Spring Break '09

Spring Break 2009

Doesn't this picture say it all? (this poor little bird from the zoo is so ugly he's cute)

Monday we headed out for Portland for a trip to the zoo. It was cold and wet and rainy... but we are troopers and went anyway.

*note to self: take a cue from the animals next time and stand under shelter and go inside where it is warm; instead of wandering around outside in the rain watching all the animals watching you wondering why YOU are walking around in the cold and rain!!

After our trip to the zoo and a quick warm up at the hotel we met our friends the Birnel's at Big Al's bowling alley and I finally got to hold Finn!! Yay! Last time we visited the Birnel's I was sick and didn't get to hold him or anything :( Finn is the most AMAZING baby... he never cries! Just sits there and looks cute! Isn't he a cutie??

Sadly the wait for bowling was too long, so the kids just played in the arcade, which they seemed fine with. Then we took a trip over to Baskin Robbins.
Abby was so excited to see Lily again. She kept asking at the zoo what time it was and was counting down the hours until we could see Lily again.
Tuesday we made our trip to OMSI (Science museum) where the kids played around for 6 hours




We got lost leaving Portland... AGAIN! So, we got out of Portland an hour later than planned and a bit hungry, we stopped at the Tollgate Inn in Sandy. I mention it so any other weary traveller friends that read my blog will know that it was a great stop!! The service was super quick and the food was good "homestyle" cookin' and really quite reasonably priced. We will definitely stop here again before the long lonely food-less trip over "the pass".

Wednesday was an errand running day, and Thursday I babysat a friends little girls and spent some fun time at the park and playing outside.


Friday I got to meet up with a friend in the morning and hike the Butte with her, came home, picked up the kids, grabbed some lunch at the drive thru at DQ and headed down to Shevlin Park for some wild and crazy letterboxing!!!

The person who carved these stamps really is amazing.

Near one of the letterboxes was this covered bridge where we stopped to rest for awhile.

This was the cool stamp at the letterbox we found by the bridge.

The clues were great so our finds were easy and we went 3 for 3.
Ethan of course had to search for critters.

Ethan is actually getting really good at skipping rocks

So after spending the morning outside with my girlfriend and 3.5 hours out letterboxing in the afternoon, would you believe I got a sunburn?? In March!!!

We got a kick out of the silouette the charm left on my sunburn. Can you see it?

Saturday we went to see Monsters Vs. Aliens.

It's an OK show. Not great, but what else are you going to take your kids too? Abby probably liked it the best. The scenes are really scripted and set up to try and make jokes and it gets old, and the story line is lacking, but kids don't really care about that stuff anyway.

Sunday Samantha decided to have a little "Photoshoot" with the kids during "quiet time" and she actually came up with a few cute shots.

So, that wraps up our Spring break '09

Now we hope the spring weather continues.