Two weekends ago, Papa Duane and Nana Karen came from Florida to visit us! It's wonderful how quickly the kids warm up and become attached to their grandparents, even when they haven't seen them in a while. Ronan really wanted to share his love of trains with Papa and showed him YouTube videos of trains going down the tracks.
The plane became a favorite toy when we spent time together in the backyard.
Brielle posed in a beautiful dress they gave her.
Ronan saw Brielle posing, and as soon as she walked away he popped in for his turn in the photo shoot.
Our first excursion with Papa and Nana, along with Great Uncle Phil and Great Aunt Karen, was to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville (almost an hour south of Portland). Papa Duane and Phil love going there because they used to be pilots. Amazingly, the museum houses actual planes that they flew- not the kind of plane, the actual planes!
Here's Phil in front of his plane:
I took pictures of Papa and Brielle at his plane when she was a toddler. But it's still there, outside in front of the museum:
This museum in known for housing the Spruce Goose. Brielle posed under one of its massive wings.
Brielle and Ronan liked looking at the planes, but they really loved buckling themselves into the various airplane seats that were set out throughout the museum as resting places.
Some of the planes are inside, and some are outside.
To one side of the Aviation Museum is the Space Museum. On the other side is a new attraction called "Wings and Waves" - an indoor water park! And, yes, that's a real plane on the roof.
Inside, there's a wave pool, a regular pool, a hot tub, a kiddie splash area, and four large slides spiraling down from the airplane above. You access them by walking up a bunch of stairs to climb up to the inside of the plane.
Ronan wasn't tall enough to go down the big slides, but he enjoyed the pools.
The slides were SO fun! On most of them you ride on an inner tube, either by yourself or on a double tube with someone else. The yellow one was fast and scary because it was the only one with an open top, so you worry that you'll fly over the sides. The blue one took you through the dark so you can only feel the smooth, gliding motion and it feels like you're flying. The green one had a point where it opened up into a large funnel, where you spin around the top then make your way down to the bottom where you drop down through the "drain". (In the orange one you have to lie down in this skinny, claustrophobic tunnel, so I didn't do that one.) Brielle was brave and had a great time with all of them.
Oh, and there's a winery there too...How cool is that?
Everyone came to our home afterwards and enjoyed time outside with the fire table.
Ronan engaged Papa in a (foam) light saber battle.
Our second excursion was down to wine country.
The kids enjoyed their own activities at the wineries, like feeding the fish at Duck Pond and running through the fields.
There's Nana!
At some point the kids started getting a little bored and got some iPad time.
One big project during their visit was to pass on Papa's childhood train set to Ronan. Several boxes of trains, tracks, and electronic equipment were delivered to our house earlier and kept in storage. But this visit was the perfect time to actually set it up, since Ronan is obsessed with trains. Papa and Daddy spent a lot of time getting it all set up, to Ronan's delight.
Thank you for a wonderful, fun visit, Papa and Nana!
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