Vancouver and back

This has been a very fun couple of days. We went to Vancouver to visit Ruth and Dana and their new son Magnus. Boy is he a little cutie and we were lucky to be able to meet him and be part of the baby blessing on Sunday. And he seems like a very happy little fellow. We took a whole ton of pictures, so don’t mind if there are a lot of pictures for this blogpost.

This is a picture of Whitney meeting her cousin. She really liked the baby and we had to make sure that she didn’t put too much pressure on him or poke his eyes. But Whitney did pretty good and usually just pointed to him and would say ‘baby’. It was so cute to watch Whitney give Magnus hugs and kisses.

Here Whitney and Magnus get a ride on their daddy’s shoulders. They both seemed to really love the experience. Whitney was the big girl on her dad’s shoulders and Magnus was too little to really have a baby fight, but it was fun watching them.



We got to do a lot of fun things on our trip. The first thing was to go the Japanese Garden in Portland.

It was just Will, Whitney, and I that went because Dana was at work and Ruth wanted to stay home with a fussy Magnus. It was a beautiful garden with lots of flowers and streams and it was just a very calm place. I could have stayed there and just read a book or written a book or just spend some time sitting. It was peaceful. Here are some pictures from the garden.

It was just a wonderful garden. Inside, was even a zen garden. I guess these rock gardens were very popular in medieval times.





The next day was spent with Ruth and Dana and Magnus taking a tour of all the pretty sights in the gorge. I cannot believe what we miss when we just drive through quickly on the freeway and don’t get to see everything.



We went up to Crown Point and got to look out over the water.

I thought the fog over the water made it that much more beautiful.

This building is the visitor center for the point and we got to climb up to the ledge and see everything. You can see for miles from that far up the mountain. After seeing everything from up high, we traveled a little ways to go see a couple of waterfalls. I don’t remember all their names, but I am sure we could ask Dana and they would tell us.

This is first waterfall we saw. We got to get really close to this one and could feel the mist spraying off the bottom as the waterfall hit the small stream.

Here is the three of us standing by the waterfall. We also got to see the Maltnomah Falls. According to Dana, it is one of the biggest waterfalls in the Northwest area. It is 542 feet tall and simply magnificent.

It is amazingly tall. We got to walk up a little trail to be on the bridge to get closer to the falls. Unfortunately, people aren’t allowed to get to close because about 17 years previously there was a big rock slide and a huge boulder fell down, injuring people at a wedding shower. But we could still feel the mist as we stood on the bridge.

It is hard to tell because our camera doesn’t have the greatest zoom abilities, but this is us standing on the bridge. Dana ran down the trail to get some pictures of us on the bridge. We were at this waterfall for awhile just having a great time looking at it. But then we all got hungry and needed a late lunch.



After lunch we went to a fish hatchery/water treatment kind of center. Dana taught us all about salmon ladders

Which still seem a little cruel since you are making the fish swim upstream and I don’t think they really need to, but it is suppose to be more realistic. The great part was when you go inside the visitors center and get to see from behind glass windows the fish swimming by in the fish ladder.

Here Will shows Whitney the fish going by. The salmon must sort of travel together because there would be great clumps of them and then none would swim by the window for awhile. I learned that salmon really have a rough life.

So it was a really great couple of days. We all said our goodbyes to each other after sacrament meeting. I wish we could stay longer, but we will have to get back together soon.

Ruth and Dana’s House

This last weekend was a fun one; we went to Vancouver to spend a couple of days with Will’s sister, Ruth, and her husband Dana, and Will’s mom. We were hoping that we could see a new baby and Whitney could meet a cousin, but little “viking’ Jensen has decided to stay comfortable and warm a little bit longer. (Will’s sister, Ruth, has now had her baby). But that’s okay because it means we will need to go back later to meet him. Here is a picture of everyone; it only took several tries to get Whitney to look at the camera.

Whitney had a blast at this new house with lots of new toys to play with. She especially loved this little bunny house that has been in the Keeler family for over twenty years. It is just a simple little play house with a family of five bunnies inside, but Whitney discovered she could shake the house and the bunnies would make a fabulous noise. Here Whitney and Will play with the little house for awhile.

Ruth and Dana have a lot of really neat electronic things and some of them were okay for Whitney to touch. For instance, there was a lego robot that moved with a controller. At first, Will and Dana played with the pair and tried to control their robots into attacking each other. But then Whitney got the remote and was allowed to control it.

It was really funny though Whitney thinks all remotes go for the television, so she ran over to the TV when she got the remote and tried pushing buttons to get the TV to turn on. Will showed her what the control really did and Whitney thought it was cool that she could make the robots move.

But Whitney’s favorite toy, by far, was a little electronic “bug” called a Hex bug. It just uses a battery and vibrates all around on a hard surface. Here is a video of Whitney trying to catch the “bug”

We had a blast just watching her go crazy over such a little thing. Whitney is always surprising us; she has decided lately that she absolutely loves her carseat. She has always been a good traveler, but now Whitney will put herself into her carseat and try to buckle herself. I think it means she wants to go more places and does not want to stay at home. Anyway, now Whitney is branching out and trying other people’s carseats.

This one happens to be Ruth and Dana’s and they plan on using it soon. Maybe Whitney just wanted to test it to make sure it would be good.

One more fun story from our trip. While we were there, Vancouver had their first farmers market of the season; so we all decided to go. I wish we had a farmers market here like they do because it was huge and amazing. There was all kinds of food and jewelry and rugs and paintings and everything you could think of. And it was more fun than Costco because there were all kinds of yummy samples to try. I wanted to go back and get the samples again – garlic and parmesan popcorn, real salsa, fudge, homemade bread, little sausages, and much more. We bought a little lunch of international food while we were there and just sat on a bench outside the park to eat. Whitney was more interested in a little water display that was like a statue of salmon shooting off water. Because it was a nice day, I let Whitney go into the water thinking she wouldn’t like her “cold shower” and want to come out. Boy was I wrong. She loved being in the water and was constantly running back towards it while I was trying to get her to leave. By the time we got away, Whitney was soaking wet. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought my camera. So we took a picture after arriving back home.

This is Whitney without her pants because they were too wet. We found her some new clothes when we got back to Ruth and Dana’s place. Anyway, that was our fun trip. It has been great to see so much family over the past two weeks. We love you guys.