Driving to Oregon

Wow! What an amazing drive. We popped the kids in the car at 4 am and headed to Oregon. It was majestic to watch the sun rise in the east and cast it's amazing rays on the westerly mountain range. The light was so warm and beautiful I wanted to eat it.

This picture was taken from out of the car window. The dawning of a new day. Beautiful!!
The ride though the rocky mountains was absolutely breath taking! It makes me home sick just to blog about it.

Not once did we stop the car... for fear that the kids would all wake up...we told them they couldn't play or talk until 7:00. Then we slid the time back as we drove *he he he* cuz Bend Oregon is on Pacific time. So we actually had peace till 8! :-)

So all these pics are taken from the coziness of my passenger spot in the car at about 60 mph. Not bad, if I do say so myself. :-)

This one as some windshield bugs :-) LOL! I had to share lots of pictures, because this was one of my most favorite parts of the trip.

We did see a moose, it was just a cow, and I didn't get a picture of her, but I did get a picture of this warning sign, that lets you know that you aren't just looking for deer, but for much larger game! We saw TONS AND TONS of deer, they were all over the place during sunrise. We counted, but of course I didn't keep the paper.

I thought it was funny that this town was named Yahk. LOL That's a terrible name for such a beautiful place.

THE BRYANS:

We went to Oregon to see my sister and her 4 children. As we approached Bend we were NOT impressed at all with Oregon. We had just completed one of the most majestic drives ever and the last few hours, heading into Oregon were horrible, boring desertish... bleck. But then... once we hit Bend, we found out why people live there. Wow, what a beautiful area! The Bryans took us around to see some sites.

If you look closely Alex and Ethan are at the top of this waterfall.
Liza and Elise having some cousin bonding time.
We went up here to go "tadpoling". The kids had a blast catching tadpoles and minnows, but they were so disappointed when mean old auntie said that the tadpoles weren't coming home. Alex was particularly cheesed "what did we catch them for then??"

This was our Sunday after church activity. We packed a lunch, and ate it while trying to keep warm. There was still snow up here on this mountain, and in the shade, it was quite cold. The kids jumped around on the snow and then walked out into sunshine to catch tadpoles.
There are Ethan and Alex again, off in the distance. They were done looking for tadpoles and moved on to minnows.

There were all these beautiful wild flowers that were very fun to photograph, along with the beautiful mountains and lake. Such a pretty spot

We were supposed to meet Ben and Emily up there for lunch with us, but they didn't get there until we were done and heading back to the cars. :-( They did come back to my sisters house tho, and we got to visit for a little while before the kids got too cranky.
The older 3 girls took over their Great room. As you can tell by the blur of the photograph, there was a party going on right there...
The big boys were nice enough to include Logan in their play. I'm not sure what that play was, but they were shooting stuff, and that's just what they like to do.

Tori and Abbie reunited! They had a great time playing together! They stayed busy the whole time!

Katie and Caitlyn had a ball too. I'm not sure what the wacky hair on caitlyn was, but it must have been the result of a really good time. Everyone had a friend and everyone enjoyed the evening. The adults had a fun conversation about Brian Regan, and were entertained by Logan quoting Buzz Lightyear "You're a sad strange little man, You have my pity." LOL!! It was SOO funny. We were so happy to be there with the Bryans and felt blessed to have Ben and Em and the kids show up to play with us too.