Trip to Oregon- Part Four, Visiting Grandparents

We spent about an hour of each day during our trip visiting my Grandma and Grandpa Ballard (an hour a day is all my kids could handle being couped up in the retirement center, and it was all my grandparents could handle of my kids). They are doing reasonably well for their ages (Grandpa in now 94, and Grandma is 92). Grandpa is a little hard of hearing, and he uses his nebulizer frequently (we call it his peace pipe). He also fell recently, but is slowly recovering and can get around pretty well with the use of his walker. Grandma is still a pretty forgetful, but not as bad as I was expecting. It was wonderful to see them again, but it is getting harder to say goodbye with each visit because I don't know if will be the last time I see them.

Here's grandpa using his "peace pipe". Molly was very concerned about his "smoking" habit.













This is one of the few pictures we could get of Grandma Ballard smiling. She really enjoyed the attention and company, even is she doesn't always remember who we are.
This spider and rat were the only toys for the kids to play with at my grandparents (they were left over from some Halloween decorations). Jake stole the camera during one of the visits and took some great pictures- I especially liked Luke doing bunny ears on the rat. I swear I can see great things for my boys in the future!

Trip to Oregon- Part Three, Fun in Corvallis

We did have some moments of sunshine mingled with the Oregon rain. We were able to play at Avery Park, go on a short hike behind my grandparents house, and visit Oregon State University.
Avery Park had a couple different playgrounds in addition to a train engine that the kids played on. The trails were all too muddy to hike, but the kids still found ways to entertain themselves (sorry about the mass of pictures, there were too many cute ones to narrow down).

Trip to Oregon- Part Two, The Coast

We had so much rain on Easter Sunday (not the drizzle kind of rain Utah gets, but Oregon rain that drenched everything), when Monday rolled around and we saw a hint of sunshine we bolted for the coast.
It was sunny all day with temperatures in the 50's (still a little cold to be playing in the ocean). The kids really enjoyed the tide pools, playing in the sand, and collecting seashells and smooth rocks.

Jake playing in the tide pools. The tide came in quickly and soon everything was covered in water (including Jacob).

















After playing at Seal Rock, we visited the Marine Science Center, had lunch at a 50's diner, and then headed up to Devil's punch bowl and Depoe Bay for some shopping and whale watching (although we didn't see any whales). We also grabbed some famous Mo's clam chowder on our way home to bring back to Grandma Ballard (of course we had to buy some for us too- delicious).

Trip to Oregon- Part One, The Mullet

We just returned home from celebrating our Spring break in Oregon. We had so much fun and took so many pictures, I thought I would break up our vacation in a couple different posts so it wouldn't be such a long overloaded blog.
While in Oregon, we stayed at my grandparents house in Corvallis (actually they live in a retirement home, and my brother Eric is taking care of their house).

During the vacation, Eric actually allowed me to cut his hair (the only rule was I had to cut it into a mullet because he is so ingrained with white trash). I am pretty proud of the work I did considering I had never really cut hair before except my boys (and they always end up with a buzz cut). Eric got many people at work oogling his new "do" (probably more out of pity or shame rather than envy). He actually kept that haircut for 4 days before he shaved it into something a little more respectable.

I included a couple different angles of the haircut so you can appreciate the beauty of this neck blanket. Look how the sun glistens off that masterpiece!

Snowmobiling at Strawberry Reservoir

Yesterday we had the chance to go snowmobiling at Strawberry Reservoir with my brother Rick and his family (and some of their friends). Unfortunately Kenn couldn't go (it was one of the few days he had to work, but if you were listening to KSL radio you probably had the opportunity to hear Kenn update us on the news, weather, and traffic).
The kids hated it at first because it was so cold and snowing (Jake even begged me to go home after 10 minutes), but after a few runs on the snowmobile we were all having a blast. Molly hated riding on the snowmobiles, but she loved the sledding and making snowballs. My favorite thing was Jake, Luke and I racing Kim and Alexa (I'm not sure who won, but at least none of us crashed).
We finally decided it was time to stop because it was snowing so hard and my face shield on the helmet kept fogging up and icing over. It was a great way to end the winter season (I'm all wintered out, now on with Spring)!!!

Molly in the Magazines

My friend Tiffani Smith is a designer in the scrapbook world (Tiff is probably one of the main reasons I hate to scrapbook, because she intimidates me so much). Here is one of pages that Tiffani did with Molly's picture, which ended up being published in some scrapbook magazines (sorry, I don't know which magazines this made it in).



That picture was of Molly when she was about 9 months old. Here is a picture of Molly now that she is 2 1/2 years old- I think she is still beautiful enough to be in magazines!!!