Christmas Dresses and Concerts

Chris and I are taking our girls to a Colorado Symphony concert at the beginning of December as well as out to dinner in Denver. We told them that it would be a perfect opportunity to dress up and use proper etiquette skills that we have been working on. Since I traditionally get them new Christmas dresses every year, I purchased the dresses early this year and they gave them a trial run for church today.

Fall Colors

Bungee Vacuum Girl

Kristen offered to vacuum for me one day. I knew that I could do it faster, better, and easier, but I didn't want to discourage her from being willing to help. Lest you leave my site wondering what kind of crazy hairstyles my daughter wears, let me introduce you to her bungee buns. When Kristen's hair is wet, I take scrunchies and bunch her hair into three little buns on top of her head--when she wakes up in the morning, her hair falls in beautiful waves. She coined the term bungee buns, and it has stuck. And the head band, of course, is to keep the stragglers out of her eyes.

No Equality

Kristen was examining the lines on my palm compared to the lines on her palm. "Look, Mom, you have a letter 'A'. That means you're gonna get dead." Yes, thanks. Then she looked at her hand and discovered that she too had a letter 'A'. "That means I'm gonna get married." What?

More Grossness from Kristen

Kristen was in need of a kleenex yesterday because she actually has had allergies. Instead of using a tissue, however, she was trying to wipe her nose with her tongue. I know, gross right? I told her to run and use a kleenex. Her response, "But it is tasty."

Color

So I was explaining to my children this morning that the difference between allergies and a cold can often be determined by the color of your output. If it is clear, it is probably just allergies. If it is yellow, then you quite likely have a cold. Amy stayed home from church today because she was pretty stuffed up. As usual, Misha started begging to have a friend over the moment church was over and all the way home. I told her that Amy wasn't feeling well, and that it wasn't fair for Misha to make her friends sick.

As we arrived home, I asked Amy how she was feeling? Misha was a lot less subtle, "What color is your snot?" She still wanted to have a friend over.

Kristen

I just sent Kristen upstairs to change out of her school's "pajama day" attire into regular clothes. She put her three remaining sweetarts on my desk and gave strict instructions, "Make sure nobody eats these!" Um, besides her, I'm the only one here.

Kristen

Kristen has had a lot of yelling moments lately. I knew when she was two days old that this little girl was going to have some temper issues. This morning was no different. After apologizing and calming down, we prayed together. She started to cry and said, "I wish I could be more responsible." Sometimes her wisdom astounds me, as though she were a grown up in a five-year old body. We talked about ways to stay calm. As I held her in my arms on the bathroom floor, she whispered, "I wish I could just be in your arms all day." So heart wrenching. I told her that if she prayed, she could be in the arms of angels all day while she was away from me.

We're Off to See The Coast--Sunday

Sadness. Kristen had even started crying the night before because she didn't want to come home. And she wanted to go and live with Grandma. And she said she won't miss her mom or her dad. Yeah, sadness.

Sunday morning dawned as another beautiful day. See, I visit Washington/Oregon on these beautifully, wonderful days forgetting about all of the rain on the 300 other days of the year. PLUS, the speed limit is soooooo slow. 55 in Oregon as we drove to the coast. That's absurd. Chris and I decided that maybe someday we'll move there when we are seniors and 55 seems like a fast speed. Until then, I'll visit and enjoy it.

Church was at 11 am Sunday morning. We stayed for a couple of hours so that we would have enough time to get everything ready to go. My children weren't excited to leave nor were they excited to go to church. Grandma made cheese sandwiches for lunch while the girls played outside on the swing and finished carving their fake pumpkins. I think I remember hearing power tools at some point.





And then the tears began:





We said a teary goodbye and took off for the airport. Fortunately it was only ten minutes away because we forgot to leave Grandma's carseat at her house and Grandma and Grandpa had to race over to the airport to pick it up!

Our 4:00 flight got us home at a much more reasonable hour than our trip out when we arrived at midnight our time. The girls were off to bed when we got home and had fond dreams of their trip to the coast.

We're Off to See The Coast--Saturday

Happy Birthday to Christopher.
Happy Birthday to Christopher.
Happy Birthday dear Christopher,
Happy Birthday to you.

