i promised, remember?

let's not even talk about how attempting to edit a blogpost about our trip to oregon from my phone resulted in erasing all of what i'd written and reordering all of our pictures from one post and completely deleting another one. lame.

so, finally! only a month later...filling in some more of our trip through my other camera...if you want to see some of our other beginnings to our trek you can look at this post, although all of my brilliant words and the correct chronological order of the photos is no longer.

and the good news is that finally everything is uploaded and ready to go, so i can knock these posts out!

saying goodbye to our girls (note sad ruby's face- she was not thrilled to see us go) and our valiant babysitters, papa & grandma

i know i already posted about one of the first parts of our trip,

but here is our awesome camping site in the midst of the redwoods.

to be honest, i did not sleep well in our cozy tent under this canopy of amazingness 

(as my tired face will attest in the following photos)

but it was still wonderful to wake up surrounded by this beauty.

i used to think all camping photos were cute, and then i got old and puffy. 

not so cute anymore, my friends. 

whoops! 

first we accidentally reserved the wrong kind of campsite 

(i take full responsibility for this misstep, 

but let's just keep it at the fact that no, 

we do not own a disability placard and maybe the state park website 

should be a little more clear about needing one of those to reserve this spot. 

luckily we were only staying one night, 

we pulled in after 9 pm and the campground hosts were kind and took pity on us.) 

then, we started a forest fire.

or at least we almost did. matt's ancient little campstove began leaking while we were heating up water for coffee, ignited, and started a little fire on our table and the ground. it was kind of intense and scary but my eagle scout husband saved the day by putting out the flames quickly. 

goodbye burnt camping stove thingy and burnt up bag situation.
(you can tell i am not a camper since i don't even know what the real name for the items in this picture are called)

after successfully averting a visit from smokey the bear,
i shot some pictures of these crazy beautiful trees!

attempting cuteness but just looking tired, posed, and baggy-eyed

goodbye camping trip!

(thank you rangers for being nice to us in our lameness)

goodbye california,

hello oregon coast!

hello, hike through the dunes that didn't really lead where we thought but gave my quads a crazy good workout and almost became a death march but we were smart enough to turn around when we did...

hello, hike through the dunes part two that also gave my quads a crazy good workout and almost became a death march but then didn't because we finally stumbled out onto this gorgeousness!

wow.

super windy & super beautiful

(insert here: long walk back through dune sand, three hour drive up the coast, blasting mumford and sons, getting our keys to a cute little beach bungalow, and a walk down the stairs to another incredible beach. no big deal.)

guess what you can't really do with two small children?

go for a two hour walk on the beach.

so guess what we did since our kids were hundreds of miles away?

exactly that.

for dinner we went to the rogue brewery & i did a flight of beers 

(who is not a beer drinker? me. when in rome, my friends...)

hello, crazy awesome views from our table at dinner:

yep, still our view from dinner

(insert: an episode of friday night lights, a good night of sleep, 

sick belly for my husband :( and a drive east to mcminnville)

cute little town

but matt felt crazy sick,

so i was hanging solo

while he was in bed sick all day

matt rallied for dinner even though he was completely sick

and we went to this great restaurant, thistle

how cute?!

slightly obsessed with this wallpaper

matt gets a+ for effort

dang the food was so good, but most of my pictures were not,

so the couple that did work will have to suffice:

yum

super yum

and way super yum

(peach leaf panna cotta)

matt needed to crash after dinner,

but the night was young

and i was feeling adventurous,

so i went to the rooftop bar at our hotel to enjoy the view and write for a bit

me and my date, a glass of cider

as we looked at this fun view

(i never really go places by myself; maybe a coffee shop, but never a bar, restaurant or the movies. 

how about you?)

i snuck back into our room and entertained myself by watching tv online 

and catching up on blogs while sick husband slept off the ickies. 

more to come!