(By Janie)
Well, I guess I'll try to finish writing about how our trip went.

Wednesday, August 5th, we went west- past Portland and down to Tillamook, Oregon. We toured the Tillamook cheese factory, sampled some of their ice cream (& cheese) and then we headed north west to the coast. We stopped at Cannon Beach. I think this was my favorite stop on the trip. The kids had a blast in the sand and in the water - eventhough the water was COLD! After that, we headed north up to Astoria and went to a dock. There are a bunch of sea lions that just sunbathe and hang out there. They were fun to watch (and listen to) as they fought for their places on the dock. After that, we went over the Astoria-Meglar bridge. It crosses the Columbia River at the widest point and it is about 4 miles long. The clearance below the bridge at high tide is 196 feet! It is very impressive - it made some people nervous to cross it. (Obviously - this is not a picture we took - but it shows the bridge better than we could.)

Friday, August 7th, our whole family (Mer came with us!) we went and toured the historic Ft. Vancouver. It was interesting and the kids thought it was a lot of fun. We also stopped on the way back to the hotel to do what became a Williams tradition in Washington and Oregon - we stopped to pick blackberries along the road. They grow wild everywhere along the roads, etc. It was a lot of fun - if you didn't get caught or stuck on the thorns. It was commong to hear Malin yell out, "Berry bushes!" and the kids would reply, "Let's stop and pick some!" One day on the way home from one of the ball games we stopped on a quieter frontage road to pick. It was a good place, out of the way, etc. We didn't stop to think about it being visible from the highway. It wasn't a problem other than every vehicle from Enterprise that was headed back to the hotel from the game saw us and called to see if we were ok or having car trouble. (There were actually about 10 vehicles from Enterprise up there - maybe 5 called.) From then on it kind of became a joke that if the group didn't know where we were, they figured we were off picking blackberries.

Friday was also our final game - we played the host team (Vancouver, Washington). The final score was 0 to 3. In the final inning with 2 outs, we had the bases loaded and the girl at bat had an awesome hit, it looked like it was going to really go. Something went wacky and it hit the pitchers mound or the edge of the infield or something and basically died right at second base where they could tag the girl leaving 2nd. So...we ended the tournament with no wins, but we felt pretty good about our play. We felt like the girls played competitively. It sounds good to say that the Alaskan team that went on to win the tournament was the team that we went into extra innings with. We gave them a run for their money!

Saturday, August 8th, we left Washington and Oregon and headed back to Boise, Idaho for the night. The majority of the group went to a water park that afternoon and night. We went to the Factory Outlet stores. (The kids finally got to spend some of their money.)

Sunday we left for home - it went fairly well until a certain child suddenly & unexpectedly got carsick. It was Very nasty. She shall remain nameless, but after she got sick, she rode home with us. No fun, but she seems to be better now. (Not a real fun/popular thing to do in front of your peers, but she will survive.)
We arrived home safely - the van ran beautifully. The house was still here, the grass and garden looked great and the grandparents were happy to see us and of course we were happy to see them.

Just like that the trip is over! We are trying (NOT) to get back in the swing of things and get to the work of putting things away and getting back to real life. It was a wonderful vacation and I'd better not go too often. I could get hooked on the life of not having to cook meals and clean house! (I didn't get away from laundry - had to do that a few too many times up there.) It was nice to not worry about things back here - couldn't do anything about them anyway. We did get pretty tired of fast food and snack foods, though.

Overall - a very fun time, a nice break and lots of fun (not too many bad) memories.