we're back!

What a trip! We had a great time, but we are tired and need a vacation from our vacation. We drove to Silverton, Oregon in 3 days a little more than 2 weeks ago, stopping in San Diego to see Grampa and Vovo, then in Sacramento, and then made it to Silverton. Just a note for those of you who have infants, when Yahoo says a drive will take 8.5 hours, with a child it will take you on average 11 to 11.5 hours to complete that drive. We found this out in California. Overall, the drive wasn't too bad, but Kate refused to go to sleep in her PNP at a normal hour for much of the trip, and this meant some late nights for us. But we were on vacation, so that also meant lots of naps for us!

We spent a few days in Silverton, where we caught up with family, and we had Kate baptized that first weekend we were there. On Tuesday we met in a park for family photos (and when I say family, this is not your average-sized group: we had 20 people there, I think, and that's just Tim's immediate family!). This went pretty well considering there were 11 children amongst the masses. After that we packed up and headed to the coast for 3 days. We spent some mostly rainy days in Seaside (if you've never been to the OR coast, many days spent there are rainy), where we introduced Kate to the Pacific Ocean, and we relaxed with family. From there, we drove to Seattle for a very short visit with a couple of friends. It was great to see Seattle again, but I wish we'd had more time! We'll be back over Labor Day as we will be attending Christy and Jonas' wedding. Back to Silverton for a couple more days, and then we began the long drive home. We decided that we ought to take 4 days to return, and that worked out better for all of us.

Kate was pretty happy to return home, and is enjoying sleeping in her very own crib and playing with her toys. But I think she misses all of her cousins and wonders where everyone is.

Grampa feeds Kate.

Cowgirl Kate.

More photos later, as I'm having trouble with the blogger site at the moment...