities to practice with our new toy!