Hood River Visit during Oregon Christmas Trip

As always, we had planned to make our stop at Hood River at the beginning of the Oregon trip, but again, we landed under less than ideal conditions. We believe our flight out of Houston was the only one to make it as scheduled the day we flew into Portland. We had thought our flight landing at 2AM (OUR TIME) in the morning was a bad deal. As it turns out, we were very blessed to make it into Portland on time. We also spent the night at what has become known as "our hotel!" We would not probably stay there under ideal conditions. However the last time we flew in and had 2 inches of ICE everywhere, this is where we stayed also. We checked in at 5AM (OUR TIME) and the boys actually slept in pretty nicely. I guess that happens after you mess with their sleep! The boys did an excellent job the whole trip! Thanks for all of your prayers.


Sorry for the little aside, we decided to keep an eye out for a nice day sometime during the 10 days we were in Oregon to make a quick trip up to see my Grandma Audie, Grandpa Dude, Uncle Rick, Aunt Elise, and Cousin Elliott. The weather finally let up enough to make the trip up on the 28th. When I called to tell them we were coming, Grandma Audie said, "You better be calling to tell me you are not going to try and come up here!" Needless to say after that initial encouragement the trip went off without a hitch. The road through the GORGE was wet, and there was a lot of rain, but nothing for a Suburban to worry about (Thanks Wayne and Mary!).

Here is Great Grandpa Dude measuring up Eli...and Eli doing the same. When Zach (in the background distracted by a DVD) first met Grandpa he cried pretty hard when Grandpa had one of his boisterous laughs. As you can see, this visit went much better! E could probably have taken him if he got too feisty!


Grandma giving Eli a couple of Eskimo kisses! They had a nice little time cuddling together and he is a pretty happy guy who will smile at anything. You can tell the smile on Grandma's face tells a little different story than the phone call telling them we were coming!


Aunt Elise enjoying a little time with Eli as well...we had to wake him up as we arrived just at nap time and Grandma could not believe he had slept for about the first 2 1/2 hours of our visit. If we hadn't woken him up, they wouldn't have gotten to hang out with him and really meet him.


Here is a picture of everyone using Vonnie's camera and Grandpa's tripod. We tried to steal it, but you all know how hard it is to get a picture out of the front room. I almost tried to hang it on the wall in Grandpa's studio and they might have let is go as they are always happy to let us have a new picture or two (or 3 on this trip) when we visit. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa...it was wonderful to get to see you let you love on the kids a little bit!