more trip stories...

Will I ever get to the end of this dang trip?? ha ha ha

Jenni had to leave early Wednesday morning to fly home and take a college distance ed test. Silly teacher wouldn't let any of the kids get out of it. Who schedules a test during spring break??! We were so sad to see her leave...all of the sudden the car rides and time at home got really quiet! :) We drove to Woodburn later in the day to go to the tulip festival. And since tulips are one of my favorite flowers, I loved to see them all. :) The girls were pretty sick of driving by this point so we heard alot of, "Are we there yet?" and "How much longer?" questions. It was once again so very pretty and nice to see fields of tulips. Afterwards, we drove to West LInn to see one of Paul's school buddies from forever ago. They chatted for quite a bit about his art and galleries and such while the girls played with his little baby girl. Afterwards, I visited another quilt shop and bought a jelly roll of some Mary E. fabrics :) Took another scenic drive back to my parents and had ice cream once again after dinner. MMMM

We started playing around with the idea of leaving a day early so Paul would have a chance to gather his wits about him before church on Sunday so we made a few arrangements and decided to drive home on Friday instead of Saturday.

On Thursday, we drove into Portland again and visited Powell's and Anthropoligie and a yummy gelato shop. We then drove over to the OMSI so spend a few hours. It was a really fun museum with lots of hands on displays for everyone. Abby and Chelsea were in their elements, I think. They both seem to enjoy the sciences and math. We went home for dinner then over to my brother's house in Hillsboro for ice cream and hang out time. I really loved hanging out with Darren and his family. We hardly see each other and certainly don't talk to each other often, it's actually kind of sad, but their cute little family is awesome. The little cousins adore the big cousins :)

We drove home all day on Friday and for the last four hours of the trip, we were smart and put Seinfeld on the laptop to watch as we drove and it made the trip go so much faster in the end. I pushed and pushed for the 90-mile-an-hour-trip home, but Paul wouldn't humor me at all. Dang...could have been home so much quicker ;) But seriously, it was a fun little vacation we had.