Baseball and Orcas Island with Kyle and Jenna, camping at Deception Pass

It's been a full few weeks since we got back from Oregon! We had a few days at home to get ready for Kyle and Jenna's visit, and on Friday they arrived for dinner. We went to the Mariners/Blue Jays game on Saturday (the 4th, very American activity on Independence Day:-D). Kyle and Jenna's kids wanted to get to the stadium early because they were giving bucket hats to the first 10,000 fans, so Nathan and I went down there with them around 11:20 (we got the hats, phew!). We got some food, walked around the stadium - it was the first Mariners game for all of us so it was fun to explore. Brian, Lynsey and Adam came later, right as the game started since we didn't think Adam would last the whole game. It turns out he did great! He was quite happy to sit there and have his snacks and the occasional wander on the concourse. We got very fortunate with the weather as it was sunny but not too hot (and our section was in the shade fairly early on in the game, too). It was a really fun experience, although the Blue Jays fans in our crew weren't too happy with the 11-0 blowout by the Mariners:-I. That's sports for you! You never know if your team is going to perform! I think they still had fun, in spite of the result!

Sunday Kyle and Jenna went to the game again but we didn't go this time - one baseball game is enough for this family! They were back for dinner and we took a walk to the Hartman Park afterwards, those kids seem to have endless energy! Monday we drove to Anacortes and took the ferry to Orcas Island. We had packed a lunch to eat at a waterfront park in Eastsound, the park wasn't as nice as I was hoping but we just hung out by the water for a bit before heading up to Mount Constitution. It was a bit hazy unfortunately so the views weren't as clear as I've seen at other times, but it was still really nice. We drove down to Obstruction State Park and walked down to the beach there for a bit before heading back to the ferry terminal. We had time to have a snack and a drink at the shop right there, and the Knelsen kids went to the gift shop. We went to a Thai place for dinner in Anacortes after we got off the ferry, a nice dinner to cap off our time with Kyle and Jenna. They got up at 5 the next morning and drove the whole way home, very ambitious of them! We had a great time with them and hope they come again, maybe next time the Blue Jays will show up a bit better for them (they unfortunately lost the Sunday game, too:-/).

Tuesday was spent getting ready to go camping on Wednesday. The camping trip actually went pretty well - I enjoyed it more than I thought I would! Brian had taken the boys camping last summer but I hadn't gone since our last big trip with the big group before Andy and Kristy moved back to Australia, so summer of 2022. I had been having some back trouble as well so I was just not looking forward to sleeping in the tent on top of all the work that goes into getting ready for camping. We had good weather, mostly sunny although not as warm as I would have liked. Everything went fairly smoothly and Deception Pass is just a beautiful campground with numerous beaches you can walk to and one that we drove to on Thursday morning that has tide pools, Rosario Beach. Unfortunately low tide was at 6:30am so we didn't get to see the best stuff by the time we got there at 10:30. It was still a cool beach. 

We got back yesterday and spent the afternoon doing laundry and getting everything cleaned up to put back in the shed for next year. I actually think I will go again next year, I slept much better than I thought I would. I have a cot with a memory foam mattress (known by the rest of the family as "the queen's bed") and I was fairly comfortable - I have definitely slept worse camping. The key for us is to only camp for 2 nights, even though it is a lot of work to set everything up for that short amount of time. It's still essential for my enjoyment for it to only be 2 nights vs the 3 nights we always did when we went with the big group.

Brian starts his new job on Monday! He is a bit nervous but I'm sure he will do great, it's always hard to start a new job. Hopefully he gets settled in and becomes comfortable quickly and he enjoys the new position. He has to travel to Virginia next week for a few days before we make our drive to Alberta, hopefully that all works out okay. I am happy to have nothing really going on for the family until our drive to Alberta on the 23rd! It's been a fun three and a half weeks, but I am ready for a bit of down time now before our next adventure:-D.

    

Cannon Beach and Twilight House Vacation!

