Oregon!!! First Stop- Multnomah Falls

 For years Ryan and I have talked about visiting Oregon.  We have several friends who have been and the pictures looked amazing and they say they loved it.  We didn't have any traveling planned in the summer so we decided to take a road trip and see Oregon.  We reserved a room at a resort that my friend Julie has used.  We left on a Sunday after church and drove for about 10 hours.  We didn't plan where we would stop.  We figured we would see how we were feeling and find a hotel once we were tired.  But our kids are troopers and they were happy to hang out for a long time!  One problem is that there is not many options of places to stop once you leave the greater Boise area.  The total drive to the resort is between 12-13 hours.  We ended up stopping at The Dalles, which meant the following day we didn't have much driving at all.  The Dalles is less than an hour from our first planned stop, which was Multnomah Falls.  This was right off the highway, easy to get to, really cool, and soooo crowded.

 We walked up a path to that bridge you can see.  And then the path kept going up to the top of the waterfall.  We started up it, but we have some whiny kids!  Kaden and Sadie were both big whiners about hiking.  So I ended up taking them back down after getting halfway up.  Kylee chose to come with us, and Dylan and Ryan went up to the top.

 This is a picture Ryan took from the bridge looking down on us at the viewing area.  you have to look closely, but you can see Kylee, Sadie and I holding our arms out.

This picture shows Ryan on the bridge, holding his arms out.  Dylan was with him but he's hard to see.

 Moss all over the trees!  It's so GREEN. (Twilight reference.)

 We got a bit bored waiting for the two boys to come back down.  After a long day of driving the day before (and probably too much screen time) the two youngest were really whiny.  In Kaden's defense he was doing okay until he tripped on the way down and scraped himself.  Then he insisted on being carried.  We were sitting in chairs just waiting and Kylee and I got up for a minute.  Sadie said a bird flew over her and dropped a dead spider in her shirt!!!  She was just sitting there minding her business when a dead spider falls from the air and slips down the collar of her shirt.  She jumped up and shook it out.  But it was quite the experience for her!