All The Way Home From Portland

After our fun filled week in Portland, we had a long drive home ahead of us.  Of course, we still had some surprises up our sleeves.  On our way out of Portland we stopped at some GORGEOUS tulip fields.  The pictures don't do them justice.  Rows and rows and rows of tulips as far as you could see.  It was super muddy (and we were the only people in flip flops instead of boots) but we managed to keep our footing and soak in all the beauty.

 After the tulip fields we drove about halfway through Oregon.  Our final surprise for the kids was a wild animal safari park!  We weren't sure if we would actually see animals, since it's so cold and dreary there, but I had purchased a groupon for it, so we gave it a try.  It turned out to be awesome.  There was a tiny little zoo part where we walked around and saw cheetahs, tiny monkeys, flamingos and more.  The kids pet the little horse and donkey at the petting zoo.  Then they even got to ride on a camel!  After that, we went for the 4 mile drive through the acres and acres of park, spotting all sorts of animals like rhinos, bears, elephants, hippos and more.  They were just wandering around.  A couple times we had to just sit and wait for animals to get out of the road!

We were just saying hello to the camels (because it was $10 each to ride them) when the camel guy told us he'd give us a deal and let them all ride for $10.  Ummm...yes please!

They laughed and giggled the whole time they rode "Frank"!

I quickly rolled up my window any time these guys approached!

The kids loved that they could be unbuckled!

Some of the animals were enclosed by an electric fence.

This giant, creepy bird came right up to my window.  I rolled it up as fast as I could and thought it was going to try and peck through!

 After the wild animals, we were on our way to stay in a cabin at the KOA in Mt. Shasta.  I think that part of the drive was the roughest.  Kids were throwing fits, I was irritable, and it was later than we expected.  By the time we got to the cabin it was almost 10:00!

After a night's sleep in our cozy cabin we were ready for our final stretch!  The last day we didn't really have plans.  We thought we might stop at the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield (which we didn't), and maybe some parks (which we did).  We mostly just let the kids watch movies while we drove and drove!  We did stop at a really "old fashioned" park near the Sacramento river (Seth was dying to stop near a river or creek, as we crossed over so many leaving Oregon).  We got home in the evening and were thrilled to be home and see our sweet Banjo!

Best we could get out of them!

Traveling is really tiring!  Haley is under that pink blanket in the back!

Road Trip To Portland

This year we really wanted to take a trip for Spring break.  One last trip with just three kids, and I am not so far along in this pregnancy that I would be uncomfortable with travel!  So, we decided to head up to Portland and visit our friends up there.  We didn't tell the kids about it, so they were totally surprised.  The morning we left, Seth was up early (of course), so I told him first, as I was finishing packing up the van.  Then I woke up Carey and the girls and we were on our way!  The kids were all super excited, and the extra bonus was that I had gotten "Frozen" for them, and we had it all ready to go on the portable DVD player!

We drove for a while, stopped at a McDonalds with a play place, and then drove some more!  We decided to stop for a longer break in Redding, and went to the Sundial Bridge (which is a suspension foot bridge that is also a working sundial).  As we were pulling into the parking lot, we saw Aunt Kelly and Uncle Rick pulling out!  We live in the same town, and randomly were at the same place in Redding at the same time!  They were on their way to lunch, but came back and hung out with us for a while.  The kids had a blast running and climbing and being out of the car!

You can see the giant sundial across the bridge!

They all loved climbing up the suspension wires!

We saw lots of geese, which thrilled our animal lover!

So happy to be out of the car!

With Aunt Kelly and Uncle Rick:)

After stretching our legs and getting fresh air, we went and got some lunch and then hit the road again.  We stopped at a couple rest stops (you'd think that I, being pregnant would be the one who constantly had to pee, but Seth actually has the world's smallest bladder, so it was mostly him!) and finally made it to our hotel in Medford.  Another surprise we had for our kids was that the hotel had an indoor pool...with a twisty, tunnel water slide!  That's were we spent the rest of the day, and a lot of the next morning!

Seth was the first one to go down and LOVED it!

Haley went down SO fast that it was nearly impossible to get a picture of her coming out!

Abby would always slow herself down a little, so she didn't make a giant splash!

Carey went down the slide once and said that was enough for him!  I really wanted to, but wasn't sure if I should or not, since I'm prego, so I erred on the side of caution (for Kacie's sake)!

