Wrapping Up August

When we got back to Utah, we lived with Dan's parents in Coalville for about a month until our apartment in Provo opened up. We also bought a used 97 Honda Civic for dear Daniel. Here it is, in all of its glory, getting an oil change from its new owner.

Some cute baby birds that lived on top of the porch light for a while:

One day, which actually may have been in September, I don't know anymore, we went to Lagoon with Mason and Wendy. It was quite fun. These are the only pictures I have to show for it though.

You know the rides that take you straight up into the air and then you free fall? I hate those. Absolutely hate those. I love roller coasters but for some reason those ones terrified me. There were two of them at Lagoon, one shot you up super fast and then dropped you, the other one slowly creeped upward which was quite anxiety-inducing and then dropped you. Dan and Wendy really wanted to go on them, but Mason and I were both hesitant, neither of us liking the rides. Big tough Mason even admitted he was scarred. But we gave in and went. Lucky for Mason, my ridiculous hysterical meltdown relieved him of fear and he was laughing on the way up the slow one. I am slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I may or may not have been constantly yelling, "DAN! I'M SCARED! DAN, I WANT TO GET OFF!! DAN, HELP ME!!!!" I also may or may not have started crying. Worst panic attack ever.

My dear Babooshka Lauren also came to visit Utah with her wee baby London. We only got to visit for like a half hour, but it was good to see her and to meet London! London is going to be (and already is) GORGEOUS.

Wrapping Up the Summer

Dan's brother Lance was serving his mission in Eugene, Oregon. He finished his mission in August and for some reason had a layover in Seattle. So we decided to go meet him there. Please note Dan and I wearing our Bigfoot shirts (we got one for Lance, too).

Dan's Uncle Wayne and Aunt Sally live in Washington and were in the Seattle area that day, so they came to say hi too then took Dan and me out to lunch. After lunch, we headed to Forks. Yes, I have read the Twilight series but the 4th book completely killed it for me. So I no longer consider myself a fan of Twilight by any means, but was still curious to see Forks and La Push because of how cool they sounded.

We took a ferry to get there. It was pretty neat.

Partway through the ferry ride we got back in our car and turned on the GPS. Our car was swimming!

We got to Forks. It's basically a dump. Nothing worthwhile to see but I snapped a few pictures anyways.

Took this picture for Katherine..."Where vampires and werewolves are welcome...and shirts are optional!" Uhhh..

This is the house (which is now a hotel) that Stephanie Meyer based the Cullen's house on. I thought it was going to be this big majestic thing, and I'd heard that it really was in the middle of a forest and not many people knew about it. False on both accounts. Looked like a regular house and was in the middle of a neighborhood.

Heading to La Push, which was also lame.

So the Forks trip was a big letdown, but at least now I won't wonder what it's like.

In August we also had a ward campout which was pretty fun. We had to take all of our stuff to our tent (or our TEEPEE!!) by handcart. Here's my cute husband pulling our stuff.

We were lucky to get to sleep in one of the teepees!

At the campout they had a lot of activities like canoeing, rope-swinging, biking, and a sort of tubing...it was basically a huge slip-n-slide the size of a small hill and you could rent an innertube to go down it. We went canoeing and did the rope swing.

Finally, leaving Washington. This is the house where we stayed. 

Good bye!

Portland/Coast Trip

We wanted to go to Portland, and some friends of ours went to Portland, straight to the coast to where the Tillamook Cheese Factory resides, then drove up the coast back to Washington. We decided to copy them. It was my favorite trip of the summer. We left on a Friday and got back on a Sunday.

Driving...Dan found some siamese goldfish.

I have an even better picture of Dan than this one...where he has not one but two goldfish in each nostril, as well as a mouth overflowing with the little fish. But out of respect to his pride, I will not post it.

In Portland, we went to a flee market. It was pretty cool. I really liked these paintings.

The downside to Portland was that almost everywhere we went smelled like very potent urine.

Then we headed to the beach.

Feather in the sand which we decided marked where we should lay out our towels. After 10 minutes, we caught a whiff of death and noticed there was a decaying seagull nearby so we moved.

For dinner we went to a restaurant called something like "Bigfoot's Grill"....I can't remember. But like I said in my previous post, we're rather obsessed with the sasquatch and as such had another picture with this statue (although it's at a very poor angle).

The next day we went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. It was awesome. During the tour there were samples of about 12 different types of cheese. They also had a cafe and they had delicious grilled cheese and mac & cheese (this mac & cheese was better than the "world's best" in Seattle). Here are some photos of the assembly line.

Close-up to show how huge the blocks of cheese were.

Packaging

After that we decided we wanted to hit up the beach once more. And I'm so glad we did, it was awesome! We went to this little beach called something like "Hug Beach" but I can't remember for sure...it had something to do with hugging. Anyways, at this beach we found an awesome little cave that was in the face of a cliff...highly reminded me of Voldemort's cave where he hid one of the horcruxes.

The cliff where the cave was. The cave in the picture is not the one we found...the one we found we had to walk out into the water around the edge of the cliff. At high tide the cave would be filled with water.

Dan was taking a picture of me. The water was extremely frigid and right as he snapped the picture, a small wave rushed in and caught me by surprise, hence the ridiculous expression upon my face.

Cool little barnacles on the cliff

Dan climbing up in the cliff

Voldemort's cave!!!

The cave even had it's own version of horcruxes in it. These nasty little mutant rolly-polly-cockroach-trilobite dudes. They were so freaking gross. The smallest ones looked like regular rolly-pollies and this picture is of the biggest one we saw. It was roughly the size of one of those pink hand-held erasers. SO gross.

I didn't realize til after I snapped the picture that these two were busy...haha.

Side story--these little nasties were crawling all over the walls and ceiling of the cave. I put my hood on in case one of them fell on my head. I have a huge phobia of having bugs in my hair, probably because once as a child I was swimming at a friend's house and a bee landed on my head, got tangled in my hair, and died there. Anyways, once we got out of the cave I took off my hood and asked Dan to check my hair to make sure I had no unwanted visitors. He told me I was good, but then quickly said, "OH MY GOSH. Wait. Hold still. There's a big one in there!" I was basically paralyzed with fear screaming things like, "Get it out! Use your fingers! Take your fingers and just pull it out! I don't care if you mess up my hair, GET IT OUT!!!" All the while Dan was digging around in my hair, saying very discomforting things like, "Whoa it's huge! It's digging its claws in! I can't get it out!" I really thought I was going to have a panic attack. Turns out there was NOTHING there after all, it was just a big joke. Grrr, Dan!

On the way back to Auburn, we passed/went across several bridges. Dan really loved them so I snapped a few picture of them. Again, I'm sorry for the crappy quality due to my camera.