We just got back from a really fun vacation to Oregon! We left last Thursday and made our way to Cannon Beach, Oregon, where we stayed at the Hallmark Resort right on the beach in front of Haystack Rock. The weather forecast was so grim that I was bracing myself for a lot of dreary days with rain, but the weather actually was much better than anticipated! The first day we took Adam to the beach with a bit of light drizzle and he was not thrilled but he came with us. We went out for dinner and had some pool time in the evening. Friday we actually had some partly sunny weather which was great! We went down to the beach a couple of times, even got to witness an elk family hanging out right by us in the grass:-). Had some pool time in the afternoon, went out for dinner and then decided that we would have our beach fire that night since it didn't seem too rainy (we had told the kids we were only doing ONE beach fire since it's so much work lol). We set up our canopy which was nice because it did drizzle occasionally. It was a fun evening on the beach!

Saturday the weather was much the same, periods of sun, periods of drizzle. We just hung out and played some video games, watched some TV, went to Bruce's Candy store (Nathan's one request!). Had a lovely dinner at the Driftwood. Great last day in Cannon Beach! 

Scroll down past these pictures for details and pics of our stay at the Twilight House:-D.

Sunday we checked out of the Hallmark Resort and killed a few hours in Cannon Beach before heading over to St. Helens for the long awaited stay at the Twilight House! For anyone reading this asking what on earth the "Twilight House" is and why we would want to stay there, it's the actual house they filmed the first Twilight movie in, and modeled subsequent movie sets after in the rest of the movies (they didn't film the rest of the movies at this house). Someone bought this house several years ago and started renting it out to Twilight fans to stay in, smart people! I reserved two nights a year ago (they release 3 months at time and they sell out literally immediately, I got pretty lucky!) and I was so excited that it was finally time! It was a bit of a surreal experience, we got there around 4pm on Sunday and there was still a pretty steady stream of people coming up to the house to take pictures of the outside. It was a bit awkward talking to a few of the groups, you could tell they would badly have wanted us to invite them inside to take photos but it was just too weird! Brian was shocked people were still coming to see the house after all these years, he badly underestimated the Twilight effect haha.

It was a fun few days, we pretty much just hung out in the house and watched ALL the movies (Brian and Nathan were such good sports, even insisting we had to watch them all since we were in the house!). The house was so well decorated, it felt very authentic. Brian normally doesn't love staying in vacation rentals (he prefers hotels) but even he was impressed at how well stocked it was, how clean and how well appointed - we really had such a great stay. And there were 5 bedrooms so each of the kids got their own rooms! Lynsey got Bella's room of course, this was the best room in the house - perfectly replicated. 

Since every vacation has to have some drama, we did have some issues with Adam and his repeating on this trip. He had been so looking forward to this vacation that he was pretty wound up by the time we got there. We did feel like he unwound a bit every day, and for the most part he actually was pretty chilled out by the time we got to the Twilight house. We weren't sure how he would like it there because there wasn't really anything for him to do since he obviously isn't going to watch the movies with us, but he actually really loved just hanging out in his room listening to music and watching videos. 

Another drama we had was that on Sunday on our way to St. Helens at a bathroom stop, the front tires of the van were turned so you could see the inside of the tires and Brian decided to take a look - and let's just say it did not look good:-l. We knew we needed to replace our tires and were fully planning to do it before our road trip to Calgary later in July, but we were not aware of how urgent the situation was because the part you can see when the tires were straight didn't look too bad. We drove that last hour or so in a bit of tension as we were now worried that our tires were a ticking time bomb, and we decided we would have to replace the tires in St. Helens while we were staying at the Twilight House:-/. Not ideal. We called Walmart when we got there and unfortunately they only had the very cheapest tire in stock, which is not what we would have chosen, but we didn't know if we would have a choice. Thankfully we called Les Schwab first thing Monday morning and they had a better tire in stock and were able to install that morning. Still not the tire we would have chosen if we had more time and flexibility, but a decent enough option. Brian took the van down there and was back by lunch. We don't really know how long the tires had been in that dire of a situation but by all accounts it would not have been a wise (or safe) choice to chance driving all the way home. We were quite happy it was done for the drive home!

Another fun vacation for the Kroekers! I feel like these family vacations will become harder and harder to plan so I am not taking this family time for granted, grateful Lynsey still wants to come along:-).