We started out with a slow morning on Saturday, that is, after the thrill for Chris of blowing out the candle on his french toast.



The girls helped Grandma bake a birthday cake, and Chris and I headed off to Fred Meyer's for snacks, a few presents, and some grocery items. Yes, he's sometimes around to buy his own presents, though I did give him an Aeropostale shirt just to be as cool as his daughters.



The plan was to meet up with cousins at the Vista House at Crown Point up the Columbia River Gorge. I had been there before when Chris and I were dating, but it was a first for our girls. Chris was happy to share his knowledge about the area including Beacon Rock, further up the gorge.

We met up with Becky (Chris' sister) and Kyle and their four kids: Drew, Kate, Dylan and Tyler; Lori (another of Chris' sisters) and Sam and their two children: Addie and Simon; and Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Roger. After taking a number of pictures and climbing and threatening children to stay away from the edge, we were finally ready to travel to our next destination--Multnomah Falls.

As we caravaned through the gorge past other waterfalls, Chris asked the girls seated in the back seat, "Do you see where Beacon Rock is?" And those of you who know Christopher and his love of information will laugh at Misha's response, "I walked away from that history lesson."

We passed a number of waterfalls along the way, but none so impressive as Multnomah Falls.







Look at that little cutie patootie! Below.



Some of us planned to hike to the top of the falls while others hung around the falls for a bit and then moved on to the Fish Hatchery further up the gorge. We hiked up to the bridge and then I saw one, two, three, four, five kids take off up the trail without any parents and raced after them.



My kids did great on the hike, except for maybe Kristen who hadn't had much breakfast or lunch and was running on empty. I think there was a little peer pressure for the older two who were hiking with their cousins Kate and Drew, and we didn't hear a peep of whining from them. Or maybe they're just getting used to the idea of hiking. Hmmmmm. What could it be? I think there were a few moments when Kate and Drew wished they were at home and not hiking, but we pushed on. One thing I heard on this hike that I've never heard with my girls before was, "Can I pee over the edge?" I nixed that idea.







Great hike, beautiful vistas, good workout.

Snacks awaited my girls at the bottom (our eating schedule was so out of whack), so there was no dillydallying along the way. I'm sure there wouldn't have been anyway; descending a trail is always more enjoyable. Now, on to the Fish Hatchery.



We hung around there for a little while checking out all of the fish, especially Herman the 11 ft long Sturgeon. Yep he was really that big. It was getting late and we had one more stop to make at the Bonneville Dam. The fact that it closed at five and we arrived at 4:40 was somewhat beneficial in my mind. I was ready to return to Grandma's.

The fun continued with everybody joining Chris for a birthday dinner and 35 candles on TWO cakes.

We're Off to See The Coast--Friday

Since our schedule was an hour ahead of the Washingtonians in our group, we were up and dressed and out on the beach waiting for them to finish getting ready for breakfast on Friday morning.







On our way to breakfast, we stopped for a few family pictures. If you have ever been to Seaside before, you'd recognize this turn around spot. Traffic was backed up a bit while we took pictures, but they didn't seem to mind too much. Can you believe my oldest two are almost as tall as me? Crazy.





We spent a couple of hours at the beach after breakfast before we had to check out. We had fun playing frisbee, digging in the sand, and searching for whole sand dollars.



We weren't successful with the whole sand dollars and all of the females in our family need to work on their frisbee skills, but it was an enjoyable way to spend the morning. Amy and Misha begged to play in the water. I finally relented saying, "Don't get wet. Roll up your pants!" Yeah, famous last words.





After checking out, we were waiting for Uncle Roger. I sat with the girls in the car watching this mom trying to corral two young children. She enthusiastically started to march down the sidewalk calling out in a sing-song voice, "March, March, March...." Squish. "Awwww, who let their dog poop on the sidewalk!" Hilarious.

The rest of the day was filled with sightseeing excursions. We visited Fort Clatsop which was the wintering quarters for Lewis and Clark in 1805.



Funny story with this orange mushroom. Misha saw it and asked what it was. The first words out of my mouth were, "It's orange poop." Kids are so impressionable, so I quickly told her I was kidding. But you have to admit, it does look like orange poop.



