Portland to Tillamook to Home

This weekend started early and finished late. I would have given a full update yesterday if I had the time. This is my last week at work in St. George so I have been very busy trying to finish up by Friday. Last Thursday we started our annual exodus to the Oregon Coast. It was a little different than previous years living in St. George. We had to drive two hours to Las Vegas where we boarded a direct flight to Portland, Oregon. Thursday evening around dinner time we landed in Portland and meet Adam and Claudia for dinner! Adam treated us to pizza! It was so good considering Rachel and I have been starving. Then after dinner we walked all over downtown Portland. We went to a park where Crew had his first elephant encounter. I was extremely impressed with the buildings and design of the city of Portland excluding the freeway system. The historic part of downtown is exactly what we are trying to create at Elim Valley. We spent the night at Adam and Claudia's apartment and Claudia treated us to a wonderful breakfast Friday morning. Crew enjoyed eating an apple with Claudia and Adam headed off to work and we moved our way back to the Portland airport to pick up Sam and his boys at 12:30pm. To pass the time Rachel, Crew and I spent the rest of the morning and a small portion of the afternoon at Ikea! That store is awesome.

Once we arrived in Tillamook we took a little nap and waited anxiously for the rest of the family to arrive. Then all 25 of us went to dinner at a little roadside diner. The food was good but the family time was better. Crew really enjoyed seeing Eliza, Caleb and especially his Grandma VanderSloot. Saturday morning the Crabbing games began! Rachel, Crew and I were on a our boat for most of the morning. Crew really moved his arms, hands and feet every time we brought a crab trap to the surface!

Our boat only caught 16 crabs compared to the day high of 30. But even without the hight numbers we had a lot of fun. These pictures were taken after we arrived at the marina. This was our biggest crab of the day! As you can see Crew thought all of this was really fun.

Then after the crab harvest we spent a few hours at the Tillamook cheese factory. We had a ice cream cone and sampled all kinds of cheese flavors. Then when we went back to the hotel I felt really fat so I went for a four mile run through the Oregon country side. Then we had our annual crab feast and enjoyed the fruits of our day's labor. There is nothing like fresh crab especially when you have worked all day to get it. In the morning we drove back to Portland caught our flight and headed back to St. George!