We had a great time celebrating Ava's birthday weekend in Portland. It was a quick trip, we left Saturday morning and came home Sunday afternoon. But we packed a lot of fun into our time there. We started off with a trip to the Oregon Zoo. Cristian insisted on wearing his Husky coat (even though it was not that cold out) because he wanted all the Oregon Duck fans to see him and make comments. He is so funny! Here is the kids checking out a mountain goat.
A leopard
I think Tigers are so pretty! My favorite are the White Bengal Tigers :)
We also took the kids on a train ride around the zoo. Carter got to board first while the other two were going to the bathroom
They chose the Washington car
Captured kind of a neat picture of this bird!
Cristian loves feeding birds, it's the highlight of every trip to the zoo for him.
Ava likes to feed them to, but likes to keep more of a distance and does not want one of them to land on her.
whereas he encourages it!
Carter sneaking in to get a closer look
Carter's favorite animal is by far the Polar Bear. Every time we're at the zoo he just laughs and laughs at them, and insists that we stay and watch them for atleast 5-10 minutes. They are very entertaining. This guy kept playing with his ball, which Carter found hysterical.
This bear kept dancing... no joke. He had some good moves!
This little bear drew quite the crowd. He climbed SO HIGH up in this tree, I think most people were worried he was stuck, or that he'd break one of these branches and fall. But all he cared about doing was biting off all these little branches.
I couldn't scoot far enough away to give you an idea of just HOW HIGH this bear was off the ground. I probably got about 1/3 of the tree in this picture.
There he is... starting to climb down
don't worry folks, he made it down, but I do think he scared himself a bit.
Awww... what cute cougars all snuggled up.
an old farm house that they left on the zoo property. it started sprinkling just a little bit at this point so I put my camera away, but they had a really cool children's play ground, petting zoo, and educational area.
We had a great day at the zoo!
After dinner at Outback Steakhouse (which, by the way, we had a great experience finding restaurants with Gluten Free options on our first vacation!!), we asked the kids if they wanted to go see a movie (Gnomeo and Juliet) or if they'd rather go back to the hotel and swim. Well, as you can see... swimming was their choice.
Looking like such a big boy these days!
Kyle with the baby
My birthday girl!
you could tell she was excited about her birthday
SPLASH SPLASH SPLASH.
On our way home from Portland we stopped at the Spaghetti Factory where we met my parents and sister for Ava's birthday dinner.
She was pretty excited to open up more presents!
A very beautiful Rapunzel dress!
Something to display all her squinkies on!
and perhaps what she was MOST excited about... a ticket to go see Mary Poppins on Broadway! Thanks Nannie and Grampie!
Ava got a butterfly garden and a lady bug garden from Auntie.
Ava blowing out her candle
Happy Birthday Ava!
My 5 year old
Once we got home from all the festivities, Ava was excited to play with her new toys! Cristian helped her put all her squinkies on her new holder.
Playing with the toy Cristian got her
modeling her new leos for me...and of course we can't just take pictures in them... we have to take pictures of her doing gymnastics in them.
Bridge kick over
Splits (how weird that she's a righty and I'm a lefty??)
Posing
Posing
I couldn't quite get a picture of her exactly in a handstand... either her legs weren't quite all the way to the top
Or she'd kick up too far and fall into a bridge
that's as close as I got to a handstand.
