I look like the schmo because Matt does his blog posting right away – and I seem to take forever! Ah well – here are some of our favorites from our Thanksgiving time in Orange County with the Theule and Nienhuis families.

Wow! Everyone is smiling and looking in the right direction.

Gotta have the silly one too

Max’s first horsey ride

Amazing! Look at the first fish Max has ever caught!

Okay – here’s the real size of the fish with no camera tricks.

Silly Daddy and Lucy

OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) has an exhibit named Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination.

Star Wars OMSI

Since we were taking Toby to the airport anyways, OMSI was sort of in the area. Max and Lucy and I dropped Toby off and bid her good flight. We had about 90 minutes to kill before the museum opened and so we leisurely found a Noah’s bagel shop and had breakfast bagels (chocolate chip with chocolate milk, of course). We drove around looking a church / castles and the river and it was about 9:45a when we got to the museum and boy was it packed. We spent about 30 minutes in line, just to get admission tickets. By the time we got our tickets, they were printing tickets for 12:00 entrance into the Star Wars exhibit. Because there was such a long time before Star Wars admission, I spent an extra $10 for the Millenium Falcon Speed of Light exhibit/ride. I thought that doing this would be fun and help Max to wait patiently for the real Star Wars exhibit. Boy was I wrong. We waited almost an hour in line. It was only as I got to the front that I realized why this was taking so long. They only had four seats per 5 minute ride. Ugh! I told the ride operator (who was very nice) that I would sit both Max and Lucy on my lap so we only needed 1 chair. We got in a bit earlier. Looking back, it was a pretty cool use of sight and sound simulation, but at the time I was feeling a bit ripped off. In the end, Max got his Millenium Falcon pin and he was happy. It was the Millenium Falcon pin that prevented him from abandoning the line altogether. All in all, I wish I hadn’t spent the $10 on these tickets and we had just examined the other exhibits in the museum. 20 more minutes in line finally brought us inside the exhibit. The Star Wars exhibit itself was fantastic. 2 huge rooms full of hands on stations (build your own robot, control robot legs, etc), visual displays and characters walking around to take picures with (storm troopers and jawas). Too bad we had used up all of Max’s energy waiting in lines. After a total of 25 minutes he was asking to be done and go home. sigh. There was so much that I didn’t get to see because I was picking Lucy up off the floor or telling Max how cool something was. I guess that is what happens when you take the kids to the museum and wait in line a total of 120 minutes for 30 minutes of exhibits.

Max and Lucy have blasters.

In an effort to extend Max’s time in the exhibit, I let him take pictures with the camera. He was doing a good job until he dropped it. Here is an example of the photos he shot. This is the type of picture you take when you are 4 feet tall and the displays begin about 18 inches off the ground.

Looking up?

Toby, Max and I visited Mt. Hood for a day of playing in the snow on Thursday, 28 Dec 2006. The start of the day was pretty rough, but God worked it all out in the end and we had a great day. We left later than I wanted and so we got caught in traffic on the way up, adding an extra 45 minutes to our 1 hour drive to the mountain. When we got to Summit Ski area (where we had gone tubing previously) we found out that they were sold out of tubes and there was a waiting list. We waited about a half an hour and the rumor was that someone had reservation of 30 tubes. Toby called another tubing place and found out that they had about 10 tubes left. Unfortunately, we didn’t know exactly where Ski Bowl East was located, only that we had seen a sign for it on the way up. Toby and I spent some minutes yelling at each other about where it was before we were able to follow the signs over. When we got to SkiBowl, we were told that the parking was full. Undaunted, Toby drove forward and dropped me and Max off to get the tubes. The official line at the rental area was that they were out of tubes until 3pm (it was now noon). Toby found a parking place and came over. She was not happy when I told her that there were no tubes to be rented. She walked around and saw a big pile of about 25 tubes and talked to the employee standing next to them. That guy said he didn’t understand why they weren’t renting out the tubes. Toby grabbed 3 of them and sent me to buy 3 park tickets. The guy behind the counter told me that there were no tubes to be rented, so I yelled to Toby to make sure she already had tubes. She did. The guy still was hesitant to sell me the tickets. I finally was able to browbeat him into selling me the tickets. We were set. After that the day was great. Max spent a good deal of the day just climbing up and down a small hill with another little boy while Toby and I tubed down the adjacent hill. (After all we had been through, we were determined to get our money’s worth of tubing.)

Max in snowsuit

Happy Parents

Happy Famiily

Max and his new friend Devon