On Sunday night, July 6, 2025, the whole family, from Grandpa to babies Noah, Soren, and Junie, played the candy bar game together. Each family member received a brown bag, and a hundred or more candy bars were spread across the coffee table. Anyone who rolled a 7 or 11 with our dice got to choose a candy bar. If they preferred, they could "steal" a candy bar from another family member, so long as they correctly named the candy bar and the family member who had it in his/her bag.
The biggest drama of the evening came when six-year-old Thomas stole five-year-old Audrey's giant lollipop. With both luck and relish, Audrey stole it right back again, and laughed aloud as she did it. "I felt like a witch," Audrey said later, "and I cackled." That is as witchlike as sweet Audrey ever gets! Thomas was temporarily devastated, but rebounded with more lucky rolls of the dice.
Audrey plotting her strategy, with Naomi and Noah looking on.
It took some coaching for the little ones to learn how the game worked.
Amazingly, some family members, like Jenny, didn't let the competition and tension get to them! As we acknowledged afterwards, "You forget that you can just go out and buy that candy bar yourself if it gets stolen from you in the game."
We started the day with church at the Rockaway Beach ward, 10 minutes down the road from Manzanita. Family members slipped into the chapel, a few at a time, and we talked together on the grass after church, as the littles ran around and around. There were lots of hugs for the loved ones we hadn't seen for months.
During the quiet Sunday afternoon, while others unpacked and settled in, Dave and I drove north to Astoria, to see Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark spent the cold and wet winter of 1805 after crossing the wilds of North America from St. Louis. Dave loved the book, "Undaunted Courage," about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and so we have checked out places related to that expedition across the West. Dave is standing next to a statue of Sacagawea, the Native American guide who aided Lewis and Clark.
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