Thanksgiving in Oregon!

For Thanksgiving Jake and I took a long weekend and flew to Oregon to celebrate it with my family. Mom and dad rented a house in Sunriver, one of our families favorite vacationing spots. We had to fly into Portland and then drive a little over 3 hours to central Oregon where Sunriver is located. We had a few minor difficulties trying to retrieve the car we rented, one worker from another rental company was rude and wouldn't tell me where to pick up the shuttle to our car. We ended up missing the shuttle, but another one showed up in about 15 mins.

The drive was beautiful, especially around Mt. Hood. Even though it was dark outside, the moon was out and you could see the lighter blue silhouette of the mountains. I was a little nervous weaving through the forest near Mt. Hood because there was snow on the ground and we couldn't tell if there was much ice on the road. It was really funny though....When we were driving I said "Well, at least it is a clear night with no clouds in the sky, that was a blessing", and seriously 1 minute later when we came around the mountain and started to descend...we noticed a huge cloud we were heading straight into, haha. Thankfully there was no precipitation with it, but we thought that was kinda funny. When we pulled into Sunriver mom was outside the house down the block waving us in, she was so excited! And we were too! It was about 11:30pm when we finally made it to the house. Justin and Deena were asleep, but woke up to come greet us when they heard the commotion. We stayed up late talking, as well as eating pizza and potato wedges.

The next day was Thanksgiving! We went out to dinner at The Meadows in the Sunriver Lodge. It was a really good dinner...not quite as good as what the padres cook up, but still tasty. The view was gorgeous. Jake got really excited about the golf course and mentioned we should invite his parents up with my parents in the summer to Sunriver to get together and golf. We then went home, watched some football, played some card games, swam in the hot tub, and just hung out as a family. Jake and I played Go Fish with Emma, and then we played Hearts with dad, Justin, and Deena.

Friday we went to the High Desert Museum. I was very impressed with the expansive and detailed museum they had. Emma and Elissa loved looking at the fish and animals. Mom and dad also walked into a replica of what appeared to be their childhood home. All the appliances including the refrigerator, oven/stove, TV, and sewing machine looked just like what they had in their home as children. That was really neat to see. Following the museum we went out to a yummy dinner at Red Robin and quickly took Jake on a tour around Bend, OR. Then we headed home so Jake wouldn't miss his BSU vs Hawaii football game he had anxiously anticipated. The game was a bit of a disappointment, to say the least. Hawaii got away with passing the ball every play except 2 and won the game. I was impressed with Jake and how well he took this loss, even though I know it broke his little heart. That night Justin and Deena bought a couple of games: Risk and Uno. We played Uno that night which Emma was really good at and went to bed.

Saturday was our last full day in Sunriver. We started playing Risk in the morning and it lasted until later that evening without even finishing the game. Turns out I'm not very good at global domination...I got knocked out of play within the first hour. But we still had a good time. We also watched the BYU football game vs Utah. BYU didn't play that well, but we ended up winning the game in the last quarter with only a minute and 30 sec to do so. We were jumping up and down and giving high fives all around when we scored the winning touchdown. It was nice to have at least one of our teams win their game that weekend. That night we went to our favorite restaurant in Bend called Pine Tavern. Then we headed home and played and watched TV until late that night.

Sunday morning we left Sunriver at 8am. It was sad to say goodbye to my family, but good to know I will be seeing them in a few short weeks for New Years. It was amazing to see how grown up our little nieces have become. Especially little 20 month old Elissa. She isn't a baby anymore! And she is soooo fun to watch because she loves to laugh and make others laugh. Jake taught her the monkey face and she did it the remainder of the weekend....Soooo cute! Emma was just precious too. I love that she loves me =)

The drive home was fun. For some reason Jake didn't want to listen to music, so we ended up talking the whole way to Portland, which really made the time go by. One funny thing that happened on the way home was when some muddy water sprayed onto our windshield. Jake forgot there was no wiper fluid in the car so it smeared it all over the windshield and then quickly froze. We could hardly see a thing! But we were very blessed when just half a mile down the road, in the middle of nowhere, there was a Chevron where we could clean the windows. We don't know how we could have gone any farther, that was really neat to see the hand of Heavenly Father in our lives that day.

It wasn't difficult finding the hotel to drop our car off at, but it was difficult trying to find a gas station to fill up the tank before we turned it in. After 20 minutes of Jake driving down a road to nowhere he finally listened to me and turned around to ask for directions to a gas station. There was actually one across the street, but unfortunately it was closed! So we drove to the hotel, asked for directions again, and finally filled up the tank. We rushed to the airport, but to our surprise the airport was not busy once again! We had time to eat lunch and rest before we boarded the plane. While we waited for our plane we found out we were flying through Boise. Jake's brother Brandon was flying into SLC from Boise at the same time, so I had Jake call him to see if it was the same flight number. And it was! It couldn't have worked out more perfectly since we were driving him home from the airport and he was on the same flight as us. We got home around 7:30pm and we were pretty exhausted from the trip, but we did some studying before going to bed. It was a very fun weekend with the family. I am so glad we were able to spend it with them, but sad that it went by so fast.