over the river and through the woods

to grandmother's house we go...

This time, we flew.  And because I'm too cheap to pay $25 for a checked bag, I lugged a 22 pound kid, a suitcase, a diaper bag and a backpack all over the Denver airport during a 4 hour layover.  (The stroller and carseat they let me check for free.)  So, no, I was not the pretty picture of the slim, A-line dress-wearing stick figure with the one rolling suitcase they have pictured on the "experienced travler" poster at the United Airlines counter.  But it worked.  I've always had a knack for packing a lot of shit into a small space and wielding it all around like it was made of air.  Really, it all felt effortless despite the sheen on my upper lip.

When we arrived in Oregon and strolled into the small airport lobby, my mom was the one jumping up and down, throwing her arms around and kicking one leg into the air, she was that excited.  They're here!!  Yee-ha!  

It's kind of a long story, but the first thing we did at the airport was lock the keys in the car, along with Juniper.  And that is how we started the visit: dancing around the car window singing every nursery rhyme we could think of until AAA arrived.  Juniper watched us from her carseat at first tired and pissed off, then thoroughly amused.  Fortunately, the rest of the trip was smooth as silk...

::  So.  To grandmother's house:

Mom's house was like the second-coming of summer: outdoor dining...

Oversized (and some mystery) garden squashes...

A love-at-first-bite relationship with grandma's sweet and abundant cherry tomatoes...

Meeting the new puppy and learning about small versus big dogs...

And totally loving on each other, especially with the mitigator gate...

And ooooh, grandma's flowers...

And crawling in her perfectly green, heavenly soft grass...

Shopping at the Saturday Market, drooling over vegetables... 

And buying J bug some token hippie clothes (note the pants)...

(And, yes, there is a good reason why western Oregon was the pot of gold at the end of the Oregon Trail...)

A day-trip to the coast...

Discovering how some things in life just slip through your fingers...

but also stick to your feet...

Then learning to climb stairs...

And, yo!  Crawling from one piece of furniture to the next for the sole purpose of pulling oneself up to standing...

Wishing for more time with Grandma...