Oregon

Once again we are on the road. We flew to Portland on Tuesday and drove down to visit Gram.  Our flight was from Memphis to LAX then a plane change to go to PDX.  We had only a 40 minute layover and I was pretty worried about making that connection at first, but luckily (I guess?) the plane to PDX was late and we ended up having an hour and change.  Evie did great on both flights and stayed pretty entertained.  She enjoyed looking at all of the airplanes and the buses and trucks loading cargo and people onto the planes.  On our layover we sat near many other families with little ones and she enjoyed watching them run around and sort of playing with them.  She fell asleep on both flights as we were landing, so she didn't get the greatest of naps and then she stayed awake while we picked up our rental car which is a minivan.  We find it really helpful when we're in OR to get minivans so that we can transport Grampa (Seth's dad) to places with us.  Evie loved it because as we were loading our luggage and installing her carseat she was able to stand in the van and crawl around the whole thing.  She also loved the van during our trip on Wednesday to the Wildlife Safari which is a drive-through zoo.  She was able to get down out of the carseat and walk around the van to get closer to whichever side the animals were on.

She particularly enjoyed the llamas (or maybe it's just me that enjoyed them - llamas are my favorite) though she kept calling them goats (doats).  She decided that the lions were Evie's, and called them tiger-roars (one of my favorite phrases she uses).  She was also fascinated by the deer and the giraffes but she kind of lost interested and needed a nap once we got to the Asia section of the park.

Thursday we took Grampa to an Indian restaurant.  Evie was, unfortunately, woken up mid-nap and not very pleasant during that eating experience, but she brightened up a little when we went to Dollar Tree and she enjoyed picking out some toys.

Today we went to Shari's with Grampa, Gram, and Uncle Parry and she was just as delightful as could be.  Such a sweet girl.  She took a shine to Gram almost immediately and enjoys having Gram wheel her around on her cart.  She also likes to give toys and towels to Parry, and she is pretty good around Grampa too, though I think she's not quite sure what to expect from him so she's still just a bit wary.

Again, since we are traveling and it would eat up all my data, I have to skip out on pictures this week.  My hope is to update all of the previous weeks' entries with pictures once I get access to my desktop again.

Edit to add: Pictures!

Also I forgot when I wrote this entry to note that we switched Evie over to her toddler bed before we left for Oregon because she climbed out of her crib.  We also switched her room because we felt like it would be better to have her in the bigger room rather than trying to use it as a guest bedroom.  Here's a video of her first time seeing her "big girl" bed.

 

This was where I found her the following morning.  She loves to read!

 

First flight with her own seat.  She did great!

 

She fell hard asleep in this position during landing

 

Taking a ride on Gram's walker

 

Checking out the bears

 

Daddy let Evie drive.  Video below

 

Walking through the orchard on the Mayne property in Oregon

 

Gram and Grampa built their house themselves and while they were waiting for it to be finished, they lived in this structure which was then added onto to become a storage shed.  You can see where the old "house" ended - it was a 10x10 room.  The shed sits at the front of the driveway and is marked with "D. E. Mayne".

 

Evie impressed Gram with her iPad knowledge

 

Cheesin'