Oregon Coast Trip - Day 1 + 2

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Finally :) Our trip to the Oregon Coast came! I won't bore you with pre-trip preparation. On to the good stuff!!! On Tuesday May 25th we got off work by 3:00pm, packed the car, got gas and ice and were on our way to the California Redwoods by 4:45. Woot woot! Our trip across Las Vegas was minimally interesting. Lots of desert, hills, blah blah blah. We made it into Reno at about midnight, stopped for gas, and got yelled at by the guy at Chevron for using the bathroom together. The lines was huge! Hotels were outrageous, so we decided to drive on and not sleep here. I do not like Reno. I had slept a little bit earlier, so Josh and I switched drivers about 30 miles outside of Susanville, CA. The hotels there were expensive too, so we decided to drive to the next rest stop and sleep there. Little did we know that after the last building in Susanville the altitude jumps thousands of feet. Before we could get to a rest stop, it was snowing like crazy! With white knuckles, we finally made it, and were able to sleep for a few hours. But it was a bit crazy.

ACCOMMODATIONS OUR FIRST NIGHT :)

The next morning, we got up, and took off for the final leg of our long drive to the coast. Outside of Redding, CA the Google Map instructions we were givin told us to turn north into the Hoopa Reservation and then east again onto a road called Bald Hills Rd. We have fondly named this route the Hoopa Trail... cause it really was like a trail... paved for part of the windy steep climb up to the summit, then suddenly dirt road for miles. On the reservation it was common for roads to have no street signs... and we drove this road for about 45 minutes with no confirmation that it was the right way. But we did see a bear cub right off the side of the road.

Bear in Hoopa indian reservation

Thankfully Josh spotted a ranger who let us know we were going the right way. WHEW! about 20 minutes later we ended up in Orick, CA and the beginning of the Redwood forest. We had a great time wandering through the enormous ancient trees. In Klamath we went through a drive through tree and got some pics. And before entering Oregon we found the Trees of Mystery and got some pics by Paul Bunyan and Babe. :)

Redwood Forest!

Rhododendrians !

Upon entering Oregon, we also got our first glimpse of the coast and had to stop and document it. So beautiful !!

The first thing we did after that was get on the Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor. There were many pull offs, but we only chose a few.

Arch Rock

Natural Bridges Cove

At Harris Beach State Park we got down to the beach and found some sand dollars. the rocks here were gorgeous.

That night we camped out at Cape Blanco State Park, which was one of the greatest camp sites we have ever been to. They had hot showers, electricity, and a very nice and clean site. Good prices too! We had canned Dinosaurs and bread and it was yummy. It was chilly, but a nice night.

Before going to bed we drove over to the beach access area and were able to actually drive the car on the beach. She looked so cute out there I had to take a picture! AWW.

Sadly, we also were not watching a wave and when it came in close Josh grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the shore. It scared me so bad I screamed, jumped, and my little point and shoot camera fell out of my pocket. great... we pulled the memory card out first, then the batteries. Then once we were in the car again, Josh took it apart and blew it dry and got all of the sand out. No luck... it was toast. Thank Elyon that Jamie was wonderful enough to let us borrow her SLR camera. Otherwise we would have missed one of the most gorgeous sunsets I have ever seen...

Bella Boo

Friday, May 14, 2010

As promised... more pics of little Bella Boo. :)

One Year Anniversary - May 12, 2010

This week Joshua and I celebrated our one year anniversary. First of all, I want Josh to know that I love him a millon times more than the number of stars in the sky. He is the most amazing husband, best friend, lover, father, companion, exercize buddy, dreamer, person in my world and nothing that could ever come between us will separate us far enough to fit even a peice of paper between us. He has become my partner in crime in everything that I do, and to know I have someone with me every step of the way, right beside me and ready to catch me if I fall, and him being there GLADLY... that is a love I never dreamed would happen to me. But it did, and here we are now, a full year into this wonderful lifetime on Earth and forever in heaven. Its weird actually to think about, one year ago we were experiencing our wedding day, our first few days of being ACTUALLY married, our honeymoon trip to Yellowstone... and I guess I have to say that it really doesn't seem like it was that long ago, and I think I know why. Time flies when you are having fun. And boy oh boy have Josh and I had one fun year! Most of our fun was on road trips to Vernal, weekend get togethers with family, movie nights, date nights, and enjoying every second that Kimberlee and Shaylee spent with us. Our first year of marriage wasn't extremly monumental, but we did have a few milestones...

• We realized we both love airplanes
• We saw Josh Gracin in concert (Josh's first time, Tacy’s 3rd time…)
• We went to Lava over our first Fourth of July together
• We found out we love to go grocery shopping... a lot
• We had our first REAL fight, like one when we don't talk for a couple hours...
• We bought a kitten named Keoke
• Tacy experienced “Snowbird Week” for the first time
• We bought a "nice" TV
• We discovered that Josh likes socks with colored toes
• Kimberlee started kindergarten
• We learned some good communication skills
• Shaylee was potty-trained
• Took our first “family” pictures
• Went and saw New Moon together (Team Edward!!)
• After three attempts, Josh found a job at a place he loves
• Tacy still has not met McKay in person (a month and a half to go!)
• We bought a couch
• We learned to budget our money
• Josh came closer to being debt free
• We bought a Wii
• We discovered there are two different ways to do chores
• Small water heater = shower together, save water :)
• We drove to Las Vegas for a trip
• Tacy went to her first Jazz game
• Tacy received her Endowment
• We moved to a larger, lovelier apartment
• We bought a kitten named Bella

Plus a lot of other crazy fun days that were very exciting. This year was packed with some of the best moments of our lives, and we hope our blog entries help us to remember them in the many years to come.

