Portland Zoo and camping at East Lake

Toward the end of July, I took the kids down to Portland for a trip to the zoo with one of my mothers-in-law, her daughters, and their kids. We had so much fun together! It turned out to be a super hot day, which, with 7 young kids and a very large zoo, meant that we didn't see the whole zoo. But that just means we'll have to do it again!

That was a Saturday...that night, I left the kids in Portland with the grandparents so that I could get home and get us packed for camping trip #2 of the summer. We headed down to central Oregon - specifically, East Lake - for some camping with Steve's mom, sister and her almost-husband, aunt, and cousins. Some family friends were so generous to lend us their trailer, which was so great! I love sleeping in a tent, but a trailer (with toilet and running water) really does make things a lot easier when you have young kids. Especially since....it rained. A lot. But not the entire time, and as some of the pictures will show, the rain didn't slow the kids down too much!

4 of the 7 - I wish we'd thought to get a picture of all of them.

It took a lot of fussing for him to fall asleep, but he finally did.

I just love elephants!

This dinosaur was motorized and made some small movements. Travis was a little freaked at first, then thought it was pretty cool.

I wasn't a big fan of the first part of the zoo. The walkways were really narrow (which doesn't work on a crowded summer day), and the animals were spread pretty far apart. So we had kind of a slow start, and as you can see, Jayna was not impressed :) But it got lots better.

This, I think, was the kids' favorite part of the day - or at least the part they talked about the most afterward. I can't even tell you what kind of an animal that is, but it was right at their eye level and was putting on quite a show for them!

One of Evan's favorites - spaghetti!

Both Travis and Jayna caught their first real fish on this camping trip. Well, kind of. Travis caught a fish at u-fish once, but that doesn't count. And really, these were "junk" fish the kids caught...but they don't know the difference! Travis actually caught 8, I think, and for the first 7, he didn't want anywhere near them. But by the end, he was willing to hold one wrapped in a washcloth, and even throw it back out to the seagulls for them to eat. Fun times!

On the last full day, it poured. To the point where the tent people were digging trenches around their tents to keep the water from flooding their tents. Evan - he didn't mind one bit! In fact, it was his mission to pace back and forth and tromp through these two giant mud puddles as many times as possible. Nothing could deter him - he didn't even look up when we said his name. Sometimes I wonder how he and Travis could possibly be brothers!