Oregon with My Littles

Landon and Parker tried out for the Seattle Starz and they both made the team!  Believe me when I tell you that this is a big deal.  Landon had several teammates from his Skyline team try out and none of them even made the B team.  I should probably know the rankings but Landon would tell you the Starz are ranked pretty high nationally.  Some of their teammates travel as far as two hours away to attend practices.  Lucky for us, their practices are right here in Sammamish.  Landon and Parker were all smiles as I dropped them off for their first practice.  Landon was on the team in the fall and after the coaches saw Parker playing at some of their clinics, they asked me if Parker would consider trying out.  He made the team and thankfully they gave me a pretty good family discount.

Now for my rant.  Full disclosure: Travel teams are the worst.  Whoever got the brilliant idea to monetize youth sports had to be affiliated with the airlines.  Paying lots of money to travel to different States is so lame (especially for this non-athlete mother).  But for lacrosse, it really makes a difference since it's a new and growing sport where competition can be sparse in certain areas.  If my kids played soccer I'd really be annoyed at traveling when there are soccer teams everywhere.  Pretty sure it wouldn't be that hard to find a good team to play against that doesn't require a flight somewhere.  With lacrosse, it's a little bit different. But I still feel like I got suckered into something that makes big promises to my kids but is really just going after my wallet. I digress....

Luckily they play three tournaments and two of those are the same. Randy and Landon flew to CA for Landon's first tournament and the following weekend I drove to Portland with Parker and Henry for Park's first tournament.  It was actually really fun having Henry along with us.  We got to rode trip in the CIA (my Expedition).  It's so comfortable and Henry made a comfy little bed for himself and slept for most of the drive (that took an extra two hours because traffic was so terrible). 

Parker is #17

These four boys all play for Skyline.  It's pretty impressive to have more than two kids from the same local club on the team. 

The hours in between games is what kills me.  Henry and I went back to the car so he could watch a movie while I read a book.  Thankfully it wasn't hot in Oregon that weekend.

We had one king-size bed for the three of us.  Oops!  Good thing they're little.  And so cute when they sleep.

Our hotel was just down the street from the temple so of course I made them go before I took them to see the movie Inside Out 2

Parker's team won all four games so they played for the championship and won that too.  Hooray!  The other teams weren't that good but don't tell them that :)

Spring Break in Oregon

OK, so we didn't really go to Oregon.  We went to Vancouver which is still in Washington but telling my boys we were going to Washington for the weekend sounded really lame and confused them.  I told them we were going to Oregon and they were thrilled.  It was a last-minute spontaneous idea to visit our Oki friends, the Stinchfield's, for a quick weekend trip to kick off our spring break.  The weather was gorgeous and we had a great time with our friends.
The best part of the trip was leaving the kids at home with pizza and electronics to entertain them, while the adults went out for a night on the town in Portland.  {See, some of us actually went to Oregon so it wasn't a complete lie.} First, we went shopping at the Columbia employee store.  Obviously we aren't employed by Columbia but our friends have connections so we got to shop at the store where everything is half off, plus we got an additional ten percent.  Shopping has never been so fun!  After breaking the bank on lots of awesome clothes, we went to dinner in Portland at a place called Tilt.  The food was amazing!  Huge burgers big enough to dislocate your jaw on, and cheesy-bacon tater tots with the best fry sauce I've ever had.  I already checked out their website to see if there was a Tilt near me.  Sadly, there is not.  But the meal was so good and the shopping was so much fun I'm pretty sure we'll be driving down to visit Tom and Tracey much more often.

Randy flying the drone.  Tom has all things techy

the drone coming in for a landing

The girls have pet bunnies and they are even house trained!  Guess what my boys are begging for now?

true love

We spent the afternoon hiking around this gorgeous lake

Seriously it was so gorgeous and the leaves aren't even all the way out

Landon surprised us all by bravely crossing the log

Parker was fearless

Our hike ended at this gorgeous waterfall

Waterfalls are so romantic

After the hike we stopped by their Cross Fit gym to play

Ethan did a muscle up

Then he climbed this peg board.  He is built for this kind of stuff

For the record, the guys bought way more stuff than the girls

Our dinner didn't disappoint

Tilt, you are amazing and I miss you!

We browsed through Powell Books

Of course we had to pick up some Voodoo Donuts, which we were too full to eat

We tried to get ice cream at this place but the long line {at 9pm!} and our full tummies made us decided to try another time

These donuts are crazy good! 

And Rogue is the best dog ever.  I never heard him bark once and he's super obedient.  That's my kind of dog!

I took way too many pictures but we had such a good time so it had to be documented.  I love that we live in a place where a quick 3 hour drive provides so many adventures.  We are getting good at maximizing our vacation time so Randy misses as little work as possible.  We are leaving Wednesday night for Whistler to do a little spring skiing to finish out the rest of our spring break.  It's been great so far!