a northwestern thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we flew to Portland to visit Leif's family, who are all absolutely wonderful. How many people can say that about their inlaws?  Unfortunately we missed the majority of the fall leaves by a couple of days.  The riot of reds and golds and yellows had nearly all been blown away by an early winter storm, leaving but a few leaves to dot the mostly naked branches.  What was left was the landscape of deep green hues; the evergreens which make the Pacific Northwest undeniably beautiful any time of the year. So not much fall colors but still beautiful, nonetheless.

It's hard to visit Portland and not fall in love with the city.  There really isn't anywhere in the States that is quite like this city.

It was the first time for Leif's family, other than grandma and grandpa, to meet Clio so the few days we were there were full of exciting new faces for her- including her cousin Jasper.  She handled all the excitement fairly well considering her nap schedule was all wonky.  We thought she was fussy but everyone else laughed and said we had no idea what fussy really was.  Admittedly we have a pretty mellow baby.  Still, she didn't want to breastfeed because of all the environmental stimulation (even when we hid out in the basement) so I ended up pumping and bottle-feeding her quite a bit.  That was not fun.  The minute we got home she was all, GIVE ME THAT BOOB IN MY MOUTH RIGHT NOW OR ELSE I AM GOING TO START SCREAMING AND NEVER STOP!!!!!!!  I guess she is just a finicky little eater.

Leif and I took advantage of the grandparents and went out for a date, leaving them to watch Clio.  We had some really salty nachos, drank some really good locally brewed beer, and saw Hugo in 3D.  Maybe it was just the time -it started at 9:30, which is usually my bedtime- but it was a snooze fest.  At least I thought so.  Leif liked it though.

On the morning of the second day the battery in our camera died and we realized that we did not pack the charger or the extra battery.  So we ended up just using my phone most of the time.  Once upon a time mobile phones were called car phones, weighed about two pounds, and didn't have cameras.  So it could have been worse but we were still pretty bummed about not being able to use our camera.

 -oh bangs, you are too long and when I pin you back you look like a pompadour-

 -my most handsome husband-

 -my most awesome inlaws-

On the way home Clio slept through the entire flight on my lap.  So precious.  Then we got up to exit the plane and realized that our precious baby had shit herself to the point where it was escaping out the back of her diaper, onto her shirt and finally coming to rest on my jeans.  Sigh.  She's still precious, poop and all.