Bend!

We recently took a family trip to Bend, OR. T was speaking at a conference there and the whole family was invited (these sorts of events are becoming few and far between in the era of Advamed). Apparently, it is about 350 miles to Bend from Seattle, which would be a pretty long drive in one pull with a 2 y/o and 5 y/o in the car. Fortunately, Silverton is about half way there!

So we ditched out of work and school early on Thursday afternoon and hit the road by mid afternoon. Both kids pretty much slept the whole way! (which had it’s pluses and minuses, see below). We pulled into Denise & Chris’ place at around 7-ish, just in time for dinner. Makani and Nikola were so excited to see each other, they could barely finish their pizza before running off to play superheroes. Alton and Kailea still eye each other warily, mostly because she doesn’t want him to touch her stuff and he is mostly trying to figure out how to touch her stuff. Kanoa was content as long as he had food in front of him.

Alton had a really hard time falling asleep (kicking daddy in the head all night long), so was pretty tired when we left first thing in the morning. We shaved it a little close, arriving about 1/2 hour before having to give the lecture!

The following day (Saturday) was lectures beginning at 6:30, but we were free by 9:30 for the rest of the day! Bend is very pretty, but given how poorly the kids had slept the previous two nights, we opted to just check out some local sights. The area is volcanic in origin, and there was a national park to wander around in. The kids were getting pretty punchy toward the end, so back to the resort for naps.

Sunday we ditched the AM sessions and drove back through Silverton so the kids could play again for a few hours before making the drive back to Seattle. Silverton was definitely a great half-way destination, although I don’t know when we’ll ever drive down to Bend again! If I get invited to speak again next year, the Sun River airport is looking mighty appealing.