Down

• Jaeger’s mother, her sister, and their offspring made plans for a family vacation this summer. As mentioned by Jaeger, hail at the Denver airport disrupted our original plans so we ended up flying in two days late. Not only were we late, but the only flight available left at 6:40am which means I had to wake Calvin up at 4am. He seemed excited by the adventure but I wasn’t happy to deprive him of that much sleep.

Ups

• All things considered, I think the vacation went pretty well. We stayed at Oceanside, near Tillamook, OR. I think I might have been the only one to appreciate the weather properly. I’ve been dying of heat in Colorado so it was wonderful to get back to more misty climates. However, it was never quite cold enough that I could justify pulling out the hot chocolate.
• We got back yesterday but I took today off in order to unpack and recover from vacation. I got most of the items on my “to do” list checked off including taking Willow to the vet to get her teeth cleaned and cleaning out the car.
• My herbs didn’t die while we were gone. I was worried about leaving them that long outside without water. While they did look awful when we got back, I watered them yesterday and they look like they’ll recover. In fact, the Thai Basil went a little wild while I was gone. Prior to going, I had harvested as much of the herbs as I could and froze the leaves just in case our trip killed them. Hopefully I’ll get another harvest out of them though. I also have two tomatoes plants. Given that I general grow herbs, not vegetables, I’m having to remind myself not to nip the flowers off the tomato plants in order to promote more leaf development

Calvin Moment

• Calvin enjoyed playing with the three other children that were on vacation with us. They were all older them him but they were very good in helping him play and he ran around in an excited tizzy most of the time we were there. He also appeared to bond with Jaeger at the air museum “the men” went to and afterwards would worriedly ask where “my daddy” was anytime Jaeger left the room. Jaeger went climbing Mount St Helens on Tuesday but Calvin was distracted by a visit to the cheese factory. I’m not sure how much he was able to process of the visit but he was mesmerized by the cheese packing process which we could see through the glass walled balconies. He also highly approved of the ice cream treat afterwards.
• Upon arriving in Portland, we made a quick stop at Target to pick up a booster seat (it was more cost effective to buy a new one then try to pack it in our luggage). I had brought Calvin’s sand shovel but couldn’t fit the bucket in so I thought I’d pick up a cheap bucket at Target too. However, on the same row there was a plastic sand dump truck which Calvin fell in love with. After consultation, Jaeger and I decided it would be an appropriate buy for Calvin to have on vacation. Calvin loved that dump truck. The first day we were there he pushed it all over the beach and kept running into the ocean with it. I was following closely behind and several times had to scoop Calvin in one arm and the dump truck in the other to prevent them from being washed out to sea. Unfortunately, it was a very cheap dump truck and the wheel broke off after a couple of days. Calvin was devastated. Upon returning to Colorado, I stopped by Toys R Us and picked up a sturdier Tonka dump truck which hopefully will last longer. However, even this dump truck has a large number of plastic parts so I’m dubious it’ll last as long as I think it should.