I've Been A Long Time Gone...Part I: My Last Summer

I actually met my goal of updating my blog today! This makes me very happy. But now...where the heck do I begin? :) It's only been...um...6 months since I updated. So not that much to talk about, right? OK, not fooling anyone there. Let's skip all the pleasantries (hey, guess the song references in the title and win a cookie! :D) and just get to the actual blog post...which I will most likely split into multiple pieces, so you won't be overloaded...and so you can read them at different times. Like this one now, the next one tomorrow, and so on. Or this one today, the next one in January 2017, and the third one sometime next century. Whatever floats your boat. :)

• I was originally going to make a whole mammoth post about my vacation (last summer...wow, it's been a while since I've blogged...), but now I'll just combine it into a bullet, devoid of pictures (which you can find rather easily on Facebook, if you want to see them). Let's see...we (meaning me, my dad, grandma, and Nate and Livi) went on an ultra-fun road trip through California and Oregon, to Spokane to visit my great-grandma and other family. We stopped in Sacramento the first night (that hotel was nice, and dinner was even better...oh, the joys of seafood :) ), which I found out later is where my roommate is from. (Small world...) Then we drove like crazy to the northern border of Oregon...it was a LONG car ride, folks...stopped by my aunt's house in Vancouver (Washington, if only it was Canada... :D), then drove about an hour (including a significant amount of time across the HUGE Astoria Bridge, partly covered by clouds, at NIGHT...the high part was scary, but then it sloped down and before we knew it, we were basically on the ocean, which was cool) to Long Beach (Washington, again...that state really needs to get creative with its names... :) ), where we...get this...got to stay in a lodge! It was kind of old (more like a hotel room), and Internet/cell phone access was basically nonexistent, but it's the freaking BEACH...it was wonderful. :) (Thanks to my Aunt Katie and Uncle Dan for letting us stay there.) We could just walk out onto the patio, and go down the path, and there was the ocean. Yep. I love the ocean. :)
• New bullet! But same subject. (I didn't want to make a bullet that would take the whole page...I'm not THAT disorganized... :D) Anything else about the lovely 2 days we spent in Long Beach? We buried my dad and grandma. And the weather was beautiful. So after that...we drove to Seattle and spent two AWESOME hours there (Pike Place Market...amazing. I wanted to stay longer--and we found a cheese shop across the street! Their "signature" cheese was kind of sharp, but good...and Ivar's is the most delicious seafood stand I have ever eaten from. EVER.), before we had to fight the horrendous traffic to get back on the highway sometime that decade...then we drove some more (about 6 hours this time...which was, no joke, the shortest drive we ever had on that trip...) to Spokane. It was nice being back--we went there about 5 years ago or so (dang, I had this figured out! I'm pretty sure it was 2005...), but this time we got to visit a lot of places close to our hearts (my grandma's old house, my dad's high school, etc.), and even better, we got to spend a lot of time with my Grandma Nana (that's what we call my great-grandma, she's 91), Grandpa Dick (great-uncle? or grand-uncle? help me out here...he's my grandma's brother), and "Auntie Sandra" (she's my great-aunt...or grand-aunt, dang it, she's my grandma's sister...and in our family, most of us kids call all our aunts "Auntie," even me still :D). Yay for family! My Grandma Nana is really sweet, and I hope I get the chance to see her again sometime soon.
• STILL the same subject. Maybe I will just make this a vacation post, who knows...we spent a few days in Spokane...we got to go to a family fun center, and we played minigolf (let it be known, minigolfing with 4 children under 10 and 3 under 7 is a pill and a half :D), bumper boats, and other sundry activities of fun and togetherness. :) We also visited with the Lynds and Turners, two excellent families who we are good friends with. (Cali Lynd, now Cali Walters, just got married...we came a week too early to be at her wedding, darn it...) And after about...3? 4? days in Spokane, we drove back...this time, we stopped at Tillamook in Oregon. Holy cow, that place was my dream...cheese and cows together. I almost died of excessive joy and happiness. :D We got lots of cheese samples, I got pictures with cows both inanimate and living (I even got to pet one! That's almost fulfilling my cow-hugging dream...), and we had ice cream at the end to top it all off. (Plus I got a shirt!) Of course, there was a catch...the road was so twisty out of Tillamook that my cheese samples, cheese curds, slices of cheese we had bought (oh, you bet we stocked up on Tillamook cheese :D) and ice cream ended up on the side of the highway (in fact, like 10 feet from someone's driveway, poor them... :D). I hate my motion sickness. Hate it, hate it, hate it. And so did the dairy products in my stomach that never even got a chance. :)

OK, I have indeed decided to cut this post short and start a new one posthaste. (Love that word! :) ) I'll keep you all POSTED...haha, that was a typically lame pun, as always...and for now, cheese out! :D