The Beach!!

WARNING: This post contains a ton of pictures. Some of which were taken by Melissa Bell, Spencer Ririe and myself.

We decided to go to the beach for a day. We went to Astoria first and climbed the column.

The pictures on the side tell the story of Oregon.
We bought some planes to throw off the top. I love Melissa's face in this picture.

The wing of the plane

Melissa wrote her name on her plane so that she could find it again.

The column

Mom & Dad at the top

Kimber, Melissa, Mom and I

This picture is out of order but this is us going back down.

Getting ready to throw my plane off. It went pretty far with the help of the wind and to far for me to retrieve.

Spencer and his plane. He didn't really throw his. He just let the wind take it so it didn't go as far as some of the others.

Melissa and her plane.

Kimber

Tom at the bottom

Mom & I

The bridge over to Washington. Try holding your breath across that baby! It is pretty hard.

After the Astoria Column we went for some lunch at the Bowpicker. We heard about it from Erika and Kari. It is a boat on a trailer in the middle of a parking lot.

The fish and chips were quite delicious.

We then went to Ft. Stevens and walked along the beach by the shipwreck. I didn't want to carry my flip flops so I put them in my back pockets.

Melissa & I. She loves to take feet pictures for some reason. :)

The ship

BOO!

Oh yeah I'm so cool! ;)

And of course you have to carve your name in the sand while at the beach.

There always has to be jumping pictures too! This was kind of hard turing for the camera.

Yay for the beach!

Me, Melissa, Thomas, Mom and Kimber

I love just walking along the beach and listening to the waves. I could do it forever!

Me!

We also went to the bunkers (or whatever they are called) and walked around.

Jumping!

Melly :)

Ahhhhh!

In one of the dark rooms. I love how weird I look in this picture. Ha ha!

After Ft. Stevens we drove out to Seaside.

I insisted on going tot he Candyman. They have 170 flavors of salt water taffy which I love!

So many flavors. The had some new ones too. Like black widow which was black licorice and red cinnamon. (Yuck! Melissa loved it!)

I spent $10.40 which is about 2.5 lbs of salt water taffy. So worth it! :)

We also got ice cream cones. 75 cents can't beat that! I got mountain hunckleberry. So delicious!

Our feet again!

I love water! If there is water I am usually in it!

A nice stroll on the beach. It was such a great trip and I am so glad that we went!

Silver Star Mountain

While at home I also hiked Silver Star Mountain with Mom, Dad, Spencer and Kimber. It was a lot of fun! The mountain was covered in mist and there was due on all of the flowers and plants. There were a ton of beautiful flowers!

So much dew!

So pretty!

There were so many flowers! The hike was alonga cliff but because of the mist you couldn't see down which made it less scary I think. Unfortunately it also blocked the view. The view is supposidly amazing as you hike up.

Tiger Lily

Wild Iris

One of my favorites!

Mom, Kimber, Dad and I.

Someone made a rock arch over the trail.

Mom & Dad

You can kind of see the drop off to the right but it is covered in mist

I love the color of these. I'm not sure what these are called though.

Inside out flowers

I thought these were very cute

Lupin

Probably my all time favorite wild flower

There was tons of Lupin on the hillside. It made me happy! :)

The mist cleared for a little bit and we got to see the beautiful sky.

At the tope we sat and ate our lunches and waited for the mist to clear again so that we could see the tops of the mountains. There were quite a few people up there waiting and one of them was this cute dog Dixie. Her owner gave me some of her treats and let me feed her. It was way fun.

This is where we hiked to. That tipy top. If you look close enough you can see two people standing up there. The clouds did clear a little bit while we were up there and we could see the tops of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainer, and Mt. Adams. We didn't get to see Mt. Hood though which was a shame.

This was on the way back down when the clouds had cleared a little more. That peak is where we climbed to.

The flowers were so pretty. It was well worth the hike just for those.

Powell's Bookstore

While I was at home we decided to go to Powell's Bookstore in Portland. We drove down to IKEA and parked there and then rode the Trax to Pioneer Square and then walked the few blocks from there to Powells.

Best Buds.

Waiting for the Trax to come.
Melissa, Kari and I.
This is a new shirt that I bought at Kohls for $6! I love Audrey Hepburn!

On the Trax

Powell's! It is supposidly one of the biggest book stores on the west coast!

Mom browsing! There are so many good books here!

One thing we like to do is make a list of all the books that sound good. There are always a ton of books that I want to get but I can't afford them all so I write them down and then check them out from the Library and read them and if I really like them then I can always buy them later. I wrote down the title of 50 books this time! That should keep me busy for a while. :)

So Melissa came up with this little game. One person takes another person and puts their back to a book shelf and the person has to reach behind them and grab a book and the book they grab they have to read. We decided to do it in the Young Adult section because you are pretty safe there. Melissa, Mom, Kari and I all did it. We were kind of nervous that somone would stick us in front of a whole bunch of Vampire books but no one was that cruel. :)

Reaching back for my book!

I pulled off Moonglass. It actually looks pretty good. I think it is a newer book though because I couldn't find it at my local Library so I might have to wait a little bit before I can read it.

Kari reaching for a book.

Mom and her book, well sort of. Mom is really picky about books so she kind of just picked a book off the shelf.

Melissa grabbing a book.

Melissa and her book Vintage Veronica.

It was a very fun trip!

Les Miserables

I finally got to see Le Miserables!!!

We bought the tickets months ago and I planned on going home after my internship so I would be home to see it. Well I then got hired and didn't think I would be able to go home because I didn't think I would be able to afford it but then Spencer and Kimber decided to go home for Spencer's 10 year high school reunion. So I got to see it along with Mom, Dad, Melissa & Tom.

The play came to Portland years ago but my mom thought I was too young at the time and wouldn't let me go. I have waited FOREVER for it to come back to Portland and it finally did. This was a 25th anniversary production and I guess it was a little different than the one my mom saw but she said it was maybe even a little better.

The play was at the Keller Auditorium and right across is this fountain. We got tehre early so we could get parking and then we sat by the fountain. There were people actually swimming at the top.

The play was absolutley AMAZING! I can't even put how amzaing into words it was. The cast was awesome the set was awesome. It was all just so awesome! :) They had this really cool screen that projected the background of the scenes like the one above. It really added to the set. In one part when the towns people were marching down the street the cast just marched in place and the picutre on the screen moved making it appear as they were walking. It was very cool.

So excited! (this is kind of a weird picture. I don't look very excited but I am!!)

We actually had pretty good seats. We were on the floor. We have seen a couple of other plays at the Keller Auditorium but we were always way up in the balcony and sometimes had to use binoculars to see but this time we didn't!

I loved loved loved the musical and hope that I will get to see it again and again and again!