Oregon - 1st of Many

We took a big family vacation to Oregon this year.  We spent a very full two weeks hanging out with Jacob's parents and exploring.  This will just be the first post of what I'm sure will be many.  I took a lot of photos and we did a lot of things.

We had to leave our house at 5:30 am to catch our flight out of Denver early Friday morning.  I was hoping the kids would just sleep in the car ride down there.  Not so much.  Then I thought, maybe, just maybe Ben would nap on the plane.  Not so much.   But they did a wonderful job traveling.  They were mostly happy and well behaved.  I was grateful.  I was also grateful that we got put in all the fast lines for checking our bags and security.   It was the smoothest airplane travel I've had.  I tried to take a few pictures of Ben on his 1st plane ride, but they weren't great.  And somehow I didn't get any of Isaac.  

When we arrived in Portland Grandma took the boys to look at the planes taking off from the parking garage while Jacob and I worked on installing car seats into his parent's truck.  I thought the picture of the three of them was cute.  As exciting as being on an airplane was for both boys (Isaac loved it!) they were both ready to be done too.  They enjoyed this quick breather to stretch legs and climb before being strapped into car seats for the drive to Jacob's parent's house.  Ben definitely fell asleep on the ride there.  Poor exhausted babes.  I think Isaac was on excitement overload and didn't sleep a wink until bed time that night.

I was happy to see that Ben warmed right up to Grandma.  He snuggled with her after his nap that afternoon.  She liked it too.  He's normally not a stranger person but he was okay with Grandma almost instantly.  I'm not sure if he's actually capable of remembering her from her visit in March but it seemed like he might have.

And she was certainly a hit when she pulled out her banjo to show the boys.

We kept it pretty low key Friday to try and recuperate from traveling.  I don't know if it worked or not.  We had some difficulty adjusting to the hour difference in time and even though they were up somewhat late that night we still got an early wake up call from Ben.  I think it was 5:30 that first morning.  Ouch.  That's not great sleep.  But what can you do?!  You get up and go to the forest, that's what!

Jacob's parents bought some land in the forest about an hour away from their home.  They are in the middle of building a home on the property and have done a lot of work caring for the forest, making trails, cleaning out unwanted plants and weeds, and such.  It was really fun to be up there after hearing so much about it.  And, they have a tractor and a 4-wheeler.  The boys were in pure heaven!

Isn't their home lovely?  They were working on picking out paint colors for the exterior, you can see the paint swatches by Isaac's head.  The inside was all framed out on this first trip and by the next weekend up there it had wall board.  Fun to see it in process.

We explored the alder grove area of the forest and hiked around a bit.  It really was beautiful.

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These boys also loved being with Grandpa and learning from him.

But most of all they LOVED the tractor and quad rides.  L.O.V.E.

I was not a fan of driving the tractor.  It's bumpy and scooping the dirt is way harder than you might imagine.  It did not come naturally to me.  I did, however, love the 4-wheeling.

Jacob was a fan of the tractor.  He took the opportunity to move some dirt and wood.

Isaac also liked moving the wood, albeit a little more manually.  They liked watching their daddy driving the tractor too.

Then Grandma took Jacob and I into the forest for a little shooting.  I've never actually shot handguns before.

Can you tell I was nervous about it?  Turns out, it was a lot of fun and I'm a pretty good shot to boot.  I think I had the best set of the bunch.  Just sayin'.

Jacob got a little tutoring from his mother as well.  He's a pretty decent shot too.

And then it was time to go.  It was amazing how much fun we had.  Jacob and I were surprised we were able to fill the entire day at he forest and not get bored.  The boys helped Grandpa back the tractor into the shop to call it a day.  They were sad we had to wait a whole week to go back.

After being at the forest all day Saturday we were grateful for a Sunday day of rest.  We went to church (turns our Chris Taylor from high school days is in Jacob's parent's ward.  Weird.  I didn't have much of a chance to catch up with him though.  It was just kind of weird anyway...what do you talk about after 10 years?), ate some delicious home made pizza, and put the kids to bed on time.  It was a nice, relaxing day.

We also decided to keep Monday pretty low key too.  We took a stroll around a park near Intel (I think?  What isn't around Intel in Hillsboro?  The Intel campus is HUGE) that has a great pond with ducks.  The boys loved it.

Jacob had to keep a tight grasp on Ben because he was trying to jump in the pond with the ducks.  Ummm, no thank you.  That water is nasty.

We were going to try and go to the library that is right near the park but Ben started melting down, tantrums and all.  He was over tired.  Can't blame the kid but man he decomposed so quickly.  One minute happy as a clam, next minute crying and screaming...for the next 10 minutes.  I think he might have cried the whole way to Winco.  If only he knew the bulk section he was about to experience!

Regardless, Jacob had to carry Ben back to the car and the library didn't happen.  But we had to stop and get some groceries for the week, so Winco was a must.

That afternoon, after Ben's nap, we went swimming at one of the neighborhood pools.  We didn't take any photos of that.  I should have thought to bring the camera but probably wouldn't have taken pictures anyway because we were both so busy keeping boys from drowning.  Priorities, right?

Grandpa made the vacation for Isaac by bringing out his train set.  They spent many an hour working on the tracks and running the train.  And Isaac couldn't have loved it more.  We are grateful Grandpa was patient.  I wish I had his patience and calm demeanor.

Stay tuned for the next installment of photos!