It has been a long time since we’ve seen my sister Sara and her family. They live in Harrisburg, Oregon so it is a little out-of-the-way. They just welcomed a new baby girl into their family, and we have never visited the Pacific Northwest, so we decided to take a family vacation.

My cousin Tara lives in Seattle and we were going to spend the end of our vacation with them, so that is where we flew into and out of. Our flight arrived Saturday afternoon and we immediately hopped into our rental car and headed to Oregon. Well, I shouldn’t say that we “immediately” hopped into our rental car. There is a Seinfeld episode that depicts what our experience with the rental car company was like, you know the one, “See, you know how to
TAKE the reservation, you just don’t know how to HOLD the reservation and
that’s really the most important part of the reservation, the holding.” In our case, they reserved us a “standard” size car but when we got to the garage to pick it up, they only had mid-size and full-size cars to pick from, no standard-size. They upgraded us to a full-size Dodge Charger and we eventually loaded all of our junk and hit the road for Oregon.

Sunday we went to church and then spent a leisurely day with the family.

Uncle Daryn, Carson, Aunt Sara, Raine holding baby Adelynn, and Logan.

Logan teaching Raine all about the chickens. What did Raine think of the chickens? “It’s stinky!”

Carson and Carter playing ball.

Carter riding the scooter.

Monday we went to a farm to find some pumpkins to carve for Halloween. We took a hay-ride into the field where the kids could search for their perfect pumpkin.

It wasn’t easy for the little ones to maneuver the dried vines and pumpkins. But eventually, we found the right one.

While at the farm, the kids had fun feeding the goats and petting the animals.

They also loved running around the hay maze.

That evening we carved our pumpkins while Aunt Sara whipped up some tasty, made-from-scratch caramel to dip our gigantic, fresh-from-the-farm apples in.

Carter was relegated to the floor with a colored pencil while the big-kids were on the stools carving but he sure didn’t seem to mind. He was working hard at that pumpkin.

The finished products . . . minus Carter. Raine insisted that her pumpkin have a “happy face” so that turned into the theme for all the pumpkins.

Tuesday we all piled into Aunt Sara’s Suburban and took a tour of the area.

We ended up at the “beach” where there is an endless supply of rocks to be thrown into the water.

Daddy was the designated rock-thrower. The kids would find the biggest rock they could carry and bring it to him to throw as far as he could into the river — making as big a splash as possible, of course.

We had so much fun visiting the Hicks family. Raine and Logan were like two peas in a pod. Every waking moment they were doing something together — “camping,” hiking, taking care of the chickens, making a “salad” with leftovers in the garden — you would have thought these two were twins separated at birth. I was pleasantly surprised how well Carson and Carter played together as well, given the 14-month age difference. We all enjoyed loving on cute little Addy. And of course, I loved being able to spend time with my sister. We don’t see each other very often these days so it was fun to live her life for a few days.