Utah for Baby blessing

Sarah invited us to Utah for the blessing of their baby. So we had a fun, quick trip to Utah. We stayed with Wendy. We spent one morning with Kartrina, then had lunch at J Dawgs and then went to the BYU bookstore and spent the rest of the day with the Deans. We went to the blessing and then had a bbq with Amanda and Wendy and their families.

Rachel is 13

Rachel and I went to stay at Kristal's with Grandma to celebrate her 13th birthday.  We had such a great time.  The weather was perfect.  The first day we went shopping most of the day.  It was very successful.  We rode bikes to the beach that evening and got dinner.  The next day we spent the whole day at the beach.  Rachel can stay in the water forever.  We found a fun part of Huntington beach that has a sandbar just a little way out. We had a lot of fun there.  Then we rode bikes around the beach.  We got cheesecake at the cheesecake factory that night.  Rachel loved it. Saturday we were lazy in the morning.  Then Kristal taught us pilates and we went back to our sandbar spot at the beach for a few hours then we drove home. 

Rachel's actual birthday was the Sunday after girls camp.  We had norwegian pancakes for breakfast, spicy thai noodles for dinner and molten lava cakes for dessert.  She got a bocci ball set for a present.  We learned to play with the Smith's in Tahoe and Rachel was the best out of all of us.

For her friend party, she had some girls over for a lateover.  They walked to Starbucks, had pizza and jumped on the trampoline during a downpour.

Family Pictures

Tahoe

We drove straight to Tahoe from Oregon. Friday we played at Sand Harbor. We always have such a good time there. Saturday we went to the Air show.  The kids really enjoyed sitting in a Tesla and getting all the free stuff from the vendors.  We left the Smith's at the air show and we went to hike along the Rubicon trail.  Ruby really liked that it was like her name.  We had a good time, even though there was some whining at the beginning.  It's just so beautiful there! The blue lake is amazing. Monday we went to Donner beach and we took the jet ski.  Danny was old enough to drive it and take the kids on rides.  Bob loved that he didn't have to be out there the whole time. It was a little cooler there than it has been sometimes so we had a harder time getting in the water a lot. We also played games at night and had smores and expoded a watermelon by putting hundreds of rubber bands around it. We had a great time in Tahoe once again.  This was our 7th year in a row going there.  We're so grateful the Smith's let us come stay with them every year.

Oregon for Grandma Monte's 85th

We left July 1 for Oregon.  We drove straight through to get there.  16 hours. The kids did great. There were 40 people staying at the farmhouse this year.  We were celebrating Grandma Monte's 85th birthday. 

The first day in Oregon we went to Portland.  Ryan's family and Grandma and Grandpa came with us. We went to VooDoo donuts first.  It was ok. Then we went to the International Rose Test Garden.  It was amazing. Such beautiful flowers everywhere.  Seth and Ruby really got into it and took our phones around to take pictures of all the flowers.  They actually got some pretty good ones.  After the rose garden we split up and just our family went to the Nike Store since it's based in Portland.  And then we rode the Arial Tram that connects two parts of the hospital. The kids thought it was pretty cool.

Sunday we went to church and celebrated Grandma's birthday. We had cake and took pictures in our matching Barnhart Family Reunion shirts.  That night my mom and dad took pictures by the creek on the farm.  We got some really great ones. Danny and the other kids went fishing every day. And we picked blueberries all the time.  It's amazing how many of those blueberries you can eat every day when you don't have to pay for them!

Monday was 4th of July.  We drove to Lincoln City.  We went to the 4th of July parade.  That was fun.  Then we went over to the beach and played for a while. We did fireworks in the backyard.  Danny and Aaron helped Grandpa with tons of fireworks.  The museum was doing big fireworks too so we could watch those at the same time. 

Tuesday we went back to Portland and rode a ferry up and down the river. Wednesday we went to the indoor waterslides.   Aaron really wanted to go to the aviation museum so he talked Grandpa into taking him halfway through the day.