We drove down to Astoria and crossed the Astoria-Megler Bridge:

The Astoria-Megler Bridge is a continuous truss bridge that spans the mouth of the Columbia River between Astoria, Oregon and Point Ellice near Megler, Washington, in the United States. The span was the last segment of U.S. Route 101 between Olympia, Washington and Los Angeles, California. It is the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.

We then headed south toward Cape Disappointment to view the lighthouse there and then on to see the North Head Lighthouse. It was rather chilly at this lighthouse, rather indicative of a normal day at the coast.



Amy was a little miffed at her father. She was using one of the port-a-potties when Chris came up and starting banging on the door. He and Grandpa thought about trying to tip it, but thought better of that BAD, BAD, BAD idea.





The hike to the lighthouse at North Head was more strenuous though the weather was much more pleasant. We passed an amazing little inlet on the way.







It was time to head back to Grandma's house. We drove to a little town called Clatskanie in Oregon; dining options were limited so we finally decided upon the oddly-named "Hump's" for dinner. I'm pretty sure we went over some hills and through a lot of woods to get back to grandmother's house.

We're Off to See The Coast--Thursday

Chris and I woke to find our children already up and playing Grandma's Wii. Not sure what it was that made Grandma's Wii different, better, or more playable, except maybe the girls like having it on the main floor and not down in the basement as at our house. Grandma was up and about getting ready for work, Grandpa was already out the door, and Chris had meetings around 10:30 am. The plan was to drop the girls and I off at OMSI--Oregon Museum of Science and Industry--for a few hours while Chris had a number of different meetings in downtown Portland.



I tell ya, having a membership at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has really paid off for us this year. We visited the Exploratorium in San Francisco earlier this year, we've been to special members-only nights here in Denver, and now we've been to OMSI. Having so many museums that have agreements with each other for free entrance has been pretty fun for our girls. When I asked Misha which museum she liked best, she replied, "I've never not liked a museum."

We arrived at OMSI just a little before lunch and decided to explore the Turbine Hall first. Click on the link to check out all of the fun activities my girls participated in. We could have probably spent our whole time there and realize now that we missed a lot in this exhibit.









Gotta love that picture of Misha.

We ventured over to the cafeteria after awhile. The selection wasn't stellar, but the girls were happy with pizza, and I had chicken tacos. After sorting all of our garbage, we headed upstairs to a smaller children area. Kristen thought it was great, but Amy and Misha were soon bored and headed over to an exhibit about the body.







We had four hours to spend at the museum and by the end we were running on low. It would have been fun to tour a submarine or watch some shows, but by the time we were ready for them, there just wasn't enough time left to start them. We did venture outside and walked along the river path for awhile.





Chris picked us up around 2:30 pm and we hurried to a bus stop a couple of miles away to meet up with Grandpa Ball who drives a city bus. Our girls have ridden the buses at the airport plenty often but no city buses, so this was a fun, new experience. And to have your grandpa as the bus driver? They stood up at the front holding onto hand rails and talking with grandpa when he made a stop. We rode with him until the end of his route. He gave us transfer tickets to get back to our car; he drove home to get ready to meet us at the coast later in the evening.





Just before we arrived back at our rental car, we passed this open field filled with goats eating and eating and eating. Love the sense of humor.



Our drive to the coast was fairly uneventful except for the road construction, and we were fortunate that it didn't slow us down too much. The trees that line the road were just magnificent. That is one of the things I remember the most about Oregon, it is so amazingly green and beautiful.

We stopped for dinner at Dooger's in Seaside. The last time we were in Seaside, we ate there and the halibut was delicious. I shared a large plate with Amy and Chris shared his plate of salmon with Misha. Kristen had her own plate of fish and chips. Nothing beats fresh fish. The stuff we get flown in here to Colorado doesn't compare one bit.

We stayed at the Worldmark Seaside hotel. It overlooked the beach. My girls would have loved it if I had let them bring swimsuits, but I figured October would be nasty for outdoor swimming. Well, the pool was heated, and did I already say the weather was great? Oh well, next time. Grandma and Grandpa joined us as well as Grandpa's brother, Uncle Roger.