So we went to Day Out with Thomas this year but forwent the train ride… He was all about the trikes last year — this time, he rode on one for like a minute and was off to the next thing. He’s into building and hands-on activities now. Oh and he took just a quick glance at Thomas when he rode in. “Do you want a picture with Thomas?” “No.” Guess you can infer he’s over him. Wah, wah, wah.
Hats off to Eric Carle, a beloved author:
He emphatically wanted to Strider instead of run this race. “I want to bike it like Uncle Dan did at that other race.”
Cheering squad at the start again!
But then Strider-ing is pretty much like running on a bike. :P
And who doesn’t love the après-workout noshing? :)
The venue at Little Elm Park was scenic, with great views (especially at sunset) of Lake Lewisville, a playground with interesting structures, beach, sand volleyball court and hiking trails.
Flirty or just friendly? The latter, please!
Other snapshots from E’s bodacious social scene (haha):
Worst hair salon visit to date! He acted perfectly ready for a haircut and just unexpectedly broke down (as in flailing arms/legs & loud tears) upon arrival. He was mostly inconsolable until the very end. Then we played with the trains there for a like an hour and all was okay again in his world. ;-)
He was juuuust shy (like a hair — maybe from that cut, ha!) of riding the jeeps at Frisco Safety Town. Huge letdown. :(
One of the teen workers let him at least sit on one for awhile… until an older dude shooed him away. Grown-ups always ruin everything. Hehe.
Peepin’ Elias. No worries, it’s legit.
Finally got a pic with all 3 of Mommy’s BFF’s girlies!
Schweatiness.
Always all smiles for i.c.! It’s even sweeter when it’s free. :)
Yep, it’s spring {allergy season} in Texas. :] Did you know that NTX registered the fifth highest pollen counts in the nation? We found some natural allergy drops specific to the region that seem to be helping. E isn’t too bothered by it, at least.
The fear of the Easter Bunny seems to be a thing of the past.
Though he was still a tad bit shy… ;P
Egg “hunting”… More like egg-grabbing. But thankfully, we didn’t go to some of the ones that were in the news with tramplings and hoarding parents.
We made it to more than one hunt but E was content in getting just a few eggs. :)
City of Plano brought out some of their service vehicles for a touch-the-truck.
Kiddies (w/ parents in tow?) flock and wait in line to honk the horn of a garbage truck. :D
More here and there’s:
I’ll drive a boat before I drive a car. :)
But lounging is just as good…
Made it to our annual Firefly Run! Year 7 and going strong!
Found another bunny. Similar shy pose?
Seeing off the runners at the start line. E was getting his game face on before his own run.
PC: Footprints Photography
Neat-o to see our designs throughout the event – signage, backdrops, flags, pennants, bibs and thousands of runners donning this year’s tee.
PC: Footprints Photography
PC: Footprints Photography
Then he took off!
Stopped mid-race to help Uncle Dan direct traffic.
PC: Footprints Photography
Crossed the finish!
Post-run goodies in the VIP lounge and chillin’ at the after-party.
We hosted a family get-together/dinner for Easter and E’s (belated) birthday.
The star dish was Daddy’s prime rib. Bacon wrapped scallops, shrimp and Asian-glazed salmon made it all surf ‘n turf. And of course, can’t forget the veggies and sides.
But E was most excited about his Storm Trooper cake! Auntie Angeline wasn’t available to bake for us this year but we managed to find another lady.
It’s nice when you only need three candles. :)
He totally got the candle-blowing thing down.
Storm Trooper stabbing…
Then on second thought, feeling sorry for him? Haha.
The beheading…
Not the brain!
Fuhgeddaboudit, just let me eat my birthday cake!
He found his own birthday hat. How resourceful!
Leftover Storm Trooper head for breakfast? Don’t mind if I do, he says. :)
So we let him know that he can now tell people he is three and not two. His response: “I don’t want to be 3. Can I go back and be 2?” We hear you, Son. We hear you!
E is becoming quite the seasoned traveler and was more than ready to head to PDX.
We purposely didn’t let him nap that day and even with a late afternoon flight, he was awake until the very end. Too excited?
All smiles on the shuttle to our rental car!
We spent the night in Portland and the next day getting groceries at Costco and hitting up a couple of cafes before making the drive out to Mount Hood.
Cup & Bar: Coffee (for Y) AND Chocolate (for G)? Match made in heaven! The loft-style space was very open, industrial and vintage but inviting. In the back, you can peek into two separate windows where they were roasting coffee beans and making chocolate.
