Trip to Oregon!

At the beginning of April, we visited Derek's brother and their family out in their new home in Portland, Oregon. This marked Bella's third time on a plane trip, and this was by far the most successful trip! She was awesome on the planes and enjoyed watching Dora and playing with her toys. She also liked seeing the "big planes" and watching us take off and land in the plane. In fact, she hopped onto some other lady's lap when we landed on one flight so she could see out the window!

We had a lot of fun spending time with Matthew, Melissa, and Cayden. On Friday morning, we took the kids to a children's museum. Bella has now been to several of those, so she is a pro at navigating them! Naturally, the second she saw the water room, she had to go check it out.
We were able to steer Bella away towards some other exhibits as well. She enjoyed doing some grocery shopping, quite similar to how she "helps" Mommy at home. Or maybe it's more of that she picks random items and puts them in our cart... whatever it may be. :)
Always fascinated by fish. :)
And then back to the water room! She made some little friends at the racing table. :)
Splashing around with Cayden- these two didn't to interact a lot at the museum as they each wanted to go their own way. But everybody loves water!
Splashing up a storm with another little boy!
Friday afternoon after the kids took a nap, we took them to a local park. We were lucky when we visited as the weather was nice for a majority of the time!
We tried to get Bella and Cayden to sit together on the slide for two seconds... as shown by Daddy's arm, that was unsuccessful.
Here Bella is looking for bugs on the slide, which was a favorite activity both there and at home. She is quite fascinated by bugs, which are referred to as "bugga-buggas" thanks to a Dora episode. The second she sees a bug, she has to go investigate it thoroughly.
She's a goof. :)
Playing some basketball with Daddy... however, that didn't last too long. The enticement of slides and bugs were too much for her! Bella and Cayden also had lots of fun merely chasing each other around. :)
We were able to get a good picture when we got back to their house. :)
Bella looooved playing with Cayden's recorder, as well as wearing his cowboy hat and glasses.
It was quite the interesting sight!
On Saturday, we went to see a waterfall- which Bella referred to as "big waterfall!" It was a little cooler that day and definitely cold from the mist of the waterfall, but it was very pretty to see! I had a fixed millimeter lens on my camera, so we couldn't take a picture of the whole thing.
Up on the bridge by the waterfall- Bella wasn't a big fan of getting sprayed with water, as shown by the disturbed look on her face.
Much better from a distance!
Here are the boys with their kiddos, excluding the two in utero. :) Not a good picture at all, but Bella was freaking out that Mommy was no longer holding her.

The only unfortunate part of the trip was that Bella was sick on Saturday night. She started acting weird on the way home, saying her tummy hurt. We thought she was hungry, but she didn't even really eat that great. Then when we got back to Matt and Melissa's house, she proceeded to throw up- her very first time. :( Needless to say, we were a little worried about the plane ride the next day! However, all went well and she was fine from then on out. Thankfully that didn't happen until the end, so Bella had lots of fun playing with "Cayd." They actually played together quite well- maybe because most of play time entailed of chasing each other around, a favorite activity for both. :) We'll look forward to the next time they can get together and play!