Last sum­mer I was holed up writ­ing Unla­dy­like day in and day out when I wasn’t on shift at the hos­pi­tal. Need­less to say, I didn’t get out and play much with my fam­ily or friends.  I vowed that this sum­mer would be dif­fer­ent.  And so far it has been!

The Hogeweide fam­ily is a water-​​loving fam­ily. We are blessed to live in Ore­gon where rivers run wild  in every direc­tion. We are a mere 15-​​minutes drive from Kelly Point, a recre­ation area where the Colum­bia and Willamette rivers con­verge.  It’s not my favorite since the water is a bit murky and oily from river traf­fic, but the beach is sandy, it’s close to home and it’s the only river spot we play on where inter­na­tional barges and tug boats are cruis­ing within sight. The wake they cre­ate makes for great water play.

Our fave rivers are a bit fur­ther to get to. Like yes­ter­day. The whole fam­ily was off and able to spend the day at Washou­gal River in nearby Wash­ing­ton to cel­e­brate my husband’s  birth­day.  This is one of our favorite swim­ming holes, and if you fol­low me on Face­book or Insta­gram, you likely saw all the pho­tos I posted last night.  Beau­ti­ful place!! Our fam­ily enjoys the cool water of a north­west river and the forests we find them in.  For me, it is rest for my soul, enjoy­ment with my fam­ily and a reminder of the short days of sum­mer we must grab onto in our region of the nation. Sum­mers here don’t usu­ally kick in until around the 4^th of July and are just about wrapped up by Octo­ber when autumn rains begin.  While the rest of the coun­try has endured record highs this year, we get excited if we hit the 80’s or (gasp!) the 90’s !  Wel­come to the air-​​conditioned cli­mate known as the Pacific Northwest!

Dugan Falls on the Washou­gal River, in Washington

I did not intend this blog post to morph into a weather report.  I just wanted to announce that I need to take a blog break and step way back from my online world.  I need to take advan­tage of the remain­ing weeks of sum­mer and get out and play as much as I can when I’m not work­ing at the hos­pi­tal.   I also need to play catch up on a few things like read­ing and I’ll also be doing a bit of house­clean­ing around my blog to get it ready for some new fea­tures that I’ll be launch­ing next month, one of which was voted for by read­ers. I am excited about this evo­lu­tion of my blog.

I will be writ­ing a post for SheLoves mag­a­zine before the month is over for their Rest series (ironic, right??!)

I plan to jump back into the blo­gos­phere  one month from now. This is a long time for a blog­ger to not post and Lord knows I have fret­ted about tak­ing this kind of break when momen­tum for this blog is growing.

But…

My tat­tooed skin loves the feel of the river

I will be a stronger,  clearer writer if I take some rest.  So I am trust­ing my read­er­ship to come back and hang out with me when I return in September.

Until then, I hope you are hav­ing some out­side play time wher­ever you and if you hap­pen to stum­ble into Port­land in the next few weeks, holler at me and I’ll take you to our fave swim­ming hole!

Me at the river with my fam­ily in the background

What are you doing out­side this summer??

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