Monday, October 24, 2016

Summer 2016 Recap

Fall is here but I wanted to do an update and tell you all about my summer. I’m so grateful. I mean just beyond thankful, for the summer that I had this year. You all know how rough last year was for my family and this summer was the complete opposite. Everything was perfect and I think I can officially declare that the summer of 2016 was my best one yet!

I’m disabled, my Dad is retired, and my Mom is a teacher so we are lucky enough to get to spend summers at home together. We spent a lot of time in the pool, reading good books, watching fun movies, shopping and playing our favorite board game – Monopoly! We spent a lot of good quality time with each other and also went on a lot of adventures. We also played some mini-golf and went on lots of hikes and walks.

We took a short vacation to our favorite coastal town in Oregon, Newport. We spend 2 days there and it was really nice. We spent a lot of time on the beach and actually ended up sitting on some driftwood and watching California Gray Whales off the shore for a couple of hours. They were feeding but kept breaching and it was so much fun to watch them. We took Cooper, our dog, with us and he really loves being on the beach just like the rest of us. We spent some time shopping on the Newport Bayfront, which was fun, and then explored Ona State Park, which I think is one of my new favorite places in the world. It was a short trip but the majority of it was perfect!

July 17th was an important day of celebration in my household because it makes my Dad’s 1st ReBirthday!

He still has cancer but he’s doing so much better now. We celebrated with gifts and cake, just like we would with any other birthday. It was such a happy milestone for our family to reach.

We started kayaking this summer and we went many times. Kayaking has become one of my all-time favorite hobbies! I really love it. It makes me feel at peace to be on the water and the physical act of paddling makes me feel so strong and healthy. We’ve been to so many beautiful places and been lucky enough to explore them from the water. We were going at least once a week, but often twice, and we loved every minute of it.

We also went camping. I don’t love camping but I do love being outdoors and getting to spend some quality time with those I love. We ended up having fun even though it was pretty cold and there were so many spiders. I mean, I get that there are spiders outside and I’m okay with that but there were more than you can even imagine. Cooper isn’t a huge fan of camping either. He ended up spending most of his time wearing his coat in front of the fire and sitting in his camp chair, LOL! We did have a nice time, though. We took the kayaks because we camped right on Diamond Lake and the water was great. Cooper rides in my Dad’s kayak and one morning he tried to chase some ducks that were on the water and ended up soaked after he jumped in after them. He was so confused and it was adorable. We got a good laugh out of it! He still loves to kayak, though.

If you’re ever in Oregon and want to go kayaking you should definitely check out Spring Creek and Lake of the Woods. They have been my two favorite places we’ve been so far.

Pretty much every single day was full of love, laughter and time spent together as a family. It was perfect! Except for the last two weeks of summer when I got West Nile Fever. It took me quite a long time to recover but I'm back to normal now.

I'm sorry this post is a bit late but I had a hard time picking out which pictures to share. We took so many! Anyway, how was your summer? I hope your fall is off to a wonderful start!

No comments:

Post a Comment