Days 7 & 8--The Next Day and the Drive Home

Day 7:

On Sunday, we were pretty wiped out but managed to get up at a decent time. Our friends, Mike and Nellie, stayed in the extra room in our Sunriver house Friday and Saturday. They treated us to breakfast and were all around fantastic housemates for the few days.

We do have some sad news. Saturday night, around 9:30pm, we lost Tom's Grandpa Revel. We are so thankful that we were able to visit him about two weeks before. He has always been a vibrant man and it was obvious he was becoming frail. The visit with him was great. You can read about it in the post, "Visit to the Harbor."

Sunday morning, I awoke to learn that we also lost my stepdad's mom, Grandma Larko in the early morning hours. She was a lovely woman who was always so great to my stepdad and mom.

In case that wasn't enough, we also learned that Tom's Aunt had to be evacuated from her home in Pateros, WA. due to the wildfire that had already consumed roughly half her town.

It was quite a bit to process but with the support of one another, friends and family, we are doing much better. As they say, this too shall pass.

Since we were quite tired, we just laid low most of the day. Tom and I took the girls to Village to look at the shops. Kylin didn't find anything she wanted to buy and is still saving her money. Alora found a book at the bookstore she had to have. Does anyone else think it's great funny that my daughter chose a book out of all the things possible? #proudmama #shesareader #parentingwin

We decided to have some appetizers at the Mexican restaurant in Village. It wasn't very good. In fact, I don't even remember the name of it. Right after, we headed over to Goody's for one more ice cream fix before heading out on Monday. Kylin went with Cookie Dough, Alora Mint Chocolate Chip, Tom Marionberry Sorbet, and I stuck with the delicious Cookies and Cream. Side note, I don't remember ever having Cookies and Cream ice cream before my Auntie Ei gave me some on one of our trips to her house in Katy, TX when I was a kid. It's still my favorite ice cream flavor!

At 6:00pm we met up with the Brittains and the Burtons to play some volleyball. I have to be honest, at first, I was nervous and wasn't very eager to play. However, I pushed pass that...I may have yelled, "Please don't come to me" as the ball sailed my direction, missed the ball about 1, 000 times, and failed many serves. Hey! It had been at least 20 years since I had played. What do you expect!?

In the end, I improved and was dusting off some of my previously used muscles that haven't seen that kind of use in ages. We played 2 matches, each with two games to 25 and a third game to 15. Each team won a match. This ended up being one of the biggest hits of the entire week for our family. It was so much fun to get outside, be active and laugh until our bellies hurt!

The only picture I have from today is three of the teenagers playing volleyball with three young men that came over to use the court when we were done.

Day 8: The Drive Home
This week has flown by! We had to be out of the house by 11:00 am so we got up around 8:00 to finish cleaning and pack up. On our way out, we stopped by to say good-bye to the Brittains. The kids noticed some deer outside. It turned out to be two adults deer and two baby deer. I tried to get pictures of them, but the babies went and laid down under a tree across the street. The adults were most interested in eating but looked up at us from time to time.

Can you see both of the babies?

Who you lookin' at?

About 11:00 we were on our way to Bend. We had to fill up the gas tank and needed to stop at Starbucks then it was Mt. Hood bound. There have been a lot of wildfires in the area. Around Warm Springs Indian Reservation, we started to see a lot of smoke in the air. We could even smell it inside the closed up car.

Usually, you can see far into the distance but not the case today. We passed several fire fighter headquarter signs on the highway.

As we got closer to Mt. Hood the smoke dissipated.

Tom wanted to take the girls to Timberline Lodge since we were so close to it.

 I wasn't thinking ahead about having the camera ready and at the last second snapped the shutter. When I looked through pictures later, I was shocked to even see the sign. I thought I had completely missed it. It's not anything to write home about but it was a small victory. :)

 Rounding the top of the road and coming into the parking lot.

 Timberline Lodge...it is SO cool! I don't remember taking time to read all about the lodge when I was there before. This time, Tom and the girls let me take my time learning all I could about it and noticing the beautiful details that abound in this place. Did you know that all of the iron work was forged by hand?! Talk about a major time commitment!

 I wanted a picture of us with the peak in the background but the girls weren't thrilled with it. At. All. They were fully warned that I intend to take a lot of pictures of them on our next vacation where we will be seeing a lot of historic sites and they MUST smile and be happy about it. Demands = good parenting, right?

 We walked up the trail toward the top ski lift and I was winded after the first few steps but the view was stunning.

The girls humbled me and sat on the mantle inside the lodge for one picture. As you can tell, Alora was beyond happy to do this. Oh, did I just drip sarcasm on this post? Oops!

I loved our visit to Timberline Lodge. Tom and I would like to stay there sometime. I suggested may for an anniversary...we have our 20th next year (hint, hint).

The drive home was perfectly uneventful. Piper was over the moon happy that we were home. She hasn't leaped around like that in a long time.

In two days, we leave for the second leg of our vacation; two weeks in Maryland and Virgina!