Vancouver Trip 2009

We had a blast on our trip! My slideshow pretty much sums it up, but I wanted to explain a few highlights:
1. We drove from Rexburg to Vancouver in 13 hours. We spent the first 2 nights at Gary and Kris Martin's house (daughters Morgan-10 and Gracie-6), while we spent the day hours with my family. We love to play pinochle with the Martins. We also went out to dinner in Portland with them, and to 2 different places for dessert.
2. Sunday we drove to the Oregon coast. We stayed at Cape Lookout State Park, just outside of Tillamook. We camped with Kris, Morgan, Gracie and Kris's 15 year old brother, Darren, as well as Kristen and Oliviana. It rained all day Sunday, but the kids still played on their scooters, and we were able to string up a huge tarp to protect the table and our camp chairs.
3. We came across a baby seal on the beach, who was injured. We cheered for it until it hopped back to the ocean. As soon as it got back into the ocean, a couple of overzealous sea mammal-lovers started running after us and yelling at us that they were going to report us to the authorities because harassing sea mammals is a federal offense (turns out it really is). We quickly walked the opposite direction. (Come on! Only in Oregon.)
4. Kristen went back to Vancouver with Mom and David on Tuesday, and Heidi and her family (the Sampsons) showed up to camp Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Kris went home on Tuesday morning. We went shopping at the factory outlet mall in Lincoln City and spent time on the beach with the Sampsons.
5. Thursday we drove back to Vancouver, first stopping at Fort Clatsop and Seaside to buy salt water taffy and do some sightseeing.
6. The rest of the week was spent with the whole Kimball clan. We went to Chloe's baptism, took family pictures, ate good food, went to Saturday Market in Portland, and played some really fun games together. Landon and I kicked David and Sara's trash playing Pinochle one night until 1:00am. They should feel kind of embarrassed.
7. After we got back to Vancouver, we stayed at Nanny's (my grandma) house--enjoying breakfasts of oatmeal with enormous amounts of walnuts thrown in. We loved visiting with Nanny and spending quality time together.
8. We discovered a European bakery in Portland this trip. We returned 3 times to buy more pastries. Loved that place.
9. Our girls had the time of their lives playing with their cousins. This is the first time that all the cousins have been together in one place. It was really fun having all the Kimball family members together, except for Manase who was very much missed.
10. On the way home, our truck's transmission died in Caldwell, Idaho. We called a tow truck and were towed to Boise. We had the truck towed to the Boise Aamco Transmission, where we are still waiting for it to be finished. It will cost us just over $3,000. We called Landon's mom, who came to pick us up on Monday. After she arrived, we went to one of the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives locations featured on the Food Network. It's called the Westside Drive In. It was amazing! The food really helped heal the pain we felt about the whole truck situation. We stayed another night in Boise with Nana and got home Tuesday afternoon about 4:00pm. Pretty crappy end to a really fun trip!

Warning: This is a really long slideshow! It features 3 videos within the slideshow, so only watch it if you have a fast computer and like to watch LeFevre vacation photos.