A Week of Play With Grandkids

Clayton and Jen had asked for us to return to Oregon after our stay in Canada so that we could help with kids for a week. We needed to arrive in time to take our grandson to an ice-skating birthday party on Sunday.

We left Canada on Saturday morning so we could visit Dale’s cousin in Seattle. Of course, U.S. Immigration didn’t like some of our food, after I’d carefully gone thru the list of permitted food on the Homeland Security website. Crazy!!! The immigration officer said that we could not rely on the permitted items on the website, and we were given more current information. We decided that we will not bring any fresh veggies or meat across again. It is just too much hassle.

We made it to Seattle by early afternoon and after visiting our cousins we picked up food. It was a great find, we went to the little local Chinese restaurant and found that they made everything in a gluten-free version. We ordered everything gluten-free so that we could share.

After a night in the last Washington rest-stop before Oregon, we made it to Milo McIver State Park. We couldn’t stay in the local county park because we were not going to stay in the RV every night. 

We got to the park and were told that we could only camp until Friday, as the park was full for the weekend. The ranger gave us a list of available campsites and we grabbed the 1^st one. We dropped the RV, grabbed our clothes (everything was dirty), and left for our kids’ house.

It was only with minutes to spare that we arrived to pick up Fynn. Fynn got his stuff, we got the address to the ice-skating rink and we were on our way.

The week was jam-packed with activity; taking care of the babies, making meals, getting big kids off to school and back, taking them to their various activities. But watching the babies participate in gymnastics, playing games with big kids and things like jumping on the trampoline was lots of fun. Dale taught Fynn to play chess, we played lots of Mexican Train and Uno.

The big kids had a school holiday on Thurs and Fri. We took them to our RV and spent Thursday night camping. They had great fun running on the trails in the campground.

On Friday morning we packed up the RV and drove the county campground near Clayton and Jen’s house. We left a forest for a crowded campground. We were happy to be close to the house but sad to leave the beautiful state park.

The kids wanted and we promised to take them to the pumpkin patch, they wanted to go thru the corn maze, eat roasted corn, ride the train, eat honey sticks and drink a milkshake. On Thursday we only had time to walk the maze so we promised to go back on Friday. On Friday we stayed and played, doing everything except eating roasted corn. We had to go back on Saturday for the roasted corn. There we found the best gluten-free apple pie that we have ever had. Unfortunately, there was no apple pie left by Saturday. Alas.

 

On Sunday, we had breakfast then packed up the remaining things and headed on down the road.