After some fun in the pool on Sunday morning, we got back in the car for our trek up to Portland.  We stopped for lunch at Abby's Legendary Pizza, and the kids managed to scrounge up 9 quarters from under the machines in the arcade, so they each got 3 quarters to use!

They crawled on the ground, reached in the cracks, and Abby even managed to MOVE one of the machines in order to find change so they could play!

 We made it to Portland by late that afternoon and found our friends, Eric and Stacey's, house with out any problems.  Eric, Stacey and their kids were actually in CA when we first got there, so we got settled in without them there.  After dinner we were all exhausted and pretty much went straight to bed!

Two days of travel is exhausting!

 The next day we played at the park in the morning and then I headed to the airport to pick up Eric, Stacey, Titus, Eliana and Josiah, while Carey stayed with the kids for some naps/quiet time.  Once we were all in the house, it was pretty much controlled chaos the whole time.  Between the two of us we have 6 kids (including two sets of twins)!  It was so fun to get to spend time with Eric and Stacey and their sweet kiddos.  We went to a bounce house place, played at their house, went to some parks and hung out around the house.

Since Eric and Stacey's kids are still little and aren't up for all the things our "big" kids can handle, we ventured out for a few adventures on our own through the week.  We rode "the Max" (Portland's public train system), which was REALLY exciting to my kids who never "get to" ride public transport, ate some yummy food, went to some fun museums and saw some fun friends.  We had a really great time in Portland!

Seeing the train coming to our stop!

Abby ordered "the monstrosity" which was two burger patty's and four strips of bacon with grilled cheese sandwiches made with Texas toast for the buns!  She ate almost an entire half of it!

While Carey met a friend at a music store downtown, the kids and I went to the World Forestry Museum, which was Seth's highlight of the trip.

We had breakfast at a restaurant called "Slappy Cakes" where you order your pancake batter (we got buttermilk and sweet potato) and whatever mix-ins you want (we got chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, apples, bananas, blueberries and bacon bits) and you cook them right on your table, which has a griddle in the middle!  So much fun:)

This is what happens after a breakfast at Slappy Cakes!

Haley and Josiah

Abby and Elliana

We met my friend Robin and her three girls at the Portland Children's Museum.  It was so fun to see them and explore the museum!

Abby and Seth loved the grocery store area, especially that the grocery scanner actually peeped when they scanned the groceries!  They were so cute in there!

The vetrinary area was a hit!  The kids loved it in there and were so funny.  I heard Abby tell a little boy, as she handed him a stuffed animal dog, "If he's not better in a week, bring him back in.  And here's some powdered sugar to help him get better!"  Seth handed me a stuffed bunny and told me "You need to pet it more gentle.  It was all broken to pieces inside.  But don't worry, I glued it back together with body glue".

Construction Area!

They loved seeing Amalea and Maya.

Introducing Titus to Frozen!

We had a great time visiting Tim and Ashley and their sweet girls.  We crossed over the bridge into Washington and had a delicious dinner with them in their home.  We loved meeting their daughters and getting to catch up with friends (Cambria was already in bed when we took this picture).

Seth and Elliana

Saying goodbye:(

We also got to see our friends Paul and Gina, and our friend Rob Namba.  Stacey and Eric were SO kind to let us come and invade their house and lives for a week and we had a blast.  We can't wait to go back and visit (although next time we'll go in the summer)!

From The Mouths Of Webbers!

These are a few of the funny things my kiddos say that I really don't want to forget:

• Darth Mater (instead of Vader)
• someone who steals things is called a Robert (aka robber)
•  ridicleeous (they say this so often that I have to think really hard to say the word correctly)
• they call lemons tarp (tart)
• soup bra (broth)

 I know there are more, but at least I got a few down for the history books!

Christmas...that happened!

Okay, well, it's three weeks later and I am finally getting around to writing about our Christmas festivities.  To be honest, this was not our best Christmas.  I feel almost guilty to say that, because really, it's all about celebrating that God loves us so much that He became one of us, and how could that not be great?!  But, in my mind, I failed at Christmas this year!  I failed at having focus and at helping my kids to focus.  And, of course, by failed I mean I fell short of my own expectations!  Good thing we can all celebrate the love of Christ any and every day of the year!

