Visit from the Parents

 The parentals and baby sister came for a visit last week. The Bobs and Dad rented a beautiful cottage for all of us on the coast (seriously...RIGHT on the coast - the beach was our backyard) in Newport, OR. We had fantastic weather and saw some really amazing things while we were there. 

We saw tons of these white things on the beach and could not figure out what they were. We thought maybe they were jellyfish parts, but it turns out that they are squid eggs. They were EVERYWHERE.

We all went for a morning run on the beach one day - even Anna came with us. We ran and splashed in the water and found our first tide pools.

Anna saved a few starfish by throwing them back in the ocean.

This is only the beginning...You are going to be so sick of looking at starfish and anemones by the end of this post.

All our bending and squatting and jumping muscles were sore by the end of the trip. These were probably the best tide pools I have seen though.

It was a bit chilly...

A glowing slug-like creature that the parentals found on their 5:00 AM date to the tide pools.

We visited the OSU museum and research center and saw an octopus and some HUGE starfish.

We even saw part of Japan. Well, we saw a dock that had floated all the way from Japan in the earthquake/tsunami disaster a couple years ago. James is quite obviously very impressed...or something.

Asian fingers.

Ok, who knew that Anna could make her eyes do this crazy thing?! I found out over lunch while she was 'making eyes' at me across the table. It was rather unfortunate timing because we were in a semi-nice seafood restaurant surrounded by LOTS of very elderly people and when I saw this face, I lost it. Snorting-squealing-crying-gasping-could-not-stop-laughing. Bad. It still cracks me up.

Ok, this is one of my favorite memories of the whole trip. Anna was a bid worried about going to the beach house because the only beach house she could picture in her mind was Aunt Josephine's house (from A Series of Unfortunate Events). If you aren't familiar with the books/movie, Aunt Josephine is a VERY paranoid woman whose irrational fears actually come true at one point in the story. One of those irrational fears is that her glass doorknobs will explode. Well, we just happened to find some glass door knobs... 

And we stayed RIGHT next to Aunt Josephine's house! (For those of you who don't know, this is the house that  takes an unfortunate plunge off of a cliff into leech-infested water.) See below for the real deal. Don't they look alike?!

And of course, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to feed baby sister's irrational fears, so we brought the movie along and watched it after dark in our beach house. 

She wasn't scarred too badly though. We froze away any fears by playing in the ocean - wowie, it was cold. And so much fun.

Looking around at shops.

We found a glass-blowing shop and got to watch a demonstration.

The finished product - absolutely breathtaking. 

James made a new friend...

And Anna grew some new facial hair...

....on her eyes. Weirdo. This is what we had to do to entertain ourselves on the ride back. We took  Highway 1 from Newport to Florence - beautiful scenery - ugly carsickness.

Anna's bed/zoo at our house. She brought all of her stuffed animals. We had to ride with Bruno (the enormous stuffed dog) for hours in the car. 

Strawberry picking! It was the end of the season, so we got everything for free. We found some great berries and made strawberry shortcake with them when we got home.

We also planted our garden, did some home remodeling, saw the new movie Monsters University, and thoroughly wore ourselves out before they left. What fun memories! We are so blessed to have loving parents and siblings.

I helped organize a hike with our Relief Society this last week. We went to Koosah Falls - an amazing hike a little over an hour away from Eugene.

Until next week! Love to all our family and friends out there!