~erica
Monday the kids and I headed down to Portland for 3 days of being tourists. With our Pacic Science Center membership and staying at my aunt's it didn't cost much more than gas and fun food.
We went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They had 2 featured exhibits that we wanted to see; Narnia and Game On. Narnia cost us $2 each to get in. They had costumes from the first 2 movies and sets and props. There were some hands on exhibits warning against global warming (I think the link was the big thaw in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe- never mind that was caused by magic). There was a wall of ice that you could try to climb and some chain mail and armor to try and lift. The second exhibit was about the development of video games. They had everything from pinball machines and arcade games to Wii, Kinect, and a Virtual Reality game. They had Pong set up a big screen, it just seemed wrong. The boys could have stayed in there for hours but it was so noisy! I looked for PacMan but couldn't get near it if it was there.
We went to stay at my aunt Ann's house. My cousin Paul's family came over for dinner and my cousin Fae came in with her new baby. We gladly held the baby all evening, the kids fought over who got to hold her. Noah is as blond as most of the cousins in my generation (I was the exception- I always had brown hair).
(Turns out no flash, night time pictures are better when they are black & white.)
Tuesday Ann & Kaitlyn went with us to McMinnville to the Evergreen Air & Space Museum. Kaitlyn had been to the museum before but it was new for the rest of us. My membership got in 2 adults and all the kids in the party, we had wanted to go when we had a membership to the Boeing Air Museum but because Evergreen has an IMAX it is actually a science museum and not an air museum. I'll be writing a post on the value of memberships to places, but I'll just say here that these 2 visits would have cost more than we paid for our Science Center membership, even at the Platinum level.
My friend, Mauri, met us the parking lot for a 5 minute hug and catch up; I hadn't seen her since she moved down there 2-3 years ago. She had to get to a class but it was nice to see her even for just a few minutes.
They had old airline seats all over the museum instead of benches. Every time the kids sat down they buckled their seat belts. Every single time! Towards the end of the second section of the museum I sat down and figured out how to recline the seats then I didn't want to get up and drive the hour back to Ann's.
The highlight of the museum is Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose. You can go into the fuselage and look both ways. They filled the wings with beach balls for flotation- remember that the next time the flight attendant tells you to use your seat cushion.... It's a huge airplane but they have so many airplanes around it and the building is so big that it's hard to get a real sense of its size.
Rounds of ammunition in the wing | I finally got a picture of the Berlin Wall (I didn't have any film when I was there in 1988) | 24 kills
Sig Sauer (why does the name seem familiar?) | This banner says "Pacific Theater" | Time Magazine cover with "Race for the Moon"
Arin with his head up the exhaust vent of a Saturn rocket | Isaac inside the bigger exhaust vent of the rocket | Boy Scout sash is a "typical" boys room of the 1950s (but I think those are all modern badges)
In the hands on area they had an infared camera and you could see yourself on the screen. We were easily amused and stood there for quite a while rubbing our hands together to heat them up. The lighter areas are the warmer areas. Arin and Rush's noses were black and Rush's curls were jet black, he looked like Bernard from The Santa Claus. The display of guns was of special interest to the boys and they all liked playing outside on the playground. Tovah got to push the button that started the Saturn rocket countdown so she was happy. The boys want to go back with Ryan (and he'd like to go too), maybe we'll go if we go down to Homeschool Day at Oregon Gardens on Sept. 13.
There's a Sonic around the corner from my aunt's so we made sure we were back in Hillsboro in time for Sonic Happy Hour. Everyone got a 32-oz. drink and was happy.
Wednesday we were going to go hiking at Multnomah Falls but it was too hot and we were ready to be home. We headed across town to stop at Ikea for a shower curtain for the boys' bathroom and swedish meatballs. We're having them for dinner tonight as soon as Ryan gets home (we could bring them home frozen since we had the coolers with us).
When we drove down on Sunday we drove out of sunshine and temperatures pushing 90-degrees into a wall of clouds and chilly temps. Monday we woke up to glorious sunshine and the wind wasn't even very bad. We headed to the beach in the morning in case the clouds were coming back in the afternoon. The hotel has an indoor pool so we weren't worried about swimming in bad weather. 
