Other Christmas Vacation Stuff We Did

During this break we tried to keep the kids busy...and my Dad!

Dad likes to constantly be on the move.

We had a list of fun Christmas like activities, however most of the places around Portland were ridiculously packed. 

For instance, we tried going to the Zoo lights one of his first nights in town. After sitting on the highway for almost 40mins we got to the exit where the "shuttle" parking was. We were still in a string of cars that followed a winding road down a hill. The hill was bordered by a line of people. Hundreds of people!

We decided that we would rather spend our time doing something other than sitting in line...

One day we went to Safari Sams for the kids to run around.

Abram ended up losing his phone in the jungle gym. After searching for it for quite a while my Dad found it in the lost and found. Thank goodness!

Sitting in Safari Sams is like sitting in the middle of a nightmare. 

It is kids running around screaming, crying, and begging to go play arcade games.

 It can get fairly overwhelming...

But the kids love it

 August and Ely on the rope ladder

 Elysia having a moment with her mommy

 The glow-n-the-dark mini golf. August just loves running around the course

 

We also got to do a little hiking. 

We tried to find places that were close to Jen's house in Tigard. 

There are several great little hikes.

 We ended up in Tryon Creek State Park. We used to come here a lot when we lived in SW Portland. It has several little trails and is an easy place for the kids to enjoy running around.

This was a nice out of the house activity. August got pretty tired and was begging me to pick him up for the 20mins or so of the hike.

Besides cookie making, we did a lot of Christmas shopping and running around. I decided to videotape a lot more this year. It makes it hard to get photos and videotape.

While my dad was at our house in Prineville the boys taught him how to play BeyBlades...

Papa got to tell the boys about spinning tops. How all things tend to be recycled in the world. Even ideas. They may be modified slightly, but the concept is the same.

Of course the day we headed to Portland it started snowing...

Even though my Dad swore it wouldn't.

It was snowy in town but the mountain passes were actually clear.

Jumping back to what we did while in Portland...

We went to a great place as our "back up" to see Christmas lights. 

The Queen Anne Victorian Mansion. I am making that its own blog because it was pretty cool. 

It really is a magical time of year.