FRAZZLED

I honestly cannot figure out why, but for some reason I am just NOT able to fit blogging into my life this school year. I feel frazzled! I never finished all my summer posts... Well, I barely even got started.

It could be all of the physical therapy and and other appointments. We do home school until noon, I eat lunch, and then I am off and running. And I don't stop until the end of the day. It's enough trying to keep up with regular daily stuff. How can I fit blogging back in??

I'll figure it out.

Portland, OR

Our first day in Portland was the stupid fishing day. Thank goodness we had two more days!

We went to the Japanese Gardens in the middle of the city.

It was so pretty!

We went to eat at this place called Pok Pok that Mike had seen on TV.

Crazy Thai food.

Mike and the boys got Voodoo Doughnuts one day.

A little crazy!

We spent our last day around the area of the Columbia River Gorge, 

which is actually in the state of Washington just next door to Portland.

The boys went white water rafting!

Doesn't Matthew look great? LEGIT!

He opted to get out before the last part.

Mike bought the CD with all of the pictures of the big drop:

I love Collin's face!

FUN!!!

I think it was that same day when we went to the fish hatchery.


They had these Sturgeon there:

18 FEET AND 1200 LBS??? CRAZY!!!

They are BIG. And UGLY.

We also went to the Bonneville Dam (which was HUGE).

We went there to see the fish ladders. Fish ladders?? Yep! I've never
seen anything like it. They help the fish swim upstream to spawn.

Very fascinating!

We also finally went to see the big waterfalls.

This one was ENORMOUS!

So beautiful.

(hey! i'm getting these summer posts done!)

The Goonies & STUPID Fishing

Our last stop along the coast of Oregon was in Astoria. We finally got a nice view!

We watched the Goonies that night in preparation for the next day. 

You see, our family has a long history with the Goonies. Mike always thought it was funny to show it to the kids when I was out of town, no matter how many times I said DON'T LET THE KIDS WATCH THAT MOVIE!!! They were little, and there's lots of swearing in it! Goonies trivia says that the word sh** or bullsh** is said a total of 19 times. Hello! Naughty old Mike would show it to the kids anyway. And then when I got home one of them would run and meet me at the door to exclaim, "Dad let us watch the Goonies!!!" They thought it was so funny to get him in trouble. 

The movie was made in Astoria, and we were in Astoria! We started out at the Oregon Film Museum which was also the jail that is shown at the beginning of the movie.

It actually was a jail.

I think the boys did an awesome job posing for this one.

 

The Fratelli's car - Bullet holes the size of Matzah Balls!

Lots of cool Goonies memorabilia...

Next stop was the Goonies' house. Gotta do the Truffle Shuffle!

SO FUNNY!

The house was right by the Astoria Column.

The boys climbed the spiral staircase and flew airplanes off the top.

Michael changed his mind, so I went up and threw his plane.

Nice view!

Much to Michael's disappointment, we had MORE seafood.

Note to self: Never get a bagel at a smoked fish place. BLECH.

The last stop of the day was the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. Good times...

Now for the stupid, Stupid, STUPID part. The more time that passes, the angrier I am about it ... SO, Mike has been obsessed with taking us fishing and has been wanting to pay for someone to take us. I always thought it was ridiculous. But he has been wanting this for years. I went ahead and found a place online that would take us fishing in the area. I called and set it up. The guy asked me what we wanted to fish for, and I said I didn't know. I really didn't know! I sounded like an idiot. So he treated us like idiots. 

We met the guy at the water in the morning and set out for our half day of fishing.

When we finally got to where we were going and the dumb guy got everything out, he started setting up the rods. We just sat there. And sat there. And sat there. Mike never let on that he knew anything about fishing. I was starting to think that we were paying to watch this guy fish.

But then all of a sudden he said he wanted each of us to practice reeling in our line. Wow! We would be fishing! Hahaha. Don't be fooled. That was it.

We seriously sat out there for hours and did nothing.

Oh, wait ... we did play cards.

Michael was annoyed with having to wear a life jacket ... and Mike got a nice nap.

It was so LAME. We totally got ripped off. We finally headed back...

...and found out that we had to pay the guy in cash. Oh. My. Gosh.

I won't tell you how much we paid him. It's too embarrassing, and it makes me mad.

The guy followed us to an ATM, and we were done. STUPIDEST THING EVER.

Side Note: This is the hoodie Michael got at Disneyland. He lives in it.

We had planned on seeing the waterfalls after that, but all of us were too annoyed.

So we just went to this huge place on a hill. I can't remember what it was called.

But the view was spectacular from there.

Best part of the day was eating the most amazing sushi at this place Collin wanted to go to. It was so, so, so very yummy! And Michael likes sushi, so he was even happy!

Somehow we found a way to laugh about the fishing.

I don't think I will laugh about the fishing again. It was stupid.