Oregon Adventure

Last Thursday we flew standby into Eugene, OR to see our niece Abagail's baby blessing that Sunday. We stayed with Jason's sister Lisa. It was so fun to see everybody in the family except for Jimmie & Co. all in one weekend! Here are a few of the highlights, in no particular order:

• Playing SingStar with the Gray kids, although I still need to fulfill my promise of beating Javan and Kambria at their own game. (SingStar is a video game that is basically competition karaoke. We had never played before and it was really fun. Jason and I even got to play by ourselves for a while when the rest of the family went strawberry picking and we stayed behind with a couple of sleeping babies.)
• Going entirely off Weight Watchers for an entire weekend. We even got Junior Mints in the theater and See's candy in the airport. Very yummy, but I overloaded and was ready to be good again when we got home.
• Witnessing sweet Abby's blessing. Her dad, Scott, is a recent convert to the Church and it was awesome to hear him bless her.
• Eating Dad Maner's famous egg sandwiches.
• Going out on a boat in the lake and watching Javan ski. Well, actually it wasn't skiing but he was on this board thing and I don't remember what it's called. Brooklyn hated her life jacket.
• Jason beating Javan in a game of Horse.
• Meeting Scott's family.
• Watching how much Brooklyn liked to play with Kylan's toys and how much Kylan liked to bang on Brooklyn's head. Not so much fun for her...
• Going for a walk around a beautiful little lake and finding the cutest salamander ever. After meeting that little guy, we decided we were going to get one as a pet. However, I did some research and apparently 90% of them carry Salmonella and are not recommended as pets for households with children under 5. So sad...
• Going to a movie for the second time since Brooklyn was born. We saw "Horton Hears a Who." It was cute.
• Going to Javan's basketball game at the sports center.
• Giving Brooklyn her first bath in a regular tub. She LOVED it. (Yes, we still bathe her in the sink. I'm putting off getting soaked and spending any length of time with my knees on linoleum for as long as possible.)
• Playing dominos and "Loaded Questions."
• Discussing the superiority of "The Host" to the Twilight series with my librarian sister-in-law, Luann.
• Eating Lisa's amazing home-cooked meals... and sleeping in Kambria's comfy bed, complete with satin sheets. Thanks so much you guys!

It was a great trip, but it obviously had to end at some point. Jason's first day of school was Tuesday so we were anxious to get home. However, the flights coming home looked HORRIBLE for standby. We were going to leave Monday afternoon but it didn't look worth it to spend the day in the airport and probably not be able to fly anyway. So, we decided to have a nice day on Monday and then fly through Vegas that night. We were flying on another airline so our standby priority was lower than everybody else's. We flew to Vegas without a problem, but had kind of anticipated being stuck there that night. When we called earlier in the day, there were four unsold seats and 6 people listed standby (including us). The only way we were going to get on was if 2 people didn't show up. When we got into Vegas, the connecting flight was delayed about an hour. We got there a little after 10 pm and the flight was delayed until 12:45. So we were looking at a 3 hour wait to POSSIBLY get onto the next flight. We were thinking we would just leave and get a hotel, but the girl at the counter told us that we were the only ones flying standby. (Apparently the others had cancelled?) She encouraged us to wait with our cranky 8-month-old, so we did. We were hungry and tired and anxious, but we took her advice. When the plane was finally ready to board, we were relieved to get our seats assignments. It was one of those planes where you have to go down stairs to get to the tarmack and then go up stairs to get on the plane. It was a big pain with the stroller, carryon, and sleepy child, but we were excited to be on our way home. This is where we ran into a problem. Somehow, the attendant had made a mistake and the PLANE WAS FULL!!! We were kicked off. It was after 1:00 in the morning and we had nowhere to go. To make a long story somewhat shorter, after another hour we were finally in a hotel room. Jason missed his first day of class and we flew JetBlue into SLC the next afternoon. I was pretty miffed that the attendant had us stay when there REALLY WERE 4 OTHER PEOPLE FLYING STANDBY and we could have been in a hotel a good 4 hours earlier than we were, and possibly had a nice day in Vegas before flying home. Anyway, that's standby for you. Brooklyn is 8 months old and has been on 12 standby flights, with this one being the only bad experience. I guess we'll just have to stick with JetBlue, the best airline in America, from now on. So here are some pictures from the trip. We brought both the video and regular cameras and somehow left them at Lisa's house every time we went out. I have a bunch of pictures on my cell phone with no way to get them off. So a couple of these are ours, but the rest are pilfered off other other people's blogs. =)

The whole gang after Abagail's blessing.

Going on a walk with all the strollers. I felt like we were a pioneer handcart company.

Abagail in her blessing dress.

My cute little one.

The Nelson family with the new baby.

Brooklyn sleeping on Aunt Lashelle.

Lisa with Kylan wearing his cute little glasses.

Brooklyn taking her first fascinated look at the big movie screen. She was pretty good, fussy at one point but then fell asleep on Daddy.