Exhilerating Excursions

My mother came to town for a few days. I like to believe she came to visit me, but let's face it, Noah was the real reason she made the journey out here. :) It was an eventful few days. DH and I were able to get out for a hiking date...something we haven't been able to do since we got here. Grandma was happy for the chance to babysit. On Monday, we spent all day cleaning my house and making some food for the company we were expecting in the evening. For those of you who don't know, I am getting started with a home based business as an Arbonne Consultant. It is a really great company with really awesome Swiss-formulated pure skin care products. Seriously, it is the best stuff I have ever tried...and I've tried a lot of stuff. So, we had a fun Arbonne party that night. On Tuesday, we headed to the coast...and what a day we had!

First of all, Oregon is just beautiful everywhere! We started out heading toward a town called Tillamook on a winding mountainous road through the Coastal Range. We made one stop along the way so DS could eat, pulling off at one of the few random spots that had enough space for a car off the road. (Much of the road had no guard rail with a severe cliff-drop-off directly beside my car...Don't get too close!) When I got out of the car to be able to walk around to encourage Noah to burp...and boy, did he have a big one!...we realized there was a trail leading back into the woods to the origin of the refreshing sound of a creek flowing through the wooded mountains. After just a few minutes of exploring, we got back in the car and headed on our way. It was a long drive over the mountains due to the seemingly endless winding road that didn't even get enough traffic to blow the leaves to the side. What a pretty drive it was. When we got to Tillamook, we stopped for a quick lunch before heading to my mom's new friend's house--who she met on the airplane on the way here from Pennsylvania. This lady has a daughter who had a baby 2 weeks ago and she was coming out to visit her and help with the baby. This daughter of hers is my age, so she invited us over to meet her. After that quick stop, we headed down the road referred to as Three Capes Drive. This is a road that runs along the coast from a town called Pacific City (one of the most beautiful Oregon beaches) north past three different capes. We stopped for multiple photo-ops to attempt to catch the experience on camera. Pictures just don't do it justice. After watching the sun set over the Pacific at our last stop, we dropped my mom's friend off back at her house and headed home. On the way home, we took a faster, straighter route back so we could avoid the windy mountain road in the pitch black night. As we drove along, chatting away, suddenly there was a deer directly in front of my car. With a quick swerve, I avoided hitting it head-on, but it bounced off the side of my car with a loud thud. I was so sure I would have a big old dent to show DH when I got home. After pulling off and catching my breath, we decided to continue down the road and find a place that wasn't completely dark to inspect the damages. When we found light, there was no dent in sight--not even a scratch. Miracles do happen...there is no way I could have hit that deer like I did without leaving a mark--on the car, that is. I'm pretty sure that if I had inspected the deer like I inspected the car, we would not have found similar results. I never realized deer hunting could be so easy! We finally returned home exhausted and still in disbelief.

As if that wasn't enough excitement for one week, we woke up on Wednesday and decided to finally go through and organize the rest of the boxes and stuff piled in the garage that we really hadn't touched much since the big move. Now, I can back into the garage without worrying as much about hitting stuff. I seem to have trouble backing straight.

Thursday morning, we headed to the airport so my mom could meet the plane. Today, I crashed...on the couch, that is...