No better place than this city to order avocado toast. The other one was goat cheese and chocolate nibs.
Contemplating life, eh?
And the chocolate. ‘Nuff said!
Another great memory about this place was E barged out of the bathroom and announced way too loudly, “I pee-peed in the potty, Daddy!” to which everyone (who all looked single and not older than 30) turned around and stared… Mostly with smiles, at least! One of the baristas thought it was the cutest thing and relayed the story to other people walking in. (BTW, did we mention he is potty training? Okay, he is potty training. It was an unexpected start after a friend visited us and started talking about it. We were worried that it’d get severely interrupted on the trip but it actually went better than we thought.)
Smith Teamaker was the other Portland joint calling out to us. What a warm and elegant tea room! We ordered a couple of tea lattes to-go and then a small pouch of matcha powder to take home. Caught all the employees in a tea meeting discussing very serious brewing things. :) Wonder what it’s like to work in a tea factory/workshop.
We then drove about an hour or so to Government Camp and settled into our condo. It was very comfortable and spacious — 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms (at one point, each of us occupied one!) and a triple bunk bed. Three’s for our three’r. :) E slept on a different level each night. Haha.
After a pretty early wake up call and quick breakfast, we were on the snowy roads to Meadows Ski Resort. Too bad no slopeside lodging at all. Good thing we rented a AWD SUV.
It had dumped pretty heavily the night before and was still coming down on our drive up so we were giddy about the fresh powder awaiting.
We checked E in to childcare and ski school and made a few warm-up runs before coming down to spy on E during his first snowboarding lesson.
As biased as any parents can be, we were beyond proud! Specifically, we saw that he never gave up, picked himself up after every single fall and pushed on with no tantrums or tears. (Daddy would say that may have been better than Mommy’s first few times on the board. Hehe.)
All smiles when we picked him up!
His little board was just too cute.
The next day was pretty much a repeat of the first except it had rained which meant wetness and then it became icy up top. Not great conditions but we made it work. We called it a day a little earlier and spent some time on the bunny hill with our smooth rider. :)
Flawless magic carpet ride and dismount. ;P
:))
In action:
Soon enough he will surpass us on the slopes but can’t forget the humble beginnings. :)
Next on our itinerary was Bend. We wanted to time the drive around his nap so we spent the morning at White River West Sno-Park for some sledding.
While fueling up the car, a warning light came up indicating low tire pressure. After checking, it turned out to be a slow leak but Daddy was pretty sure it’d make it to Bend after pumping it up.
One last stop was in order before leaving Mount Hood: Timberline Lodge! It’s a historic landmark and even offers skiing year-round. Had it not been for the lack of childcare, we would have definitely liked to try it out. E dozed off too early, even with the twisty road up. We thought we could wake him easily once we got there but he kept sleeping in Daddy’s arms… then Mommy’s… and even after we put him down on a chair. Unprecedented! Snowboarding does tire one out. :)
Gotta save these for future blackmail. J/K!
He was not a happy camper when he finally roused after much coaxing.
Ideally, it would have been nice to explore and enjoy the views but the disturbed toddler wasn’t on the same page. :\ So surely, he’d fall right back to sleep once we got in the car and were on the highway and such, right? Take a wild guess! He falls asleep minutes before we are almost at Bend and enter into town. Daddy had looked up a Discount Tire where we had the flat repaired (for free — yay for DT customer service!). E slept through that (with all the ruckus and the car being raised and lowered). We drove across town to get rental boards. E slept through that (Mommy waited in the car). Then we went to pick up a few more groceries before heading to our next condo. E slept through that (Daddy waited). When we finally stopped, he woke up slowly as we unloaded… #lifewithakiddo
Another snowstorm hit just as we prepared to meet Mt. Bachelor the next day. Making way up to the resort was a bit tricky with the weather conditions and drifted vehicles. It took us close to an hour for a normally fifteen minute jaunt.
We barely eeked it in time to check in for Elias’ snow explorers program. Here, for his age, they only offered a more introductory lesson to skiing.
Snooped at him from afar for a bit…
Then it was see ya for some dancing in the pow-pow. :)
When we picked him up for the day, we chitchatted with one of the caretakers and showed her one of the videos we took of him snowboarding at Meadows. She was impressed and said he was ready for a private lesson! We didn’t know about this option before arriving but the staff was nice enough to switch things up for us so he could do snowboarding. He even told us that he liked boarding more than skiing. ;P
Mother Nature, however, made known a fierce presence the next day. It was CRAZY winds (plus more snow!) the next day…
Lift tickets, lessons, etc. are non-returnable so we sucked it up…
They couldn’t find the right size for his snowboard boot (similar to last year’s ski boot incident) but he still wanted to go. That’s our boy!
