Trip to Oregon

I am sure many of you out here on the East Coast are dying to know my secret...how did I get my two babies adjusted to the three hour time difference between Hershey, PA and Grants Pass, Oregon in ONE DAY!? I am SUPER MOM... That must be the answer. Well, I am willing to share my SECRET formula.

First, there is some of this.



Then a bit of this:

And then a few hours and a delayed, cancelled and then another delayed flight later (with two more 5 hour layovers and some rerouting to go), you throw in a little of this...

And Voila!! Your kids adjust to the new time zone!! That's right. With two kids under two, we flew three flights, and instead of 9 hours of total travel time, we managed to be in transit for 22 hours!!! WOW we had some tired kids. Eli's not a very good traveller, so we had meltdowns like the one we captured a few minutes of about, oh once an hour. This one lasted about 45 minutes, but one of them on the flight to San Francisco (a 4 hour flight after we spent 4 hours in Chicago) lasted two hours. I am pretty sure every single person on that flight would put me up for worst mother of the year. Or all time.

On second thought, I think I would pass on this particular formula to adjust to the time change. Maybe next time we will have our good friend Nate (an anesthesiologist) whip up something to knock them out cold. That's legal, right?

We eventually made it, and Whit's dad and mom drove down to spend Father's Day with us. We had a great time. These shots were taken at a lodge on the river (we were staying right on the Rogue River) and this lodge also has a fabulous restaurant called the Taprock Grill. Seriously, I sat outside and had GREAT crabcakes for $16! Eli loved the landscaping (with these waterfalls and tons of local artist animal sculptures.)

Right on the other side of the river is a park called Riverside Park. It's a GREAT park, with ducks, (obviously) and LOTS of play slides, forts, etc. It also had this old tractor area which Hugh found neat.

It was kinda windy, but Isadora had fun anyway!

The next day we went to the park with a new friend of mine there (our realtor's husband is a dentist and the dentist he just hired a year ago is mormon and this is his wife--small world.) Anyhow, she showed us the volunteer (or All Sports) park. She is about the nicest person in the world! She came and picked us up, showed us around and made us lunch! The park we went to has a great riverwalk that Eli is on here... not sure how Whit got this photo! It also has a huge play area or two.

Here I am with Dora, talking to my new pal Joy. Her second is named Tian and he's just 18 months or so older than Eli.

Eli loved this slide, and it loved him back! Check out his hair!

Whit's parents babysat while we went to dinner. Fun with grandma wore Dora out!

She woke up shortly after we returned and was all smiles as usual.