Laura Leaves the Country

Laura left for China on Monday! Pete and I were so nice to drive her to the airport and see her off. It was pretty funny watching her fidget.

 

Laura and her nerves.

 

 

Pete being unsympathetic to her nerves. He, after all, left the country for two years!

 

Goodbye for four months!!

Battle Creek Canyon

This week's hiking adventure ended up a little more adventurous than we intended. Our original plan was to hike up Battle Creek Canyon,over the ridge, and down Grove Creek Canyon. Sadly, we made a wrong turn up top and ended up having to scramble down some deer trails/scree fields to get off the mountain. Woo! It was quite an adventure. Everyone made it just fine although some had sorer feet than others.

 

On the way up there were tons of beautiful waterfalls. People were actually repelling off this one. I think we gave one kid stage fright because we stopped to watch him.

 

 

Taking a rest.

Rory found a cool wasps nest so we all decided to stop and sit under the tree and see if we could get stung. Except Kathleen. She walked up the hill and found a different tree.

 

Squaw Peak

To help my ongoing cause of losing my baby weight we decided to hike Squaw Peak this weekend. It's a steep one! Britt came with us and entertained us with many funny stories. Madelyn was such a good hiker and slept the whole time except for our lunch/diaper change break at the top.

Making sure our girl is looking gooooood.

We found a nice flat diaper changing rock. It also made a good airing out rock. She was pretty sweaty from the hike up. Poor baby.

Our smoky view from the top.

A Week Away

We went to the Oregon coast last week to visit Rory's family. Man oh man is that a long drive with a baby. We took two days to do it and Madelyn traveled very well. She mostly just slept. Yay! We also took her on her first camping trip on the way over. The first night of driving we pulled off the road onto a forest service road and pitched our tent there. She slept beautifully.

Family pics.

Four generations of O'Connors + non-O'Connors who still got to be in the picture.

Sherri and baby

Great grandma O'Connor and teeny

Grandpa O'Connor and tiny

We went Frisbee golfing a lot while we were there but I never actually took any pictures of it. Here's Rory and Madelyn cuddling right before a game.

Kipp and Kathleen got some cuddle time in too.

Later that day Rory helped his sister feel beautiful.

We took a day trip to Florence while we were there and had clam chowder and a walk along the board walk.

Grandpa O'Connor helped Madelyn to her first bunny ear picture.

The Wii entertained us for countless hours.

Madelyn thinking about her first solid food.

Terence and Sherri had a gorgeous flower garden so I had to snap a few shots of that.

We decided to go tide pooling one day. Mostly I fed the baby but everyone said they saw cool stuff. I apologize to all the innocent tidepoolers who had to see me doing an emergency feeding session on the beach. The car was too far away.

Kipp kissed a starfish.



After our beach excursion we went sand boarding. That was fun! Except we all got sand down our pants. It makes for an uncomfortable ride home.

Rory was such a nice dad and built our baby a hut to keep her out of the sun. Yeah... that lasted about two minutes before she'd had it. Good thought though.

On the last day we took some beauty shots.