We have a very lovely life , and we know just how lucky we are to be together. And yet - we know some of you have told us that after reading the blog you don't know how we're doing so much with twins, or how things are going so well. In the interest of full disclosure, of COURSE things aren't always as pretty as they are on the blog - while our lovely moments are all real moments, there are plenty of tough moments that don't make it on camera.
Case in point - our vacation to Oregon. We took this vacation a year ago, and on our drive back from a lovely week in Oregon we got the call that Ashley had picked us to parent the girls, and that they would soon be born. We could not WAIT to repeat the vacation this year, this time with our darling daughters. Many of you out there already laughing at this point - how did we think the vacation would be even remotely the same? Who knows - we naively booked four nights at a bed and breakfast, one night at a yurt on the coast, one night at a posh Portland hotel, and planned in lots of fun activities. And while there were many amazingly wonderful moments (which we'll post here in the coming days in installments, because there are just so many pictures!) what you don't see are all the times we were just trying to manage to keep going, keep relatively sane, and keep the girls in one piece. Our overall advice - don't expect a trip with infants to be a relaxing vacation.
And now - for the good stuff. We stayed for four nights and about two days in Hood River, Oregon. It is absolutely beautiful. We were especially excited to tour the Fruit Loop, a 25 mile loop through gorgeous farms and mountains to tour a variety of farms. Here's a little look at our scenery - Mt. Hood features prominently in lots of these pictures:
The girls slept off and on during this journey, so sometimes only one girl was up at a time when we arrived at the farms. The alpaca farm was one where only Clara was awake. We saw week-old baby alpacas, we saw the roving that their fur is made into, and then beautiful yarns that are made from each of the alpaca on the farm. It was great.Here's Clara, happily bouncing in Christina's arms and taking in the scenery and the farm life.
But get her near the cute, loving, adorably sweet alpacas and yikes! We could not believe how much she disliked the alpacas (and this was an abrupt reaction - she was fine one second and then when Christina clicked the camera shutter we got this picture:)
Seriously, how cute are these guys? But, we took Clara back to the car, and tried to take note that she isn't always as into the animals as we think she might be. Only dogs and birds seem to really appeal to her.
Next we went to the Draper Sisters Farm, and had a nice time stretching our legs and swinging on their old-timey swing with Mt. Hood in the background:
The girls, who are huge fans of all fruits, really loved the peaches we got at this farm. They each got one, but while Clara's was getting washed she got a little impatient.
Luckily, they are learning to share and Elena let her have a little peach while she was waiting.
Clara was asleep when we first got to the farm, and Elena took a little ride in the wagon to pick out a special peach (not quite ripe) that she could carry in the car without getting messy.
We also went blueberry picking - Christina taught the girls how the blueberries go "kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk" like in the Blueberries for Sal book she loved as a child.
She didn't really need to try so hard to get them to like the blueberries - they couldn't go more than a few minutes without getting a little taste, or without having us show them the blueberries we were getting.
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