Oregon Coast Memories

I feel bad.
A year ago in August my family went to one of our favorite places on earth (and mine and Cody's honeymoon destination) Oregon Coast with my brother-in-law and his family. My brother-in-law and his high school sweetheart are only two months apart, i was in the grade under them (me and my date and them and some others went to a prom together, the best one I went to) and Cody was a grade older and we all went to the same high school. Unfortunately  Cody and I didn't really get to interact with each other much, although he tells me he knew who i was very well :) Luckily we met later and hit is off really well and the rest is history.
Anyways, I LOVE to take pictures so I documented our little family vacation pretty well I thought and got some fun pictures. Unfortunately  I lost almost ALL of the pictures, they just disappeared! *sniff* That has never happened to me, usually I am very careful with my pictures and make sure I have them. But this time they slipped through my grasp! Before that happened though I was able to get a few pictures onto Walmart.com so i could print some pictures.

Our oldest boys!

They just had their third boy. I'm betting on the chance that they will have all boys! And I think that they would be just fine with that! 

My crazy hair!

If you notice their picture says 'thank' and ours says 'you'. I printed these off as a "thank you" to Cody and Nathan's mom's cousin ( I think I got that right) one of the coolest people i know, Eunice, who graciously let us stay at her unbelievably beautiful home (which has an amazing view of Nahalem Bay). Both of us want to make a tradition of going to the Oregon Coast often. Cody and I were able to go see Cannon Beach (our honeymoon spot) and the great resort we stayed at. So many good memories for both of our families!

Highlights from the trip:

• Seeing Eunice's house again.
• going to Wheeler's antiques stores
• A Sneaker wave almost taking Ephraim and Joseph out to sea! (okay so they weren't in that much danger but it was still very scary to us.)
• Waking up early to see starfish
• pulling the boys around on the bogie board
• sand getting EVERYWERE! uhg. (not necessarily a highlight but definitely something I remember)
• Flattening a penny on a train track while a train went by ( which is now taped in Joseph's journal)

Surprise Trip Home!

We decided to go home to visit our families. We went a different way, by the Salt Flats. It was only supposed to be and hour out of the way, but it ended up being FOUR hours out of the way (lots of construction in Nevada)! But we'd never seen the flats so that was fun...and very pretty! It was a nice visit, although I felt so pooped the WHOLE time. That could be because it was was over 100 degrees most days! SO awful! We couldn't even open our windows at night. My sister Bailey also came into town for a school reunion so I was able to see her too. So me and two of my sisters went through the temple together it was very nice! Unfortunately my camera died half way through the trip, I took some pictures with my moms camera, so she has them. We gave Joseph a Hair cut while we were there. But I messed up so Cody cut it into a Mohawk. Jojo's hair only lasted like that for two days and then we buzzed it.

The Salt Flats

"The sun is in my eyes!"

That fixed that problem! What a Problem Solver!

Trying to keep entertained.

Dancing to music... he looks so enthusiastic...

Peek-a-boo

Four kids in a tub

Riding around on a plastic sheet is fun. 'Nuff said.

Papa and Ry looking at videos on Papa's new phone.

Notice Jojo's mohawk? 

Ry... with a tin can on her head....

Camping!

Finally!
We borrowed a tent and sleeping bag from some friends, and we were all packed and ready to go by noon yesterday. We were going to go to place two hours away but at the last minute we saw that there were openings at a much closer and nicer spot... Mt. Timpanogos just past Aspen Grove and Sundance. Luckily there was an opening, usually it fills up fast. We had foil dinners and s'mores for dessert. Rylee explored the area and got massively dirty! Joseph carried his 'pooh bear" {not actually pooh, but that's what we calls him} EVERYWHERE. Come bedtime we realized we would have to be in bed with the kids to get them asleep. It was actually kind of fun just rolling around on the air mattress singing and telling bigfoot stories. And in good Schultz family camping tradition we even checked out Patrick F. McManus books and read some stories from that. We were finally tired enough and it was finally getting dark that we tried to get them to settle down, and lay down. Because we knew it would get so cold we just had the kids sleep between us {We should have bought a king sized mattress!} Needless to say it was cramped, and it took the kids a long time to settle down, but finally they did. Only to have Rylee wake up screaming two hours later! And when I say screaming I mean SCREAMING. non-stop. She's never really done that in the middle of the night, or maybe she has but we've been able to block her out....
She has a horrible diaper rash right now, very horrible. We think she had a bad tummy ache and then went poop and it was hurting her. So finally we changed her and by the time I finished putting her new diaper on she had stopped crying. THANK GOODNESS... we were also pretty secluded I'm pretty sure we didn't disturb anyone. I hope. And of coarse the kids woke up early. We had cereal for breakfast {with those individual cereals, we thought Joseph would like that, I think he did} Then we got ready and packed up, with the intention of explored Uinta National Park but with Rylee's ouchy bum and ridiculously narrow winding roads we just decided to come home. Which was good because I was able to get an appointment for Rylee and Cody didn't know it but he had more work stuff to do.
Overall I really enjoyed it, but I grew up camping and I have always loved it. Rylee seemed to enjoy the immense amount of dirt piling on her. I don't think Joseph really liked it. He kept saying "Okay, let's go home." I think Cody enjoyed it, maybe not as much as me but this was kind of an experiment. We talked about how we now know what more we need to bring. Like a hatchet for the wood. Which I had actually mentioned before we left. Luckily, at the last minute before we left Cody remembered the hammer for the stakes. He used the other end to cut the wood! We for sure needed more blankets. That was partially my fault, we could have had another sleeping bag to keep us warm but I forgot the sheet for the air mattress. I did remember double jammies for the little ones. Plus they had their blankets to help keep them warm.
hopefully there will be many more camp outs in the future!

