Sunday, August 16, 2009

Portland 2009 - Addendum: What about Finn?

While Mandy, Julia, and I were out gallivanting around the west coast, what the heck was Finn up to? I'm sure this was on everyone's mind, so let's see what the answer is.

He stayed with Mandy's parents the first few days. He paid a visit to some relatives and their pets. Finn-sized dogs Maggie and Sammie were fun for him to hang out with.


A zoo animal is more of a community pet, but they're fun to be around too.

And you gotta take some time to slide, slide, slide!

And sometimes when you help take care of a friendly animal...

...you get something wonderful in return.

The last few days of his family's absence were spent with my parents. Here are Grandpa Dayton and Finn stretching out on the floor.

And then...Finn attack!

Grandma Colleen is a good book reader.

And if she doesn't do it right, Finn'll head lock her til she does!

Upon having his family all back together, Finn called out, "Check it out people, Grandpa Dayton doubles as a pack animal!" (And apparently the new hip is working out just fine!)

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Portland 2009 - Part Four

The final installment...

On Monday we went to OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. It had a lot of great hands-on exhibits for kids and Julia liked it (and so did the other three of us). The omnimax movie that we saw was a bit much for Julia but she enjoyed the show at the planetarium.





The parents got in on some of the action too!



After the museum we went and had an awesome late afternoon lunch at a Lebanese restaurant.

Our flight left later in the afternoon so we had some time to squeeze in one more activity on Tuesday morning. We decided to check out the International Rose Test Garden. The gardens are located on 4.5 acres of land with downtown Portland behind them in the distance. They are used to plant new varieties of roses to see how they turn out. The successful ones go on to be put on the market and the unsuccessful ones are destroyed.








I followed some honeybees around for awhile trying to get some good pictures of them in the roses.




I came to Oregon a few years ago for Ember's graduation. When I got home, I was very disappointed when I realized that out of all the pictures I had taken, none were of her and me together. I made sure that didn't happen this time!


Check this link to see more pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029118&id=1074972765&l=6ff0041547

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Portland 2009 - Part Three

The next morning we went to the Portland Saturday Market. It's the largest continually operating outdoor arts and crafts market in the nation. Lots of cool things to look at and lots of good food. Julia bought a small mermaid doll and a new tutu. She also got a balloon pony made for her.


Our next stop was to the Lloyd Center, a large mall. We weren't interested in shopping, we wanted to surprise Julia with the indoor ice skating rink that is there.

After that we headed back to the hotel and scrounged up some supper for Julia. Then Ember and I went out to pick up some Thai food for the three of us.

Sunday morning we went to the Oregon Zoo, just a few minutes from our hotel. The price was right since our membership to the Minnesota Zoo worked to get us in there too. Julia did some kidding around on a statue.

She also measured her wingspan against an eagle's.

We thought Grandpa Dayton might appreciate this picture of Julia by some bee boxes.


We did a little horsing around at the zoo.

One of the coolest things we did at the zoo was to let some lories drink juice from a cup that we were holding. At one point I had two on my hand and one on my head.





After a bird show, Julia was brave and gave a vulture a small donation. The vulture took the dollar out of her hand and dropped it in the box.

After the zoo we explored around our hotel on foot where we grabbed an afternoon bite to eat and some fancy chocolate. That evening we hung out at the hotel and ordered pizza.

Check this link to see more pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028909&id=1074972765&l=849f73abd7

Monday, August 10, 2009

Portland 2009 - Part Two

We got up Friday morning, walked down to a little coffee shop a block from our motel, and then took our drinks with us for an early morning walk on beach.


Then we took advantage of the saltwater swimming pool at the motel and went for a dip.


When Mandy and I were last in Oregon together we really enjoyed exploring tide pools, so we thought we would try to find some for Julia to see too. We checked the local tide times and then headed to Oceanside where we thought we had a good chance of finding some tide pools while the tide was out. We kind of struck out on finding any decent tide pools, but we found a beach that was pretty neat. There was a tunnel on one end of the beach that went straight through the rocky cliff and onto another beach that was only accessible through the tunnel. Three of us, Mandy, Torey, and Julia wrote our names in the sand.

On the bottom of the picture is the entrance to the tunnel.


And this is the exit on the other end.







We found this little indented cave area. Ember walked in to take a look and then yelled out that it was gross. I went in to take a look and sure enough, lots of gross looking bugs.


After saying goodbye to the Pacific Ocean, we headed inland and went back to Portland. We checked into our hotel there (I was also very impressed with this one) and then went out for supper. Afterward we went to Powell's.

Check this link to see more pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028742&id=1074972765&l=e1b28fab8c