Portland Part One

Chris has always wanted to go to Portland:

70-80 degree weather in the summer, trees EVERYWHERE, tons of stuff for the kids, great food places so for the Falco-Prather annual trip we decided to go to Oregon. After flying to Dallas it was a long 4 hour flight to Portland.  We have been prepping for this flight not really sure how Ali would do.  She feel asleep for an hour and then played the rest of the time. It helped having Jack, Caroline and Sam there. 

We made it to Portland!

The first day we found this huge playground in Washington Park.  The kids ran around and played and wore themselves out.

In the afternoon we went for a hike. Part of the hike was through the arboretum. Chris and I rented a hiking backpack for the week but it wasn't ready until Monday.  The Falco's let us borrow their's while Jack rode on Gian's shoulders. 

Caroline and Sam pretty much ran the trails and had a great time finding things in nature. 

 "Hey Sam, look I found you a hiking stick" 

"Look Caroline, look a slug!"

Ali was content being carried on my back singing "row row row your boat" and "monkeys jumping on the bed"

Monday we went to Cannon beach.  It was a short 1 1/2 hour drive.  The little kids look a nap almost the whole way there.

I found this on Chris's phone.  He wrote it for the girls.

This was Ali's first time at the beach and she loved it. She ran around trying to catch birds and followed the big kids.

Building a sand castle

Caroline fell in and got wet.  Chris got it on video.  She has been watching it on repeat laughing at herself.

Ali's foot prints

 After the beach we headed north to a small aquarium 

Caroline and Sam fed the seals

touch tank

The last stop was Astoria where Kindergarten Cop and the Goonies were filmed.  We drove across the bridge to Washington and then turned around and headed back home.

Sam wanted to go to the Lewis and Clark state park.  We only had about 20 minutes to explore but still saw some neat things.