Petting Zoo

After the Demolition Derby we went to the petting zoo. Even though all of our efforts were geared towards her enjoying herself, I don't know if she did. You can see that she's very reserved. I don't think she liked the animals nibbling on her fingers.

I do think she is cute in her overalls though.

Demolition Derby... then and now!

Demolition Derbys.

I don't think I had ever heard of them until we moved to Idaho. The summer after we got married we found that our county sponsored a Demolition Derby. It was in support of the firefighters and police and so Phil and I went. What an interesting experience. The first three photos are from that first Demo Derby.

For those of you who haven't watched one of these it's a crazy experience. Basically the idea is that people take their old beater cars, soup them up by adding harnesses for the driver, taking out all the glass, putting a big engine in it and then taking it into an arena and destroy it by smashing it into other cars who have done the same thing. You tend to see a LOT of smoke, sometimes fires, cars leaking fluids and general mahem. The various cars are normally sponsored by someone, like the police dept will have a car, and Joe's automotive will, so that people are not spending all of their money. It's crazy to see how very into in the fans get. People yell and scream and of course pick their favorites.

Needless to say Phil was VERY excited when we found that Colorado Springs was sponsoring a little county fair with a demolition derby. Phil's parents came down for the weekend and we got Ivy into her overalls for some Demo fun. Here's more pics of us with Phil's dad and Ivy in front of the cars. I think she liked the sounds! There's something primal about watching cars get smashed up.

We also found a list of rules when we went on the website for the fair. We could have entered, but unfortunatley we need our beater cars! Some that we found the most interesting were cars cannot hit head on, they can't go over 35 mph or 3rd gear. If they catch fire, the lose. They have two minutes to get their cars working, or they lose.

Maybe someday.

"It's not too often that you see human handprints on the beach"

Here's a video just to show you how excited she was. I had to pull her out of the water a couple of times. As my brother Robert says in the video, "It's not too often that you see human handprints on the beach."

Ivy at the beach

I never realized what a water bug I have. Ivy has never really expressed a lot of interest/enjoyment in going to the pool over the summer. Due to this I wasn't expecting a lot out of the beach trip. Most of us were in sweatshirts as the water/weather was chilly. As you can tell from the pictures Ivy is in a jacket and winter hat. She was crawling all over the beach. When we brought her home she was covered in sand from head to toe...

Goonie Beach

Still in Oregon...


Ever since I can remember, my family loved the movie The Goonies. It was tradition to watch it and to quote it. Since we were going to be sooo close to Astoria, where the movie takes place it was only appropriate to see the Goonie beach.
Unfortunatley for us, the weather in Oregon is not always cooperative, so it was foggy and we couldn't see all of the big rocks. Here are some of our attempts!
Since we were on the beach I also thought it would be fun to write our names with my toe. I thought I did a pretty good job.
And... I just really like this pic of me and my sister.

Cape Meares Lighthouse/ Tillamook Cheese Factory

After going on this trip to Oregon, I've decided that if Phil ever decided to leave Colorado , I'd move to Oregon. The coast is absolutely beautiful. We were there the first week of August and were wearing pants and sweaters. It did get a little warmer by the afternoon, but for me, it was wonderful.

One of our first stops was to see the Cape Meares Lighthouse. It's about an hour drive from Lincoln City, and is the shortest lighthouse in Oregon. It's fun becuase it's just a quick little walk to the top. You could see the ocean for miles- if it wasn't foggy- which it was. It was still beautiful.

After Cape Meares, we were off to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. This is one of the things that I really wanted to see. I love cheese. All different kinds... and I figured if I was going to Oregon then I should be able to see where this fancy cheese was made, so we did! It's a self guided tour, where you can see the different stages of the cheese being made. At the end of the tour we got to try a bunch of different cheeses, even Ivy. Ivy loves cheese.

Unbeknown to all of us when we arrived, Tillamook also makes ice cream. Luckily, I have a wonderful Dad who spoils all of his children with ice cream. Even his granddaughter. I wish I had gotten some good pictures of her eating ice cream.

Oddwater Aquarium

Still more to come about the Oregon trip...

Here's some more pics from our trip. We went to the Oddwater Aquarium. I loved the motto "Where it's Ok to be wierd." Let's just say that a lot of the fish fit the bill!

This is also the first time we have taken Ivy to an aquarium. For those of you who remember, we have a fish tank in our apartment. Those fish used to be Phil's prized possessions... until Ivy came.

Now Ivy bats on the side of their tank. She and her friends poke at the side of the tank with mild fascination. It's up high, so she can't see it very well, which is why she got really excited at the aquarium.

She got so excited in fact that while dancing at the lion fish, she whacked her head on the ledge and put a nice bruise on her face. I thought she had just bumped her face, until she let out an enormous yell and every parent in the room looked at me like "what did you do?"

She calmed down pretty quick and proceeded to dance in front of all the other fish areas. Isn't being a parent fun! :)

Caving in the California Lava Tubes

On our way to Oregon we stopped at the Lava Beds National Park in Northern California. Lava tubes are tunnels in the earth which lava ran thorough, normally after a volcanic eruption. The lava drains out of the tubes and leaves these huge tunnels. Actually some of the tunnels are large enough to walk in, and some (which we didn't go in) are only big enough to crawl through. Because many of them have low ceilings some of my siblings wore hard hats.
It's absolutely amazing to see the tubes and to be able to walk through them.





Here's a picture of three of my brothers, Robert, me, Raymond and Ryan.
Here's a sunny shot of most of the family as we were leaving one of the caves. It was an ice cave where even in the month of August there was frozen ice in the bottom. It was fascinating how as we got deeper and deeper into the caves the temperature got colder and colder.