The '07 Oregon installment, part I

We recently spent a fantastic week in Oregon with our friends and family. Our adventure began as we sat waiting in the SLC airport for our flight to board. After awhile, we heard our names announced over the loudspeaker instructing us to go to a different gate than where we were waiting. Apparently, our boarding passes had the wrong gate number and there were a lot of anxious people waiting to fly to Portland in our place. Needless to say, we were the last ones on a very full plane so Paul and I didn't get to sit together. I was already so nervous about flying with D and this did not help me feel any better. Well, D did amazing on the plane. He didn't fuss once. The man sitting next to us kept remarking about what a good boy he was and told us more than once that we should give him an extra special treat that night for being such a good boy! What a relief! We arrived as scheduled in Portland and headed south to stay the night in Salem with the enormously hospitable Snyders (senior) after a slight change in plans due to some non-kid-friendly black mold at our original destination and sick kids at our backup destination. After a truly hideous three hours of sleep that night (D was up ALL night...ugh), we packed our gear and headed to the beach house with the Snyders and the Shambaughs.


The Oregon coast is absolutely amazing. While the boys fine-tuned their skimboarding skills in the icy water, the girls and the babies kicked back on the beach and played in the sand. D loved the beach and quickly added "beach", "sand", and "starfish" to his vocabulary. The ocean air was so invigorating and the warm sand between my toes made the brisk breeze very tolerable. We spent a very lazy afternoon on the beach.




Paul's brother and family joined us at the beach house that night and the next day we took the kids to a fabulous aquarium (I can't remember what it was called). One really cool part of the aquarium was where you walked through a series of glass tunnels with various ocean life swimming all around you - even sharks! In addition to the ocean life, there were some scuba divers cleaning the glass. They waved at D and he cautiously waved back. He loved it! He loved all the fish and crabs and sharks and otters and birds. It was really a lot of fun.



After the aquarium, we had a delicious local lunch, said one last bitter goodbye to the beach, and headed back to Salem for the night. Just that little taste of the Oregon coast made us determined to become millionaires so we can afford a beach house on the Oregon coast some day!


The next morning we headed back toward Portland for sweet baby Isla's blessing. It was fun to catch up with everyone and have all the kids together, even though D was very intimidated by the incessant screaming matches between arch enemies Liam and Makenzie!!




After some good conversation and even better sweet rolls, we began our long descent to sunny Medford...