Oregon Trip: Part 2

I feel like I haven't come close to doing justice to our time at the coast, but I'm not sure how without the pictures.  I'm really SO disappointed at losing those.  :(  It was so pretty, and the sound of the ocean right there was crazy.  Mossy rocks everywhere, weird looking plants and ferns I've never seen.  The rain was nice and cool, and we just had such a good time hiking around there.  After leaving the coast, we drove through the mountains a bit, and rain was still falling.  As we got higher, it got mistier and mistier until Jess pulled over to look out from a cliff and the fog was too thick to even see the ocean he knew was right there.

Then we drove toward Eugene, where we'd be staying the second night.  

 

We knew we'd have a lot of driving, so we brought the Kindle with a few new episodes of shows Reed likes-Tumble Leaf, Yo Gabba Gabba, Daniel Tiger, and Curious George.  We ended up stopping to buy duct tape, and rigged the Kindle up to the headrest on Reed's seat, so he could watch his shows, but not reach the screen and keep pausing his show which made him angry.  Ha!  This worked really well, because we drove a couple of hours each day, and he either napped or (mostly) happily watched a show.  I'd also packed new toys and things but those never entertained him for TOO long in the car.  

The drive to Eugene was just getting even more beautiful.  

There wasn't a single drive during our trip that wasn't, but this was crazy.  The sides of the hills were hugging closer and closer to the road, and the trees were getting denser and mossier.  I loved it.  

We saw houses between towns that were perfect for us.  :)  I always hear people comment on how hard it would be to live outside of a town like that, but I'm always thinking how that's my paradise.  Within 20 or so minutes of a town, but off on our own.  Especially when I saw these houses, river and hilly forest on one side, and a grassy field on the other.  

I do think I'll have to stick with living in or near a town while the kids are little, and until we can build our dream cabin home.  :)

When we got to Eugene, I quickly decided it was my favorite Oregon city(of the ones we got to explore anyway).  We went right to the little bungalow we were renting for the night.  It was such a cute place, I wish we could go again with all the kids and stay longer.  There was a little "room" upstairs with a couple of beds, 

and the backyard had a cute treehouse(well platform house really, since no tree was involved), and a rope swing.  

We let Reed stretch his legs for a while in the house and yard...

 

...and then searched for food.  Jess looked up a thai place that was supposed to be good.  Reed and I loved ours, and Jess would have liked his more but it was CRAZY spicy.  Reed was so cute watching his show as he ate.

 

When we finished, there was still an hour or two of daylight left, so we drove around town.  I loved everything I saw.  

 There was the BEST neighborhood up on a hillside looking down on the town, but only minutes from the middle of everything.  The houses had a nice amount of space between them, so you could kind of feel like you weren't in the middle of everything.  We saw a deer walking through one of the front yards.

As it started getting darker we searched for coffee or dessert, and head back to the house to relax and get ready for bed.

In the morning Jess took us downtown to Studio 1 Cafe, which was PACKED, but the service was still good.  We found out why it was so busy-our food was great.  Jess was gross and got a salmon scramble and I had a farmers market eggs benedict.

Reed shared.

When we got done with breakfast we had a nice little walk downtown.

We found a cute little park for Reed to run around.

Also a slug to take a picture of and send to the kids.  

We stopped for cupcakes before leaving Eugene.  Mine was glittery and strawberry, and very good.

When we were walking to the car we saw a sign that we also needed a picture of for the kids. 

 

One of Reed's silly nicknames we've given him is Smeed.  Paige especially likes to call him that.

We left, and headed for Bend.  We had a couple of hours of driving to get there.  That first hour or so outside of Eugene was the most beautiful place.  Yes-even prettier than everything I'd seen before.  It started out looking like this:

As we drove, the trees hugged closer and closer to the road, were COVERED in moss, and the river was visible every so often.  

Eventually we found a place to pull over, where a little trail followed the river.  Since this was the most beautiful place on Earth, I have a lot of pictures from here, so I'll save it for part 3. 