New Decorations and Fun at the Park

Sunday, May 2, 2010

So Josh's family has a friend that does vinyl lettering, and boy oh boy do we appreciate all she does! We ordered some new things from her and put together these plaques that we painted for the girls' room. Enjoy!
Oh, and we had some fun at the park a couple weeks ago - here are some pics!

BYU Women's Conference 2010

This week I went for the first time to Women's Conference down at BYU. Josh's family goes every year and I was so excited to go with them. It was Candy, Jamie, Heidi, Tiffany, Hilarie, Grandma Dance, Janine, Shelley, Joanna and me. All ten of us had a wonderful time together. All of us except Jamie drove down together in a suburban and had such a great time on the way there. We got there and met up with Jamie who had driven up from Vernal the night before. Opening Se3ssion was great and Julie Beck (Relief Society General Pesident) was a great speaker. Our firt class we went to on Thursday was "There are Two Lasting Bequests We Can Give Our Children: One is Roots, the Other is Wings". It was pretty good and was given by a woman and her two adult daughters. Then Jamie, Tiffany and I tried running to the next class we wanted, "The Work of Creating SomethingBeautiful", but we couldn't get in. So we had lunch and went early to the next class. The class was good, "Choose Your Love, Love Your Choice." It was about loving your spouse in all kinds of life situations. I enjoyed it. Then closing session came and Renata Forste was the speaker. She was hiolarious and I enjoyed her talk very much. She spoke about self esteem and how commercials were geared towards women improving themselves, but men commercials are about recreational acivities. It was a very insightful talk. Before she started,an namd Daniel Beck sang a couple songs and he had a great voice. Afterwards we grabbed some dinner and then headed to lower campus to do some service kits. Janine, Joanna, Shelley and I boxed up hygeine kits for a while, then met up with everyone else. They wanted to go back and do more kits. So we went back and got split up. Jamie, Tiffany and I end up on an assembly line for school kits and it was a ton of fun. Hilarie had been walking a ton that day and ended up having swollen ankles. We grabbed some EMT's and asked for an ice pack. They asked why and we showed them cute pregnant Hilarie's swollen ankles. AWW! They helped us out and we made sure she was taken care of. We had to go to the concert, so we tied them on with some caution tape. HAHA. Hilarie was a great sport about it though, I'm glad she had such a good time. We took off to the concert and got there just in time. The other ladies had saved great seats. Hilary Weeks, Alex Boye, Dallyn Vail Bayles, Michael McLean, Mercy River, and the Fab 5 (cloggers) performed. My absolute favortie was DAllyn Vail Bayles. His voice is very similar to Josh GRoban, and his performance was amazing. His wife had thier baby like the day before and so he had such a cute story to tell about almost not coming to perform nd how she told him he needed to stay and being on the phone during the birth. He only sang a couple songs so he could get on a plane and home to his family and newest little boy. He sang this song about his son that was wondeful! I'm going to try finding it online. I also enjoyed the Fab 5, they are great dancers! It was a great first day and we all fell asleep very quick! Well, except Jamie who had to stay up to write a paper. YUCK! Sorry Jame...
Friday morning was little bit of a slow start, but it was good. I had mini waffles at the hotel that were wonderful. We were a tad bit late toopening session, but it was okay. The speakers were Barbara Thompson and Silvia Allred. They spoke about humanitarian efforts and charity works. They shared tos of videos and stories about Haiti, Chile, Katrina, Samoa, some parts of Africa, and the Dominican Republic. The stories were incredible and I really enjoyed both of thier talks. Our first class we all went together to do service and listen while we did it. But once we got there they only had one room open, so only one class was being broadcast. Darn. Heidi and I decided to g to another class instead, "Sacrifice and Selflessness in Marriage". Jamie and Tiffany met us there after staying behind to proof read and turn in Jamie's finals paper. The talk was good, but not what we expected. It didn't seem to fit the topic we thought it was about either... so it was a bit confusing. But all well. We skipped the second class again and had lunch instead. The third class we went to was by far my favorite of the whole two-day conference. It was called "I'm Thankful to be Me" and was given by Janet Preece Gleave and Rosemary Thackeray. It was amazing, and we took like 5 pages of notes. I learned a lot about loving myself and not putting myself down. The biggest lesson I learned was if I wouldn't say it to my best friend, don't say it to myself. And also, to learn to take and give compliments without saying things like "thanks but I wish I would have...". Be sincere! We headed to closing session, but grabbed ice cream along the way. I got a ix of cookie dough and peanut butter cup. My two favorites besides vanilla :) Clossing session was really good, and the speakers were Elder Dallin H. Oaks and his wife Kristen M. Oaks. She is the cutest lady ever! Such a sweetheart! Thier talk was enjoyable and really captured the theme of the whole conference, which was "Choose Ye This Day to Serve the Lord" Moses 6:33-34. And then we sang I Know that My Redeemer Lives. It was a wonderful ending to such a great conference. Thanks to everyone for coming, I hope you all had as great of a time as I did!

