Three days after Balboa we made our annual trip to Oregon to visit my parents.  This being the first “big travel” vacation with Jacob, packing was quite the production! We made sure to stop packing for a bit to play with our little guy before he went to bed.

We woke up early the next morning and Jacob was excited to start his adventure on his first airplane ride!

It was a bit daunting thinking about everything we had to do to get all our stuff to the airport, through security and then how Jacob was going to handle the airplane ride.  But everything went seamlessly and all the TSA people were actually quite pleasant and very helpful! On the flight up to Oregon the third seat next to us on the plane was not reserved (yay!!) so we were able to take the car seat onto the plane with us.  Jacob did great during the plane ride and didn’t fuss at all.  Whew!

We arrived to my parents in the late afternoon and got settled, gave Jacob a bath and put him down to bed for the night.  The next day we loaded up the truck and drove east of my parents ranch up the mountain to Odell Lake.  It was a beautiful drive through the plush forest and small towns.  My parents friends, Vicki & Roscoe, rode up on their Harley and met us there.  First we walked along the lake for a bit.

Vicki is a mom to some grown boys and a grandma herself so she was right at home with Jacob.

In fact the Carhartt shirt that Jacob is wearing was a gift from them

Jacob’s favorite thing to do these days is bite down (not sucking) on his finger (I’m still waiting for a tooth to break through!)

The weather was perfect and we had lunch at the lodge out on the patio overlooking the lake.  It also made for a nice view for this momma when it came time for Jacob to have his lunch (and be burped, while biting his finger).

After lunch we walked through the picnic area/campsites by the river

My parents dog, Jane, is such a sweetheart!

Must have been something interesting on the ground?

It was a beautiful drive and a relaxing, peaceful lunch.

Every night after dinner we always play a few rounds of the marble game and when the boys get tired of the girls beating them 🙂 we go out on the back deck to enjoy our wine and wait for the moon to come up.

It doesn’t start getting dark until about 9:00 pm, then around 10:00 pm the moon finally starts to come out.

The tiny light on the mountain below the moon is the light shining from the town veterinarian’s house.

The next day we stayed around the ranch and had a cattle round up.  I’m pretty sure my parents save this event for when we are in town since we’ve done it pretty much every year while we are up there. But we don’t mind, it is fun for us city slickers! After getting the cows through the “shoot” where they got their shots and tags my parents and Justin saddled up the horses and moved the cows into the field in front of the house.

Well…they moved most of the cows…They left some of them in the back field to wean the calves from the mothers.  So for the next several days we heard lots of moooooooing back and forth between the mamas and babies, I definitely had some sympathy for those mama cows!

That night we went to the Dexter Lake Club for dinner and the best burger in town.

Jacob is grabbing at everything in sight and putting it in his mouth, your beer is no exception 🙂

Every night before putting Jacob to bed we read to him.  He loves stories!  Very rarely do I get to see his face while we are reading since I am usually the one reading to him.  So I had to get my camera out to capture this.

He takes story time pretty seriously!

And yes, we were reading about Mr Brown making mooing sounds like the cows outside.

I’ll be back soon with more on our trip! XO