Kayaking

The day of Joe's birthday we were traveling back from Bend to Portland. We didn't get back until later so I hurriedly made him a birthday cake and then tried to write HAPPY BDAY JOE on the cake. I learned I am definitely not a cake decorator or maybe the decorative frosting had issues.... I couldn't get the frosting out of the tube so maybe I should have heated it?? I don't know but it looked ridiculous so then we tried to scrape the lettering off and that just made it worse! We then decided to just make little squiggles all over the cake so it looked festive. We were laughing really hard at this point and then it just got better because we put the candles in right after but the cake pan wasn't cooled off yet so they all started melting and drooping to the sides. It was probably one of the saddest looking cakes I've seen! Oh well, at least it tasted yummy and Joe had a birthday cake and could make a wish!

To make up for this fiasco Joe wanted to go kayaking the next morning and invited me to go with him. I was so excited to go and try out his new kayak on the river. We got to the park entrance and realized we didn't have cash to get into the park and no ranger was on duty. We ended up having to drive around the park until we found the office and had someone get us passes. Then as Joe was setting up the kayak some other guys told us it would take 4 hours! This was bad news for us because we needed to be home in 2 hours to go to the beach with the rest of the family and we had already used up time trying to get passes. We realized though that these guys were floating down on tubes and were going further than us so it only took us an hour to reach our destination. We saw a lot of fish and the water was REALLY cold so I'm glad we didn't get tipped over. The area is so gorgeous up there and I really fell in love with Portland! I would definitely love to live there someday.