On to more fun things than my confessional!  Christmas begins with the tree, right?  I am always anxious to get our tree ASAP after Thanksgiving.  I feel like if we are going to spend $50 or so on a tree, we need to have it as long as possible!  For the second year in a row we headed to Home Depot!  It seems so boring, but trying to fit in a trip to a tree farm is just one more thing to do.  Sidenote, the day after Christmas I bought a fake tree.  This Christmas felt SO busy and was a wake up call of the reality that, in the future, I want to simplify Christmas.  Buying a tree each year is one less thing to do, and we can still have fun decorating it as a family.  Plus, I really won't miss constantly sweeping up fallen needles and am stoked to have a tree FULL of branches that are nice and strong for the heavier ornaments!  Anyway, back to this year.  As always, we had a really fun time decorating the tree.  I pretty much sat back and watched the kids hang all the ornaments, and, for the first time, they weren't all clumped on one part of the tree!  Every year I get each of the kids a new ornament that somehow represents their year.

Abby was a star soccer player this year!

Seth got Spiderman (despite my dislike for character things) because he fell in love with super-heros this year!

Haley's love of horses was quite a theme in her life in 2013.

One of our very favorite Christmas traditions is making gingerbread houses.  Good old Uncle Nate hand makes all the houses and we spend a fun day with family eating candy and sticking it on the houses!  This year Uncle Nate worked for hours and hours to create a template and make a gingerbread pirate ship!  We had so much fun (even though we really missed Auntie Laura being there with us) and are SO thankful that Uncle Nate takes the time to create such a fun day for us.

Getting started on the barn:)

Uncle Nate and Seth hard at work on the pirate ship

Last year we went to Streets of Bethlehem, which is a reenactment of the events leading up to and including Christ's birth that a church in a nearby city does.  It was by far the highlight of the kids Christmas.  We went again this year, so excited because of how much fun we had last year.  It's a really neat event, but wasn't quite the joyful outing that we had last year!  We got a little turned around on the way there, which always happens when I am in charge of the directions, and then Carey and I were annoyed with each other, which also always happens when I am in charge of directions!  Abby lost her beanie somewhere along the Bethlehem marketplace and Seth was whiny because he was really cold.  When we got back to our car, everyone fell apart.  I can't even remember what happened.  I just know I was crying and we were all super tense and irritable:(  Oh, on the way home the moon was really low in the sky and huge and orange, so I pointed it out to everyone.  Haley immediately responded with "No, that's not the moon" which broke the tension for Carey and I because it was SO ridiculous! 

A really fun thing that we did for the first time this year was going to Candy Cane Lane in another nearby city.  It's a whole neighborhood that decorates like crazy and there are tons of people just walking all around.  We had a great time walking all around and enjoying the lights (and imagining having a baby there with us next year)!

On to Christmas.  Christmas Eve morning we went to Grandma Jackie and Grandpa Steve's for a delicious breakfast and gift-exchanging fun!

They love Grandma Jackie:)

How cute are these kids?

Watching their cousin Brannon play video games.

We went on a walk and met a really friendly horse!

In the evening of Christmas Eve we went over the hill to an annual Christmas Eve party that my family has gone to since I was an infant.  We went Christmas caroling and ate yummy treats and played the l-o-n-g-e-s-t game of white elephant (or big elephant, as Abby kept calling it).  When I looked at my watch and it was 9:00 and we still had a 45 minute drive home, I had to let some of my plans go!  Normally I wrap all the of the gifts that go in the kids stockings.  I warned them on the way home from the party that it wasn't going to happen this year!  I also usually decorate the house with streamers and balloons so that when the kids wake up on Christmas morning it looks like a birthday party (you know...for Jesus).  Oh, and we always have a birthday cake for Jesus.  Yep, none of those things happened this year.  I had to let them go. 

Christmas morning we did stockings, enjoyed monkey bread and then got to work making breakfast burritos.  As is our tradition, we met our friends, the Hughes, downtown and handed out breakfast burritos and socks to homeless people (this year we stepped it up and had waters, chocolate milks, cuties, muffins and chocolate).

We got that box of chocolates at the white elephant game!  We laughed every time Jonathan offered someone chocolate!

Pulling the wagon of goodies!

We went home and opened gifts and had a mellow afternoon at home.  The kids played with their toys and then took naps (after such a late night)!  Carey and I set up Seth's bunk bed (his "big" present) and then got ready to head over to my parents' house.  We did more gift exchanging over there and had a delicious dinner.

Our cute Christmas poodie under the tree!

Examining Poppa Phil's gift!

When I look at it in pictures it all looks so great!  I think I just didn't feel prepared.  I don't know if it's because the season was so short or because I had "morning-all-day-sickness" for most of it or because growing a person makes me SO tired!  Who knows?!  But, the kids had a great time and there's always next year!