July

One really long blog coming up...

BLESSING WEEKEND

We had a nice long weekend up in Mesa/Gilbert, Az where family from Texas and Wisconsin came to visit. We ate Mexican food, swam, played games, talked and had a lot of fun, not to mention blessed both Zach and Aubree. The weekend was only the start of a very long month of travel.

ATHOL, ID
My dad lives in Athol with his wife and a lot of animals. Charles loved the area and the fact that they have so much land. He would like to move there some day, he didn't see the winter weather. Juliane experienced her first lake at the Coeur d'Alene lake. We ate a lot of beef from my dad's cows and Juliane enjoyed her first taste of jerky. We enjoyed our time there and we are extremely grateful for the time we got to spend with my family.





SEATTLE, WA
We were in Seattle for about 36 hours and during those hours we went to church, saw the space needle, rode the light rail, went to pikes market. We stayed with some friends and were shown great hospitality.




SPRINGFIELD, OR
We went to Springfield to see my grandpa and grandma. My poor grandma has diminishing health by the day which is why we drove so far to see her. We drove to the Oregon coast in my grandparents RV. We stopped at the Sea Lion Caves to do a little tourist sight seeing. Besides that it was a nice mellow visit. My grandma lit up whenever Juliane was around. Juliane loved riding in the wheel chair and eating the home cooked food.





REDWOOD NATIONAL PARK
Charles wanted to see the Redwood trees so we drove to the park. Well there just happens to be a few trees that you can actually drive through so what did we do well we drove into a tree and out the other side.



CRESCENT CITY, CA
This city has the coolest aquarium I have been to. It is called Ocean World and we got to touch sea urchins an anemone, sea stars, and sharks! Yes thats right we got to pet sharks. Here are a few pictures below.







AUBURN/GRASS VALLEY, CA
We drove to Charles' mission area to see some families that he knew back in his mission days. It was fun to see the area that he was in. We ate at one of his favorite pizza restaurants then drove to the Foresthill bridge. I guess that is the bridge in XXX where they filmed the car falling from a bridge or something cool like that. We then drove up to Grass Valley where Charles lived for a while on his mission. I got to meet one of the families that housed him. I heard some pretty cool stories along the way. We stopped at some of the art work and took pictures. First is just the Auburn sign then there is a picture of Juliane and me with a gold miner then there is a picture of Charles with a Chinese worker that helped build the railroads. These pieces were made with rebar and cement. They were pretty large.





PETALUMA, CA
We stopped in Petaluma to visit some friends that had served their mission at the institute in Tucson. Elder and Sister Martin also known as Jim and Diane Martin live in such a beautiful town with a cow and some chickens in their back yard. I guess when they were younger and had kids growing up they had quite the "farm".

SAN FRANCISCO, CA
We drove to San Francisco to drop of a wedding present to a friend of mine. We got there at 10pm so we couldn't do much of anything. We did however drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. It was fun but halfway across on both I started freaking out. Juliane slept through most of this

SAN DIEGO, CA
We took Juliane to the beach so she could get wet and boy did she get wet. We were only there for one night so we didn't have much time to go anywhere or do anything.






We are so happy to be home and glad we made it back safely. Soon to come Juliane's birthday celebrations.