Ten Year Trip-Part 1

In April, Jess took me (and Reed, since he's still nursing and I'm not ready to be away from him overnight yet at his age) to Oregon.  I've always known I would love Oregon.  It seemed like something out of a fairy tale, not to mention I love cloudy skies.  I've never understood the love for sunny days.  I honestly don't think I could get tired of the grey weather.  Since our ten year anniversary was coming up, Jess decided it was a good excuse to take me to Oregon, to finally see it in person. 

We went early, in late April, since we weren't sure if our anniversary would fall during graduations and things, like it usually does.  So we worked out babysitting for the big three, and feeding for Gia, between the grandparents and aunts.  On Wednesday morning, we headed for Vegas and the airport.  Reed was good, and also wide awake, for the drive there.  We had an easy time getting through the airport, and Reed was such a cute little traveler, wearing his own backpack and carrying Moono through the airport.  He was still awake and cheery as we boarded the plane.  He waved to everyone on the plane, already in their seats, as we made our way down the aisle.

We were next to a young single guy, who did a good job hiding the fear he probably felt at sitting next to us with our toddler.  I have to say, I was pretty nervous myself.  Reed is fantastic and so good natured, but he is active, not hyper but busy.  We also chose the hardest age I can imagine for having to fly.  Big enough to want to be independent, and move around, but not big enough to understand why he has to sit still.  Thank goodness he played with his toy Moono...
 
...and happily organized all the papers and magazines in the pocket of the seat in front of me, until it was time to take off.  

 
Once we started moving I fed him, hoping he'd fall asleep.  He was awake, but starting to look sleepy.  When we got off the ground, the rougher movements of the plane got him excited at first, and he balled up his hands into fists against his chest and started sort of growling.  I think he was trying to mimic the sounds the plane was making.  Then, pretty quickly, it actually lulled him right to sleep. 

 

I held him as he napped, and tried to read a bit.  He woke up just as we started the descent, and he was calm and happy for those last few minutes of flying.  It was such a relief that he did so well.  He cuddled me for a minute just after waking up,

while looking out at the sea of clouds.
 
 He liked looking out the window with us as we came into Portland.

 We got our rental van, and went straight to a restaurant.  Jess had planned ahead a bit, and wanted to try a place called Gravy.  Breakfast food for lunch, which I love.  I later regretted ordering pancakes, even though they sounded good.  They were great, but I should have been more adventurous, since I think pancakes are good everywhere.  Jess had a really good and unique biscuits and gravy though.

Reed picked at our meals, and had some fruit and fresh apple juice.

Reed seemed to decide he was king of Portland, on the walk after lunch.
 
Before leaving Portland, we went to the Japanese gardens.  We put Reed in the hiking pack, which turned out to be good because we had a decent hike to get there, uphill, and the gardens themselves involved a good walk.

  It was SO pretty.

  I was happy to find a pond that did have koi.

Reed liked the fu dogs best.  :)
 
When we left the gardens, we headed for Corvallis for our first night, where we stayed.  We drove around a bit..

...and checked in to our hotel.  We walked from there to a cute little downtown area and had dinner at Laughing Planet Cafe.  This was probably the place where we ate our most interesting meals.  I had a Bollywood Bowl, which was really good, and Jess got one that I thought was amazing.  It was a bowl with mashed potatoes and kale, topped with kielbasa and a mustard-stout salsa.  It blew my mind.  I couldn't stop eating from his.  Ha! 

The next morning we got a muffin and coffee from a really cute coffee shop.  This was about the time we started noticing how incredibly friendly everyone was.   People told us all the time how nice the people in the midwest would be, but I did not find that to be true.  Everywhere I went in Oklahoma I smiled at people, and very rarely had anyone acknowledge me, let alone smile back.  Our neighbors were amazing, but other than that I was not impressed.  In Oregon though-every single place we went multiple people smiled and chatted and were just SOOOO nice.  Every time it happened we just looked at each other like "WHERE ARE WE?!!"  

After our muffins and coffee, we drove a bit more around town, and then headed for the coast.  Corvallis was such a cool town.  It ended up being one of my two favorite cities out of the places we stayed.  After exploring, we headed for the coast.  We had a little drive to get there, and Reed was great for it.  The views everywhere were beautiful.  So green, with so many trees, and mist.