Tacy 26th Birthday

Josh and I celebrated my 29th birthday over a couple of das, because that weekend was SO busy. On saturday he took me to lunch at Rodizio Grill. His friend from work, Adriene, and his wife Caitlyn came with us. We had a really great time and got super full ! The best thing we ate was bacon wrapped turkey. I also enjoyed the roasted pineapple, roasted tomatoes with parmesean cheese, capresse salad, and sweet and spicy chicken. That is definately a place we want to go back to someday. We also went tothe Ogden temple with Josh'd parents. I'm glad we went because they are going to be doing a major reconstruction on the temple soon and it was nice to go there before. On Monday we made home made pizza, and that was divine! Birthdays are always so fun! Oh, and you get one blurry pic thats cute, and one clear pic that we are making goofy faces.

Velise and Zander Birthday 2010

So my neice Velise and my nephew Zander are 11 months and 2 weeks apart from each other. And my sister usually does thier birthday parties together, for now anyways. Once they are a bit older she will have to split them up. This year she had a BBQ at the park and was generous enough to feed everyone hamburgers, hot dogs, and brats. Along with homemade pasta salads and chips. It was wonderful! We didn't get to eat much because we were so full from our lunch earlier (see next post!) but it was really good. And the kids had a great time. Here are a few pics I got. (I should have taken more!)

Josh's 29th Birthday

I know I am a bit behind, so I thought I would catch up really quick. A couple weeks ago we celebrated Josh's 29th birthday. He requested lasagna for dinner and Tiffany came down to hang out and spend the night. We were able to have Kim and Shay that weekend too, and Josh loved having them there on his special day. We spent the weekend playing heroes, being lazy and spending time with family. Josh really had a great birthday.

Newest Member of the Jackson Family

Friday, April 16, 2010

Meet Bella... more pictures to come!! She is either always sleeping, or bouncing around like crazy. It has been hard to get a good picture of her. HAHA She is 10 weeks old and is a Tortie colored Lynx Point kitten. We love her so much already and her and Keoke have already started to be close buddies. They play together everyday, eat each others food, chase each other around, and are just so funny together. Keoke has never been around other animals and he has been really good with her so far. He plays a little rough sometimes, and tends to put her entire head in his mouth at once... but he is learning. He's about 3x's her size, but he is barely only a year old... so he is still a baby too.

Easter Weekend @ the Binghams

We spent Easter weekend in Vernal with Jamie and Jake and thier family and everyone had such a good time! The kids got along great and we only had one tiny pants wetting incident. WAHOO!!! I huge improvement from when we were there six months ago and the girls wet through every pair of pants we bight. SIGH. But this weekend was great! On Saturday we took the kids to the Dinosaur Mueseam for an Easter Egg hunt and they had a ton of fun. We stuffed all 10 of us into Josh's car since Jamie's was having trouble. We did pretty darn good! The kids got lots of eggs and then cashed them in at the end for prizes. Afterwards we went to the park for another Easter Egg hunt. There were thousands and thousands of real dyed eggs all over. There were also tons of kids. I was with Shaylee and Josh was with Spencer. The rest of the kids were at thier own start lines according to age. When they finally said GO! it was madness!!!! we ran so fast and ended up getting just three eggs. Spencer and Josh got two, Baylie and Jaxon got two or three each and Kimberlee got just one. She was quite upset until we let her know everyone got just abuot the same amount. This hunt seemed like it would be fun, but didn't turn out quite that way. It didn't seem too well orchestrated. HAHA. But all well! This weekend was also General Conference and so we got the chance to listen to our prophets and teachers. There were some great talks and some very inpiring testimonies. We all enjoyed it very much. Heidi and Jordan drove down Saturday afternoon and it was really fun to have a bunch of us there together. We missed Dad, Darin, Chandra, Camille, and of course McKay. On Easter morning the kids had a fun time doing an Easter hunt we put together at the house. Jake got everyone together for some very meaningful scriptures and a video about Easter and what it means. The kids seemed to enjoy it a lot, and I thought it was a great Easter morning message. We went to Scott and Debbie's house for lunch, all 13 of us! They prepared an amazing Easter meal and it was just wonderful! The potato salad was amazing. Shaylee discovered she likes cooked cabbage and artichokes. She was eating them like crazy! And Josh tried asparagus and liked it. YAY. We watched the last session of General Conference there and it was great. Afterwards we put the pinata Jamie made up and the kids took turns hitting it. They love pinatas! Sadly, we did have to head home. So after a few more minutes of playing on the four wheelers, we said goodbye and got packed back in our car. We really did have a great time. Thanks to Jamie and Jake for having us over!