Who loves Independence day? We do!

We had so much fun this Independence day. This will be a long blog with tons of pictures. Sorry, I can never decide which pictures to use :). We went to Port Orford OR. to visit my Dad's best friend. We call him R.J. My kids have been calling him Uncle R.J. They loved the trip. Some how I missed taking pictures of his house, which is weird because I was sure I took some when we got there. Oh well. His place was magical. Port Orford was magical. We spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday seeing so many wonderful beaches and meeting all sorts of wonderful people. I mean, look at this beach, does it get much better than this? It is windy on these North Pacific beaches, but they are beautiful.
Saturday morning we went to this beach. We think it was called Dock beach. We can't remember exactly, but it was warm and not to windy that morning. The kids thought it was perfect.

That afternoon we to the The Wildlife Safari. This place was sooo cool. It is in Bandon OR. It is about 20 min. outside of Port Orford. It was so cool. You are up close and personal with the animals at this fun place. There are goats and deer and lamas just hangin out on all the paths around the place. David took the most amazing pictures of this place so watch for those when he blogs them. They are very cool! There were lots of fun animals to see in behind the fences (lions, tigers, bears etc.), but I think the kids really enjoyed getting to pet the animals. The deer were so cool. The little goat in this picture was a favorite of most the kids there that day.

I think Katie and Joelle were in Heaven.

They loved getting to pet this baby lynx. They really wanted to pet the baby tigers and lions, but the line was so long that we never got to do it. They were so cute. I have never seen anything like it. I really wanted to have a baby tiger after that. There is nothing cuter than that, let me tell you.

Here he is, every one's favorite goat :). Jacob was really tired so he never really got into the whole thing like everyone else did.

Dad and Katie are loving the ferret. So cute!

Then Katie enjoyed time with the Possum. She loved touching all the different animals. We had a hard time getting her to leave.

R.J. was so good with the kids. Thy loved him and he was so patient with them. It is not easy to have 7 people come in and invade your home for 4 days, but he was so great about it. He took them for rides in his convertible. Everyone loved their time in his cars. the boys are in the car in this picture, that is why you can't see them :).

He also took them out in his canoe. That was a fun little treat too. This picture is on the lake right in front of his house (literally 20 steps from his front door). He is headed to the opposite shore which just beyond that is another beach and the ocean. I am telling you, this place was literally magical.

This is the beach on the other side of the shore from his lake. I believe it is called Paradise point beach. It was my favorite beach I think. Not for the kids, this one is more for the adults. It has very thick dark sand. The sand was so soft, but since it was so deep it was hard for the kids to walk in. This beach has the largest waves. It was so beautiful. I thought it look like a Prince Edward Island beach, right out of Anne of Green Gables.

Look at that wave. I told the boys that they had to be very careful because this beach has sneaker waves. I told them that people had died hear from the waves sneaking up behind them and pulling them in. Somehow Jake heard it differently and he was terrified because he thought I said dead people would come from the waves and pull him in. I don't know how I explained it the first time that made him think that way, but I re-explained it and we got it all figured out. He enjoyed that beach a lot more after I got it all straightened out.

Here is R.J. with the kids. He really was such a great host.

On the 4th of July the town has a parade. Anyone who grows up in a little town knows about these parades. They are the best. I got lots of pictures for anyone who hasn't seen a parade like this. It brought back so many memories. The kids loved running out to get the candy that was being tossed our way.

R.J. loaned the kids some binoculars for the weekend. Jake even slept with them most of the time.

They had a whole section with a bunch of old tractors like this one. 1946. Pretty cool. Small town feel, it's the best.

These Ladies were so funny. They were totally strikin' poses the whole time.

This was the best float in the whole parade. It was the art gallery float. It was the only one that really even resembled and actual float :).

This was Joelle's favorite part. These horses had glitter all over them. You can't really see it, but it was neat.

This is battle rock beach. this is my mom's favorite beach. It is perfect for the kids. We came here after the parade for the dingy races. That was fun to see. This is also the beach where they do their fireworks display. It was so cool to be watching fireworks and listening to the waves crashing in the background. I want to go every year. We weren't actually on the beach, we were a little higher up but it was still so fantastic.

Same beach, better picture :)

We went to some wonderful friend's of R.J.s For dinner that night and did fireworks of our own at another of his friends house. I forgot my camera (of course on the actual night for which we even went on the trip), but David took his camera and I got some great pictures there. I will blog all about that later. Suffice it to say, that magic dosen't even cover what we felt there. It really was an amazing night.

We came home with about half our fireworks left. We ran out of time the night before because we wanted to go see the big fireworks at the beach. So the rest of these pictures are from Monday night at home, setting off what was left. That was almost as much fun as our trip. All our kids got to light fireworks on their own for the first time.

Katie had more fun lighting than actually watching. She just ran around crazy. Nothing new I guess :)

Hurray for Independence Day!