Portland Day Two

Today we took to a tour through the Pacific Northwest forest to Mt. Hood. It was beautiful, just beautiful. BUT our tour guide bored us to tears all day. He talked.all.the.time. Someone would ask a question, he would briefly answer it, then go right back to his speech. Highlights of our tour were:

Three AWESOME waterfalls! The area has about 75, and I would love to see them all! Here's a link to one of them.

Visiting a fish hatchery and a dam, and watching the salmon trying to swim--couldn't tell you if they were swimming upstream or downstream, but they were HUGE. We learned all about them--I've never heard someone talk about salmon more in my life.

Visited this adorable little town, Hood River, for lunch. I had a fantastic toasted roast beef sandwich on a bagel, if you must know. I know you were wondering.

Finally, we ended up at Mount Hood. We visited Timberline Lodge, which is halfway up Mt. Hood, and is where The Shining was filmed. (Red rum Red rum Red rum) The clouds parted, and we got beautiful views of the peak of Mt. Hood.

I was proud of the kids--they were soooooooooo bored by our tour guide, but they tolerated him so well. Want to know how bad it was? At one point he played folk music by Woody Guthrie, about building dams in the 30's and 40's. Then at the end, he played a recording of himself reading from the Lewis and Clark journals from 1805 when they were exploring the area. Don't get me wrong--he was very nice and very knowledgeable, but we weren't as interested as he was!

How to travel with high school students

• Make them wake up insanely early, like 3 am.
• Make sure they all have boarding passes--wouldn't be good to get to Denver without a boarding pass to Portland!
• Stay with their luggage on the layover so they can get breakfast and go to the bathroom
• Make sure they tip the shuttle driver from the airport to the hotel
• Make sure they eat lunch, instead of just a granola bar
• Keep them moving on the streets, especially when homeless people or shady people are lingering in doorways and the small of marijuana reeks in the air
• Help them get discounts into the zoo
• Watch as they get disgusted as polar bears, rhinos, and the elephants all poop and pee right in front of us
• Drag them all over the light rails and streetcars, making sure they always know what stop to get off on
• Patiently wait as they want to shop at the same stores they have back home, and patiently wait as they buy the underwear they forgot to pack
• Take them to a very nice dinner to relax, and enjoy their company
• Shhh them a million times because they are the LOUDEST group you've ever traveled with
• By the time you get back to the hotel, make sure they are so dead tired they wouldn't even think of doing anything bad
• Doublecheck 900 times what time they are to be up in the morning
• Lock your door, go to sleep and start all over again

Check out this handsome guy!

Love this picture!

Whew...

Whew...what a weekend! My brother's family was in from Atlanta, and we had a jam-packed several days with them. It was so very nice to have them here and spend time with them! My niece, her husband, and my oldest nephew stayed with us, and as usual, the girls followed Lauren and George around like puppy dogs. Poor Lauren and George--they didn't get a minute's rest from my two.

Saturday morning we went up to William Jewell for family pictures. We had a lot of fun taking many pictures--the whole family, individual families, just the girls, just the boys, grandparents, grandchildren, etc. We did a funny one at the fountain at Grand River Chapel where Bobby proposed to me twelve years, where he pretended to propose again. I told him a real romantic would have had a ring for me again, but he didn't think it was funny.

Today was super crazy at work, and I imagine tomorrow will be too. Then Wednesday bright and early I leave for Portland, without my travel buddy. She's in Baltimore with her son, who was born 10 weeks early and just survived a scary, dangerous surgery last week. I'm on my own for this trip with 8 students. At first I was fine with it, but now I'm starting to get a tad freaked out about it. I'm sure it will be fine.

My stress level can drop 100 points anytime now.

Easter Pictures

Macy and Kaylin with their Papa Bobby

With Great-Grandma Velma, who turns 90 this month!! I am so thankful the girls will be able to remember her; I barely remember my grandparents!

The girls with the Easter bunny

At the Easter Egg Hunt, the girls had their faces painted.

I took this to show the sheer numbers of people at this egg hunt. It was mass chaos!

She was so excited and ran back as fast as she could!

Macy asked the Easter Bunny for this caterpillar pillow. He got off much cheaper than Santa did. Our Easter Bunny brings presents, not candy. :)

Kaylin wanted a Zhu Zhu pet.

Dressed in Easter best

I just love this picture of Macy. She was listening to something Hannah said when we were dying eggs, and I just love the look in her eyes!

Bad Blogger

I've been so busy lately that my blog is suffering. I know I need to be better, but I just haven't had time! My dear friend is in Baltimore with her new adopted baby who is in the NICU, and so I've picked up more work at school. I finished the stupid fire program--that's my technical name for it--and I'm so happy about that!

My brother's family came in town last night and tonight (Bobby is at the airport right now picking up my niece, her husband, and my nephew!) and will be here until Sunday. I let the girls play hooky today to play with their cousin Josh all day. They only had a 1 day sspring break, so I felt justfiied in letting them stay home. We have a busy weekend planned!

I can't even think of any funny stories from the girls to share. I'm sure they've done things, but I can't remember any right now!

At school tomorrow, I will try to upload our Easter pictures. The connection is so much faster at school!

I will make a better effort to be a better blogger. Thanks for hanging with me!

What goes around, comes around

I'm not good at math. Not a secret, just the truth. When I was young, my dad would drill me on math facts. Not sure if he did this to improve my math skills, or just to keep me occupied. As I got older, I had to do his math problems without a calculator. His reasoning? One of these days I would need to be able to do math without a calculator. Guess what? I don't really ever need to do math without a calculator.

I hated it. 

But looking back now, it was just a time for us to bond, to spend time together. Just like it was in the car on Friday night. We were driving back from Bobby's grandmother's, and we'd been in the car about 8 hours that day. The portable DVD player wasn't working right, and they were very fussy with each other. So Kaylin hands me a notebook and has me write math problems for her to solve. I start with easy ones, then quickly had to move onto harder ones. Then Macy wanted math problems too! So until it got dark, I wrote math problems for the two of them. And I was reminded of those years sitting in the family room, doing my own math problems.

And I'm still bad at math. :)