The Schoolings: 2014

We finally finished gathering together all our pictures of the baby and made a slideshow; there'd be too many to send out in an email, so we made the slideshow. Here's the link: http://youtu.be/mcDanmqOB-U The slideshow is about 8 minutes long and includes maternity pictures, pics from hospital, baby pics, funeral pics, pics taking kids to the sac zoo, and pics of our trip to Pacifica so we could go to the ocean. The funeral was 10/27, a Monday; we wanted to do Saturday, but they don't work on the weekends and so they charge $500 to have a graveside funeral on Saturdays. It ended up raining that Saturday anyway, so it worked out better. The next day, Tuesday 10/28, we stopped by Jared's work and picked up the gifts they got us: a real star named Maggie Grace Schooling and toys for the kids. Then, same day, we went to the Sac zoo and to Pacifica, CA to be near the ocean. We left Pacifica 10/30 Thursday morning and drove home. Jared was off work from 10/16-10/31 staying home with us, which was so nice. Here's the pictures:

We took our kids on their first camping trip at the beach this past week. It was very cold in Fort Dick, CA (hence all the sweatshirts) and we were very close to the Oregon border with Brookings, OR being a short 30 minute drive away. While we were there, we heard it was 103-108 degrees back home in Chico, so we beat the heat for a week! I think it was 50-63 degrees at the beach we were at with a lot of wind chill in my opinion...I was always cold! The campsite was in between a lake and the ocean. From our campsite, we would walk over to and cross a large berm of sand and grass to reach the ocean. So the lake and ocean were all short walking distance. There were 7 RVs and 12 tents the week we were there and we knew everybody. Most people were from Jared's childhood church and were close family friends and family (Jared's aunt, uncle & cousins; Jared's sister & her family). Our tent was pretty nice in that it had the ability to have 1, 2, or 3 rooms in it. We used it as 2-3 rooms the whole time. It also had more vertical walls, rather than slanted walls, so we had lots of vertical space to stand upright and walk around easily. It was a $250 tent we got on Craigslist used for $75! And it was great. Jared set it up in the backyard before we left to make sure it worked properly.

Events:

During the camping trip Luke had his first fishing experience and caught a perch fish with Jared from the ocean; they were beach fishing, casting their lines from the shore into the water. We also took a short day trip up to Brookings, Oregon and had fun going to the huge Fred Meyer store there. They had a free, 1-hour childcare play-center there while parents shopped, so we jumped on that bandwagon! The kids enjoyed it. Luke wanted to ride the escalator, or in his words, the "moving stairs". Simple, free things really please a 4 year old! We also took our kids to Jedidiah Smith River to go play and wade in the water. Jim & Leslie and their 2 kids went too and they all had fun together. Luke enjoyed catching tadpoles, and Henry and Micah loved splashing and falling in the shallow water parts. It was very pretty there, the river looked green/blue and there were lush evergreen trees all around. We also took the kids tide-pooling early in the morning during low tide at Point St. George to see starfish and stuff. Jared and Luke saw most of it since they were able to climb across the rocks, and Henry and I stayed behind and explored what we could. We saw a lot of crab shells, big ones. The birds must enjoy eating them? During a trip to the beach, Luke buried all of ours and Micah's toy shovels and then couldn't find them. Jared excavated the area for a half hour, gave up, then made a "grave-site" marker for them in case anyone else wanted to continue the search.

On our way home, we took route 199 through Grants Pass, Oregon to get to I-5. We stopped in Ashland, OR to get some green veggie smoothies and take the kids to a park to play for an hour to burn some energy off during the long car ride home. The park had a water play area that the boys enjoyed in the heat of the afternoon. I also crocheted a baby hat for our baby girl, since a hat with ties is very important to have for her. We got home really late last night and are still unpacking today. We camped for 8 days and it was enough for me! The kids had fun though; every night when Luke was about to go to sleep in our tent he'd say "I love camping, it's so much fun" or something like that. Luke also really enjoyed the beach and it was hard to get him to leave it everyday.