Trip to Portland

Brian had an acoustics conference in downtown Portland the week before Memorial Day weekend so we decided to drive out there as a family to visit Angela's parents and brothers. The boys had a lot of fun visiting new parks and enjoying their grandparents. Here they are at a park nearby the Pippin's home. This park had a sand/water area where they can make rivers and floods. Travis couldn't get enough of this place.

Here's our climber Lucas.
Travis, Lucas, Angela, and Grandma went to the Porland Children's Museum one day. The kids have been there before and their favorite part is the water area (see below). Here's our climber Lucas again getting into the photo of Travis driving Scoop from Bob the Builder.

They ought to make this wheelbarrow work actually be work, they could profit off of this child labor!

Here's Lucas driving Muck, also from Bob the Builder. Grandma is helping him stay in the picture.

They spent most of the time in the water area of the museum. Lucas loved this pipe thing that would shoot water up and you could direct the stream of water. Unfortunately for Lucas, he always seemed to direct it right at himself. Those water bibs only shield so much.

Here's Travis and Lucas at the make your own river table. There's water flowing down the table and you put in rectangular stoppers to direct the water flow and then put boats down it. Travis loved this table.

Here's Lucas playing in another water thing.

They then played in a digging area of the museum. Grandma gave Lucas a ride in a dump truck.

One evening Angela, the boys, and Angela's parents met Brian at one of the train stations (Brian was riding the train to and from downtown to his conference each day). We got out and saw a steam train display. Brian bought the boys some cute shovels from a toy store downtown. Lucas used his shovel to play horsey (he actually gallops around and says "horsey, horsey, horsey...").

Travis used his shovel to act as the train conductor.

This was an actually decent family photo we had taken. It's not common to get a good one with our active boys.

On Friday, Brian took a break from the conference to go to the beach with Angela, the boys, and Grandma. We went to Cannon Beach. Here's Lucas and Grandma with the famous Haystack Rock in the background. As you may be able to tell, it was quite cold that day due to the cilly wind.

Travis had a lot of fun at the beach too.

Here's the three "boys" pausing during their digging work.

After the beach we had lunch at a nearby park. Here's Lucas playing airplane with his dad (one of Lucas' favorite things to do with Dad).

On Saturday we visited the Oregon Zoo in Portland. Here's Lucas at the elephant exhibit.

Lucas and Mom at the penguin exhibit (no they're not real birds in the background).

One of the cool places in the zoo is the bird exhibit where you can feed the birds some nectar. Travis was a bit timid about having these birds so close to him. At one point he got so nervous when a bird came up to him that he retracted his hand and spilled all his nectar.

Lucas was quite amazed by the whole experience. Now when he sees birds outside he wants to go up to them and pet them. The biggest problem with this exhibit is that the birds drink so much nectar all day that they pee often and a few unlucky visitors get an unwanted shower.

We really had a good time on our trip. On the way out to Portland, we stopped in Boise to visit Brian's Grandma Peterson whom we hadn't seen in many years (she had never met our sons). We also ate dinner and stayed the night at Brian's aunt and uncle's house there in Boise. At dinner, Brian's cousin, and former college roommate (in fact, he and his wife met in the same singles ward as Angela and Brian met in) brought his family over. We hadn't met each others' kids yet so it was nice to catch up.