Our Western Way of Life: Road Trip #1 and Other Happenings

This is what Maggie does nowadays when she's supposed to be napping. She pulls everything out of her drawers. Then she pulls baby wipes out of the container, one by one. Then she drapes them along all of her furniture. I didn't even think she could reach the baby wipes, but she strategically pulled her drawers out and used them like stairs. That girl.

There was quite the baby boom in our ward when I had Lane. At one point there were nine ladies in the ward that were pregnant at the same time and most of us were due a month or less apart. Now our babies are teething and hitting milestones at the same time.

I invited three of my friends over and we had a big baby food making party (our babies are all within a month apart). We cooked and pureed carrots, squash, peas, corn, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and green beans. We froze them all in ice cube trays and divvied them up once they were frozen. It was lots easier and more fun than doing it all on my own and it's way cheaper than buying baby food. The food took up most of my freezer, but it's nice to know that Lane has plenty of food to eat.

Maggie is in a very girly phase. It's nearly impossible to get her to wear pants. She always wants to have a dress or a skirt on. She prefers her hair down and loves to have her nails painted. I'm not sure where she gets it because I am most definitely a blue jean kind of girl and half the time I don't even put make-up on (I'm not saying I look good without it, I'm just saying I don't see the point of wearing it all the time).

Lane turned six months old on St. Patrick's Day. I had plans to take a few pictures of him and write a special post all about him, but Thursday ended up being a long and crazy day! Our Relief Society dinner was that night and I had tons of stuff to prepare for it, plus we were planning on leaving early the next morning to deliver bulls so I had to pack and get ready to leave town on top of it all. Obviously his special post never happened, but our dinner turned out well and I managed to get everything packed and ready to go (besides cleaning the house).

We woke up bright and early Friday morning and hit the road. Actually it was just early, not bright, since it was long before the sun came up. We had ten bulls to deliver around different parts of Oregon. Every time we have made that trip and traveled through the Umatilla National Forest the roads have been miserable. As in it-took-three-hours-to-go-fifty-miles miserable. Thankfully the roads were nice and clear this time. Our first stop was in Jordan Valley, Oregon. It wasn't what either of us were picturing, but we can at least say we've been to the home of the Big Loop Rodeo. Our next stop was outside of Baker City and then up the highway to Union. Our final stop was in Boardman, along the Columbia River. Maggie had fun seeing all the different cows at the ranches we stopped at. Even though we spent the majority of the time in the truck, it was still nice to get out and see some new sites. Plus it was nice and balmy in Oregon compared to our chilly weather :)

I was really worried that Maggie would start whining after a few hours, but she did great and Lane did great as well. We made good time and didn't have to stop very often. I packed a bunch of toys and games for her to play with and she seldom got bored. I also packed a bunch of snacks and now I feel like I gained ten pounds over the weekend.

This was a retired tugboat in Boardman.

We passed a huge tree farm just outside Boardman. It was 30,000+ acres of Pacific Albus trees used for sustainable logging, paper pulp, cellulosic ethanol, stove pellets, etc. and every single tree was planted by hand! I think the tourism book in our hotel room said they plant so many trees per year that it averages out to one every 4.6 seconds! The dark area on the horizon in the picture above is all trees. They went on for-ev-er! The pictures really don't do much since I took them out the window, but it was a pretty incredible sight!