While he braved the cold and gusts, we watched by the fire from inside. Hahaha. No, we did go out for a bit to see just how bad it was. Definitely had seen better days but it also meant we had the whole mountain to ourselves.
Then we came down to see where he was at… Couldn’t find him on the bunny hill so we hung around for a bit. Suddenly, Mommy hears someone say “How did you feel after that one, buddy?”, turned around and saw Elias had come down a GREEN. (Then quickly turned and hid her face. Hehe.) So apparently, he had requested to go up the big lift and then took the run down with the instructor.
Right after the decent… Can you spot him?
We took it pretty easy the rest of the day. Had a mini coffee date for an hour or two (where we ran into his instructor who told us how he did), people-watched and got surveyed by the staff. :P
Checkin’ out boards.
And that was the last day of the season for us. :\ It was back on the road the next day.
Bend seemed like an inviting town to live in. People are super outdoorsy and active. We are def jelly for locals being less than a half hour away from the mountain.
Oregon is surely a land of microclimates! We went from snow to rain to wind to perfectly clear blue skies, all within a very short timeframe.
Daddy was interested in Smith Rock so we made a stop there.
We managed a short hike with E. He did well, actually. Trekked the entire way without asking to be held. :)
The last part of the ascent was fairly steep, especially for a tot, but he made it!
Smith Rock is a notable place for climbers and we spotted a few. “Where’s the climber?” in the two photos below:
Now, find Daddy who really, really, really wished he could hike up the darn thing. :)
Then it was more snowy driving back to Portland. We were hoping to stop by a children’s museum in Salem, OR but didn’t make it with the slower traffic. But a pit stop at a neat ranger station with helicopter rescue training in session was pretty interesting!
We checked into our hotel for the night before our flight the next day and went for Chinese food! Somehow, last trip, we had missed out on this well-rated resto called Red Rob Tea House & Cafe in their {small} Chinatown. The tea was perfect and food pretty tasty. It seemed the whole place was run solely by the husband and wife team who were quite friendly.
E loved the complimentary post-dinner almond cookies.
Then we made a stop at the local Moonstruck Chocolates to buy a few gifts back. Since it was a walk away from Salt & Straw, we thought we’d treat E since he was too young last time to try it. Well, what do you know, there was an insane line on a Monday night! We waited for awhile but it was getting late so Y yelped a gelato place nearby. E was just as delighted. :)
We were scheduled to leave in the afternoon so we went to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) in the morn. We had actually walked to it the last time we were in town but it was too late in the day for a visit. And yay, admission is included as part of a reciprocal program with our Perot membership.
The exhibits and discovery zones were entertaining but also very educational. E had a great time.
We weren’t terribly late to the airport but the security line was absurd! After waiting forever, we thought we pretty much missed our flight. Not to say that we just cry out to the Lord when we are in a pinch and expect a fast rescue but He does hear prayers! They suddenly added more TSA officers so the line started moving quickly and then this mother with a kiddie in a stroller let us cut in front of her after overhearing our frustration and worries. (Bless your heart!). After clearing security, Daddy grabbed E and made a mad dash for it and then Mommy followed with bags and carry-on flailing behind. We must’ve been a sight. :P Barely made it. Regrettably, they had to pull a few stand-bys that had already boarded. (SORRY!!!!) But hey, we weren’t the last on the plane. Another Asian dude huffed and puffed to the gate a good few minutes after us and they let him on as well. God bless Southwest! Haha.
But when we got on, with it being SW and no assigned seating, we were in another predicament. There were three seats but all separated. Daddy put E down and said “You’re going to have to sit on your own.” To which of course he refused and said he wanted Mommy. That seat also happened to be in the middle of another mother and her lap child and a sizably large person on the other side. Sigh. Prayer, prayer, prayer! The attendant came by and said that there couldn’t be two lap children next to each other and then we also let him know that we actually bought E a seat. Thankfully, the mother asked to move up front if one is available and they found her a seat there. So, at least one of us could be with E. Whew, so that was our lovely escapade before finally being on our merry way home.
Of course, kids are mostly unconcerned by it all and just happy with a leftover almond cookie and healthified Oregonian cheese puffs. ;P
