A few days before Thanksgiving

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I took the boys to see my brother and his family in Portland, Oregon. On the way there, Jack was totally entertained by the things we brought for him to play with and watch and Luke was quite content to be held and sleep the entire 3.5 hours! Such angels!

Here are some videos of our time there. We did fun things like the OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), the Portland Children's Museum and World Forestry Center. We also hung around the house and played and slept.

At home





At the Children's Museum






At the World Forestry Center


One of the funnest things ever is that my big brother has a baby three days younger than our sweet baby, Luke. My SIL had a photographer come to take their family pics while we were there and one of the special pics she had done was of the sweet baby cousins. Here you can see how close they are in age and size. So so so fun!




Our flight home wasn't quite as successful as I'd hoped it would be. Jack and I both fell asleep right at take off and slept for some time (not sure how long). but then we both woke up. And for the next hour or so, poor, sweet Jack struggled and struggled mightily to get comfy in that huge airplane seat without much luck. Had I been able to hold him, I think we could have succeeded in getting him back to sleep quickly. But because I had to hold Luke, I couldn't hold the big boy. So finally we all quite trying to get him comfy and whatdya know? He fell back to sleep for the remainder of the trip. So while it wasn't a total success he did get some sleep.

At landing, we parked at terminal E...which was unfortunate because we took out of (and parked at) terminal C. So, we had to walk a bit to get our luggage and make it to the van.

One other bit of trouble we had was that the parking garages aren't color coded correctly. Inside the terminal, the garage we needed had a yellow sign...when in fact it was the BROWN garage. That made finding our van a bit of a challenge which was unfortunate b/c I was wearing Luke in front, the backpack on my back, pushing Jack in the stroller and pulling a piece of luggage with the car seats on top. It was needless to say a bit of a challenge. But we found the van eventually and were outta there.

Luke, who'd slept since about 10:30 p.m. Portland time, was RAVENOUS at 7:00 Houston time, so we had to stop at McDees for breakfast. Then it was on to Samantha's school so we could see her before her day (and Michael's day) began.

The boys and I finally made it home about 8 am and I began the task of furiously cleaning the house. Michael had done a great job of picking up, but it needed "cleaning" in the worst way. Michael arrived with his parents about 5 o'clock and I'd done about 85% of the cleaning so we left it at that.

It was a SUPER trip to visit my brother and I was sooo proud of my boys. Jack certainly enjoyed his first plane ride and I enjoyed giving him that experience.

BTW, one video I unfortunately neglected on my Thanksgiving post was Luke talking to his PawPaw. Priceless...



Up next...Ice skating.