Meeting Ellie

 Two big and exciting events for this week!  Evie got her COVID shot!  We are very glad to have her vaccinated to increase her natural immunity from her own bout with COVID in August.  She was very brave and handled it like a pro.

Then on Thursday morning, we took a trip to visit Jill, Eric, and meet our sweet niece Ellie, and Aunt Maddie met up with us too.  We've been enjoying seeing them all every couple of weeks or so on Zoom when we do our game nights, but being in person is so much better.  Evie had such a good time, she started crying when I told her we had to go to the airport yesterday.  But I'm getting ahead...

Our flight left at 7 am and we cut it real close!  Somehow we left the house at 5:35 instead of the original 5:15 plan.  It's a good thing we only travel with carry ons now because the woman behind us at the gate said she'd had to just abandon her luggage in order to make the flight because they were so backed up with checking bags.  Turns out we actually had more time than we feared because the plane was delayed.  So while we could breathe easy in Memphis, we were worried about our short connection in Houston which was only 50 minutes to begin with and with the plane leaving 30 minutes late, I was honestly 90% sure we weren't going to make it.  We got let out at C44 and had to book it all the way across the C concourse (which is HUGE) to C9, which is the very last gate in that section of the terminal.  We were literally sprinting through the airport in hopes of catching our flight and we made it with exactly 4 minutes to spare before they were going to close the doors.  Phew!

Exhausted from running, but happy to be on board

We got to Portland at 12:15 pm local time and got our rental car and headed out to find some food.  We always enjoy eating Japanese food, but even more so in the Pacific Northwest in restaurants where the menus are written in both Japanese and English.  We enjoyed sushi and ramen.

Then we headed to Multnomah Falls which we've all seen before, but it was neat to see in with all the rain they've had recently.

 2021

 2015

We drove the scenic byway back towards Portland, stopped for some Dutch Bros hot chocolate, and drove around Portland talking about all the unhoused people and explaining to Evie what could cause someone to end up in or choose that situation (led to a good age-appropriate conversation about drugs and alcohol, also economy and social justice).  Then Maddie's flight came in and we picked her up from the airport and all headed to Jill and Eric's house.

We arrived and were greeted at the door, and once we stepped in the house, Ellie immediately leaned over for Evie to take her.  Jill said Ellie hasn't done that before with anyone and I like the way Jill put it: Their little souls recognized each other.

There was snuggling and hugging and dinner and eventually bed time.

The next day, we pretty much hung around the house, chatting, catching up, being generally entertained by the two girls.  Maddie and Evie helped Ellie get dressed and Evie helped feed Elli some pears.  Evie was soaking up the opportunity to play big sister to someone.

Evie got some good auntie time in too with Jill and Maddie.  She especially enjoyed the head scratcher that Jill is using on her in this picture.

Eric was working on Friday and Seth, Jill, and Eric ran out to do some errands so I got to stay home and snuggle this sweet baby during her nap.

When she woke up, Evie gave her her bottle.

The next morning we enjoyed some more chilling in the morning and then went to OMSI.

Cousins in PJs

At OMSI, they had an exhibit about Nelson Mandela that I'm pretty sure Evie asked Maddie to read to her verbatim from every sign.  They had some good auntie-niece bonding at the museum talking about apartheid, but also enjoying physics.

Jill and Eric dropped Ellie off with Neda while we all went to an escape room which was super cute because they had a robot that interacted with you (voiced by one of the people working there) and at one point we had to decide whether to trust the robot or the new guy we received a communication from and Evie said to the robot, "I would never leave you!"  We escaped with about 15 minutes to spare.

We were really sad to leave yesterday.  It felt like too short of a time.  But we had an excellent visit and made plans for the future - hopefully it won't be so long between visits again!