We Are Young

Posted by kara

“We Are Young” was the theme song of our car trip. Martha requested it nonstop. Toshi would then request “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay” as soon as “We Are Young” would end. Although, one could argue that we heard the Little Mermaid on CD more than both those songs put together. Oh, Flounder, don’t be such a guppy!

We left on my mom’s birthday and came back on my dad’s birthday! We drove as far as we could without stopping… we barely made it to Portland. Anyway, overall the girls traveled fine. Sure there were a few constant “Are we there yet”s and a little bit of barf, but the snacks, the books on CD and the iPad definitely came in handy.

First up: Florence. We had just enough time to stop at a beach-ish place (freezing) and a Japanese restaurant that served Chinese food and fortune cookies. But kids ate FREE! That pretty much won me over. And the udon was yummy. And the good fortune was nice. Poor Paul always gets fortunes that aren’t fortunes.

Florence/Camp Lane: In the morning we had a good breakfast (girls were excited to get milk) and stopped at a family fun place called the Sandland Adventures. We dropped some mad dough and whizzed through the mini-golf at record speed, then Toshi rode the go-cart with Paul, then we all rode the train around the grounds.

After Marf’s nap and some delicious A&W, we headed to CAMP! It was so cute with a welcome table and bunting hanging everywhere. The girls were eager to get to the water, especially since that is where Mandy was. So Paul took them in the water. Later Mandy told me there were crawdads in there that were bright red and sometimes crawled over your feet. SO glad I didn’t go in. After that I GOT TO SEE ARIANA! Oh it was good. Toshi and Marf played in the kiddie pool, played baseball with Luke, and did other stuff that I didn’t see because I was talking to Ariana and Matt. There was a movie of the Mandy + Luke’s special wedding day (so beautiful), dinner, lovely toasts, and pie in jars. We stayed until Toshi spotted a single star. She was so excited. Ariana and Matt walked us out. It was sweet — all of it. The girls had SO MUCH FUN. Toshi found a couple of boys to play with, so now she keeps asking me if she can marry them. Oh boy. It was a great time. So perfect. So Mandy + Luke. Love them!

To Tillamook: We drove up the Oregon coast, and stopped in Newport. We went to the aquarium, saw the most terrifying thing (Japanese Spider Crab! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!), saw cool sharks, and other stuff. Toshi made up a song that goes to the tune of “Kiss the Girl” from Little Mermaid. I think it goes, “Sha na na na eggs wake up…” There were many verses but I don’t remember them. Then we had a mediocre lunch at the famous Mo’s chowder house, and headed up to Tillamook. Once there, the kids went swimming with Paul and I got some groceries.

The next day we did the Tillamook cheese factory tour! The girls would have been happy just playing with the steering wheels on the penny-flattening-design-imprinting machine. We finally got them to move along. The self-guided tour would have actually been pretty cool, but I didn’t get a chance to read everything. I liked watching the packaging floor, although I was hoping they would have explained what everyone was doing. Ah well, their cheese samples made up for it. Then we got some ice cream. Note: old fashioned vanilla was not that good. Martha had her first cone and it took her for-eva to finish eating it.