Family Vacation Day 1 and 2

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 & Thursday, August 12, 2010
Dear Max,
Wow, what a week it has been! We just returned from our family vacation to Oregon. I will admit, I was pulling for Hawaii or Alaska, but after our trip, I'm so glad we went to Oregon. It was so beautiful and the perfect retreat from the heat back home. Here is a run down of our vacation....

Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Today we flew into Portland, Oregon. It's never good to start off your trip with a 2 and 1/2 hour delay, but at least we were together. Aunt Jali, Uncle Geary, Daniel and Natalie had met up with Papa, Grammie, Daddy you and I so all 9 of us got to wait together in the airport for our flight. The good thing about having a late flight, all the babies slept! We arrived late to our hotel, and were glad that we had chose to stay the Airport Embassy Suite, we were literally 3 minutes from our hotel.

Thursday, August 12, 2010
We woke up and enjoyed the full breakfast that embassy suites offers, one of my favorite things about staying at embassy's. We then headed into down town Portland for our city tour. Now in true Page fashion we didn't do just any city tour. We took our city tour by jet boat! In my opinion, the only way to go. By the end of the 3 hour jet boat ride, even you could say clearly... Hang on, Hang on, Hang on! We got to see the city and learn about the culture while having a crazy ride down the river doing 360's, how great is that! Oh and we put Gramie and Papa on the ends so they got soaked and we stayed relatively dry.

The kids watching morning cartoons while we get ready for our day

One of my favorite places, these homes were built literally on the water.

Papa enjoying the scenery

Portland

Max and Mommy

We went up to Willamette Falls

And even went into the lock system

After out tour of Portland we headed down to Sherwood, OR to see our dear friend Elder Jaden Cox, who is currently serving a mission in Oregon. Sherwood was only about 20 minutes outside of Portland. It was so perfect, he and his companion had taken a split p-day so they could spend some time with us. We met them at their apartment and decided to head out for some dinner at the outback. The outback didn't open until 4, so we swung into McDonalds and let the kids eat, so when we got to the outback we put all the kids at one end of the table, with the DVD player playing cars and all the adults at the other end. It was perfect, you were all fed, so you weren't hungry and the movie kept you all captivated for an hour so we could visit and get caught up. Elder Cox is doing so well. He couldn't believe how big you had gotten. I told him that when he gets home you will suddenly say, so this is Elder Cox that I pray for each night. After dinner we went to one of the members home that has this huge blueberry orchard, they let us go and pick blueberries. Which Uncle Geary was THRILLED about. Uncle Geary served his mission in Oregon and that is one thing he remembers is how much he loved eating fresh blue and blackberries. It was really funny, we were taking our time picking the berries and visiting, suddenly Papa comes around the corner and asks, how is your picking going? And holds up his gallon zip lock bag that is chucked full. You couldn't even fill a snack size zip lock with what I had collected! It was a great laugh and a lot of fun hanging out in the orchard.

Papa, Mommy, Elder Cox, Daddy, Natalie, Aunt Jali, Uncle Geary and Elder Wilde
not pictured and asleep in the van: you, Daniel and Grammie

Papa with his HUGE bag of blueberries

Daddy was really getting into it!

Uncle Geary, Aunt Jali and Mommy

Mommy with Elder Cox. So good to see him!

We then headed into McMinnville for the night. Now this is an interesting town... we stayed in a clean but "seedy" hotel. Not a lot of options here. Can't wait to tell you about more adventures tomorrow.