The Tent will go right here!

We brought the play pen to keep Rylee away from the Fire, but  the pit was pretty kid  friendly.

Cody was in charge of the fire. he did very well. I though we would run out of wood, but he did good!

eating a stick...

She enjoyed the s'mores

he...did not. He spit it out, But he did enjoy the chocolate...

Breakfast!

snacking!

Now we only have two (and a half) more days until Cody's new crazy-scheduled job starts. Then we won't hardly see him or be able to do anything {expect, kind of, on Sundays}. it's only four weeks, but we will miss him so much! :(

Hoogle Zoo

We meant (again) to go camping today... but we all got sick so we decided to go to the zoo where we could be near bathrooms and then go camping later this week.
We had soooo much fun.
When we first got there both kids were so excited, yes even Rylee. I don't know if it was because of all the people or if she knew it was something new... But, at first, when we would see animals I would point them out and she would look and point at them too and then get really excited, sometimes even clapping her hands. so cute! By the end she was really tired and just wanted to get down a crawl. Joesph liked the reptile house.
But by far the best exhibit was the new Rocky Shores. With seals, polar bears, bears, and otters. Mine and Cody's favorite was the Polar Bear. I think it was a tie for Joseph between the Polar Bear and Otters.
The Polar bear was such a show off. He (or she) kept diving in the water and popping up right in front of the kids and pushing off the glass to go dive again. He did it over and over and over, everyone LOVED it.

giraffes

seals {you can kind of see one just under the surface on the left side}

Polar Bear

HELLO, everyone!

watching the seals

tired but still smiling!

We got there around one and left around 5. So many of the animals were in sleepy mode. I heard from a friend once who worked in Pangani Forest in Disney World that the best time to see animals is in the morning because they've just woken up and it's still cool. But we still saw most all the animals (except the Wolves) even if the Tigers were all sleeping! That's why we liked the polar bear so much, he was so playful! Maybe he had already had his nap.
By the Elephant exhibit there was this large wood elephant if you tinkered around with it it would make noises like it was sneezing or something and then spray people with water. Joseph was so intrigued but also very scarred of the elephant. We sat for the longest time just watching other kids get sprayed. After a while Joseph was trying so hard to be brave and try it out. Finally Cody went up to try and help him... he was still frightened, he started crying a bit, either because he was scarred or we finally walked away from the elephant. Poor guy. He has such a tender heart.

Festival of

                              COLORS

I know this is a little late. But we used a disposable camera. I know we are sooo ancient!
Festival of Colors (for those of you out of the loop) Is a Hindu festival celebrating the passing the winter and the coming of Spring. As part of the festival you throw powdered color in the air (representing the colors of Spring!) Spanish Fork, Utah (where there is located a Hindu Temple) holds the LARGEST festival of colors in North America. It took place on several days, we went March 24, 2012. No worries, the powder was a cornstarch base and FDA approved and safe for children!

We had only gotten past the gate at this point. Lots of throwing love.

SOO many people!!! 

We only bought two colors, yellow and orange. That's why you see so much of it.

As a man sitting beside us said "Your son is beautiful; he looks like the SUN!" Yes, yes he does.

Yes, even our little girl got 'patted' with color

Sunburns, blistered feet, stained clothes.... and yet, still so FUN!

Trip to Arizona

It was so warm in Arizona, Rylee's wearing no socks!

Cody's uncle passed away last Sunday. We decided to attend the funeral in Arizona on Friday. The services were beautiful... They made me think of Rochelle a lot. Cody really enjoyed seeing his cousins again after such a long time apart. He isn't necessarily very close with any of them but he was VERY happy that he got to interact with them a lot more than normal.

I have never been to Southern Utah, Nevada, or Arizona so I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed meeting Cody's family that I haven't met yet, even if it was through sad circumstances. We set home on Saturday and made some stops. We stopped at Hoover Dam! Cody had been when he was younger but it had been awhile. It was amazing and disorienting! Tipo enjoyed yelling down the one side and hearing his echo. We also stopped in St. George. I know that the end of my ancestors life, Levi Ward Hancock, was lived around St. George. So we stopped at the temple visitor center (the St. George Temple is SOOOO white especially against the red rock, amazing) They didn't know anything about Levi. So we took a walk around the temple. After we left St George we came across the town of Washington and I remembered that THIS is where Levi lived, so, with a wonderfully patient Cody and I turned off to try and find the graveyard, we couldn't find it but while looking we found the historical museum and a monument dedicated to the prominent early pioneers who helped settle Washington... Levi was among them. They had a relief of his face there so I showed Tipo and told him how he was named after this great man. The picture looks a lot more reverent and romantic then the moment was. ^_^ I was trying to snap a picture before he turned and ran off. ^_^ We left a good two hour before Nathan and Nina, but they got to our apartment long before us! I felt bad! But we made it home and we all were able to get some sleep... how very little it may have been.

Ginger and cousin loving each other