 

We had fun at the coast-it was chilly and grey, and so we were just about the only people around most of the time, and we loved it.  We walked around, looking for shells, and found some tide pools.  I took some cool pictures of the tide pools and they seem to have disappeared.  :(

We had lunch nearby at a Mexican place, which was pretty good.  The waitress thought we were crazy when we asked to sit outside, because it was so "cold and windy".  We were confused, because there was barely a breeze, and it was nice and cool, but far from cold.  I guess their version of wind doesn't compare to Kingman's. 

From there we headed a little farther down the road to Cape Perpetua.  This place was amazing.  Rocky, and the waves were smashing into the rocks.  It was raining on us, which only added to the experience.  The whole area felt sort of tropical, and there were crazy plants all around us, the coolest trees and ferns.  Since this is getting a bit long, and because I'm having trouble finding all my pictures, I'll stop here for tonight, and leave you with a video and a picture of the boys at Cape Perpetua.

Some Stuff About Neely

Neely continues to be hilarious.  In some ways she seems really grown up lately, but still says and does some of the funniest stuff too.  

I have kept several things she said in a note on my phone so that I could remember them word for word.   So here come some Neely quotes:

1)  After making her pet(stuffed) dog do a back flip-"You're BRAVE girl!  Oh my gosh!"  This one was much more amusing in person, just the way she said it, and the expression on her face.  She really looked amazed, like an actual dog had just back-flipped in front of her.

2)  When Paige claimed to have been being very nice to everyone one particular day-Neely kind of side-eyed her and said "Um, Paige, about that....you were a little nice today."

3)  Looking at Reed thoughtfully, she suddenly told me "We didn't know how cute Reed was, when he was still in your belly.  But now we KNOW!"

4)  One day she drew a picture on Microsoft Paint, and then deleted it after showing it to me.  Later she decided I should have saved it before she deleted it, so she told me in a patient, but disappointed voice:  "I love you....you know that, but....you should have taken a picture of the painting before I erased it.  I wanted you to."  Haha!  The "I love you....you know that.." part was hilarious.

5)   Pretending to be on the phone with me, from the other room:  Neely-"Hi, how ARE you?"  Me-"good, how are you?"  Neely-"Good.  I miss you.  I haven't been seeing you in like, 72 years.  How would it be to watch a show?"

6)  Talking to her about pandas one day, and she asked what they eat.  I said bamboo, and she asked "But what do they WANT to eat?"  I said "Bamboo" and she goes "Oh.  I thought they wanted to eat cheese." 

7)  A joke she made up-  "Why did the butterfly not eat the clown ice cream?"  

                                         A-"because it was allergic to peanuts!!!"

8)  Another joke-"Why did the banana kick open the door?"

                            A-"because it was locked"

9)  While laughing at something funny Reed did, and then hugging him-"I love you, Reed.  You're my bestest, cutest, cutesty friend EVER."

10)  One new expression she's been trying out is "speaking of which...".  The first time I heard her use it was when Reed turned off the tv while we were watching a show.  I told Neely I'd turn it back on if she brought me the controller.  She didn't know it was next to her so she goes "Wait....where IS the contrower, speaking of which?"

11)  This whole last week she's wanted me to play games where we are either the same age or she's my mom.  One day she said "Let's play a game where I'm the mom, Reed's my baby, and you're my kid."  I said "Okay, how old am I?"  She told me to pick so I said "Okay, I'll be....9."  She thought for a second and said "Okay, and I'll be........81."  Haha!  The next day she was 84 and her name was Mimi."  :)

She started t-ball a couple of weeks ago and LOVES it.  She also loves that she has two cousins on her team-Liam and Aivree.  Grama took them each to buy their first pair of cleats, and they were excited that they had picked the same ones, in different colors.

 That first practice was chilly, but she LOVED it.  So cute to watch.  They took turns running the bases, and fielding grounders.  :)

She worked so hard to throw how I'd shown her, aim, step, throw. 

 

She hasn't mastered the timing of those steps, so she ends up stepping, stepping AGAIN and throwing as that back foot comes forward.  I saw one of her throws hit the ground immediately in front of her because she held on to the ball a moment too long, but she didn't care a bit.  Followed it up with a proud looking little spin move and skipped to the back of the line to wait for her next turn.  :)

It was the cutest.