The Start of a Big Trip

In July we took a big trip to Southern California. My parents had gotten a 'trial' timeshare. My mom so wanted to have the whole family together on vacation. But alas, life happened. My youngest brother is on his mission to Charlotte, NC, my other brother and his wife were working their summer away to prepare for the next college semester (they are transferring to the University of Idaho so needed more money) and my sister's husband had some more tumors show up (In April 2005 he was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma) and would have to be in Maryland at the National Cancer Institute for another treatment (his worst yet). With all this I didn't have the heart to tell mom we wouldn't/couldn't go.

Heath was supposed to be in St. Louis for his annual training on the day we were supposed to leave. After checking Priceline for flights we found it would actually save $10 plus 1 trip to the airport if we packed up and all left the morning he flew out to St. Louis. The kids and I would spend that day and the next having fun and visiting my great aunt and uncle in Chehalis. We would pick up Heath in Portland the next day.

I have no idea how we fit everything we packed into that van. We should have gotten a picture but the idea never occurred to me until now. So, on Thursday we dropped off Heath and drove to Olympia. In Olympia there is this park that has trails down to the beach. On the beach there are sand dollars everywhere and I am not exagerating. We just happened to get there at the perfect low tide. What are the chances of that?!?!?!?! How lucky!!! I showed the kids how to tell whether they were still alive or not so they could throw the live ones back into the water. After picking up about 50 of them (I am not kidding) for keepers I told the kids over and over we had enough.

After picking up all the shells and running through all water and muck we sat on the beach to eat lunch and so the kids could 'write in their journals.' I don't know why that was so exciting to them but they loved doing this all week. I had picked up a spiral notebook for each of them at 5 cents a piece. Best 15 cents I ever spent. I gave me 5 minutes of peace and quiet. These were the only 3 pictures I got that day. The camera ran out of batteries and I didn't know where in that fully packed car the charger was put. This was just the start of our camera problems for the week.