Visit to Portland

Ben had a leadership training in Portland in September so we decided to go with him. Usually he would just fly but since we were going with him we had to drive. It's about 6 1/2 hrs without kids so it took us about 8 but it was worth it because it was a beautiful drive. A lot of the drive is along the Columbia river and the scenery was gorgeous. We stayed in a Marriott Residence Inn which was great because we had a full kitchen and a separate bedroom so we could put the kids to bed and just shut the door and we could stay up for a bit (even though Ben ended up laying with them every night). The first day we were there the kids and I went to the Portland Zoo. It is a very nice zoo but it is pretty big so I did a lot of walking while the kids rode in the stroller most of the time. I forgot to take the babies jackets with us and they were freezing so we had to go and buy sweatshirts in the gift shop. They were super expensive so I told the kids they would have to wear them every day until they die. :)

Freezing without their jackets.

The second day we were there we decided to just kind of hang out in the hotel for the day. We went to a shopping center where we found an old carousel which the kids absolutely loved. The only bad thing is that it was about a 25 minute drive...to go less than a mile. I love that we don't have traffic that bad, yuck. That night we also made an appearance at a reception they were having for the "graduating class" of Ben's training. Everybody loved the kids of course!!

The last we were just supposed to have a few hours to kill so we stayed at the hotel almost until checkout and then went back to the zoo to see a few of our favorite animals again. They are supposed to have a really cool children's museum but it was closed the whole week we were there for maintenance.

Riding one of the lion statues.

A kept putting his arm around E so I had to take a pic of the best friends!!

Ben ended up getting out much later than anticipated so we only went as far as The Dalles, Oregon and then set out Saturday for home. We had a great time but I'm glad we don't travel that much very often!!

Labor Day Weekend

Um, yeah, so I realize that I'm a month behind...oops! I'm going to be playing quite a bit of catch-up over the next few days so just bear with me and hopefully I can eventually get everything in!!
So Labor Day weekend we decided to go to Rexburg to spend some time with my family. We had a good time but the highlight of our trip was going to visit Cave Falls. We met up with my aunt and her family and decided to take a little hike. We ended up hiking to Bechler Falls which is about 1.3 miles one way...turns out it's a little too far for the munckins to walk, we ended up carrying them most of the way back. We had loads of fun although I wish we had been a little more prepared for hiking. We had a nice picnic after we came back and the kids had a blast. Unfortunately we went hiking on Monday which was also the day we were driving back so we didn't leave until very late, putting us home about 11:00 pm.