LIVE! For 3 Days Only: Cousin Craig!

Day 1: Big Family Dinner at YaYa and Papa Ron's house!

My Aunt Janene and cousin's Carrie and Craig were in town this week from Illinios. Regular blog readers will know Craig from the weekly "cousin craig" comments. Since they live in Illinois, we don't see them very often so it was nice that they decided to come out this year for a visit.

We all congregatated at my parent's house Thursday. Below is Janene and my aunt Lucie.
Here is Janene with Aunt Annette:
My cousin Curt and his wife Dee joined us for the dinner. Yup, that's YaYa in the background...

Mom was on better behavoir in this picture and kept her bunny-ear fingers where they belong...here she is with her big sis Annette.

My cousin Brian is showing off his new tattoo...Annette had her share of comments about it. I'm sure that's why he came wearing a sleeveless shirt...he knows his Aunt Annette...

I'm not sure what Siena was doing but she was having a good time doing it.

After being stung by a bee a few weeks ago, Siena has developed a fairly rational fear of the insects. Here's Papa Ron protecting her from the scary bee's with a fly swatter.

Aaahh, there's the Craigster on the left. He was a picture-taking maniac all week.

Somehow Siena got her hands on the fly swatter. This is not a good thing. If you never thought a fly swatter could be used as a weapon, just give it to Siena.

Walt and Janene...

Cousin Carrie, YaYa, and Janene enjoying dessert.

My kids ate so much sugar at this event that by the end of the evening they were running around in circles and performing Riverdance. They didn't finally settle down until after 9 when we got home.

Day 2: The Oregon Zoo.

The Oregon Zoo was founded in 1887, making it the oldest North American zoo west of the Mississippi. The first zoo site was near where the reservoirs in Washington Park are now. The zoo became world famous in 1962 when the Asian elephant "Packy" was born. He was the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere in 44 years and is (as of 2006) the largest Asian elephant in the United States at 10.5 ft (3.2 m) tall and 13,500 lbs (6,100 kg). A total of 28 more calves have been born at the Oregon Zoo, including 7 sired by Packy, making it the most successful zoo elephant breeding program in the world.

The trio of Janene, Carrie, and Craig had breakfast for the second day in a row at the Original Pancake House. We would have joined them as that is definitly the best breakfast restaurant in town, but as it is so good, the wait is pretty long to get in usually which is a situation our toddlers don't do great in at this age. For any unfamiliar with this restaurant though, just check out their web site at www.originalpancakehouse.com which features pictures of their specialties...the Apple Pancake and the Dutch Baby....ohhh its good stuff.

Anyway, zoo. I thought it was cool to see the top and bottom of a duck swimming so I included it here.

Here's the kids, Luis and Craig comparing their heights to those of bears. Luis and Craig might have a fighting chance with the sun bears and black bears but that's about it.

A new baby elephant was born about a week ago and we got to see him. Unfortunately he was a little camera shy and hid behind his mom as we tried to catch a picture. He's a cute little guy about 365lbs currenly and has been named Samudra.

Here's my own little babies sitting on a baby elephant statue.

The happy zoo-goers: Carrie, Craig, Luis, and Janene.

We saw some cool animals. Here's a rhino.

And a gazelle-thing. Yeah, yeah, I didn't memorize all the animal names. These were pretty little thangs though so I took a picture of him.

And a zebra...

The kids behind some bars checking out the zebras...

And the giraffe...

Even at the zoo there is a car, albeit a stripped-down safari Land Rover. The kids were thrilled. Siena took the wheel...And Mason manned the rear.

One of the best exhibits at the zoo were the lorikeets which would land on your hand if you had a cup of fruit nectar. That's me with one on my hand.

Mason got to feed one.

So did Siena.

Day 3: Pittock Mansion

The Pittock Mansion was originally built as a private mansion for The Oregonian editor Henry Pittock and his wife, completed in 1914. The mansion opened to the public in 1965, and has been a community landmark ever since. Roughly 80,000 people visit the Pittock Mansion each year, and we were a few of them.

YaYa decided to join us and volunteered to take the back seat with the kids...

Here is an exterior shot of the Mansion:

Mom and Mason in the dining room:

The kids weren't so much into the tour and the history of the house but they had a good time running around the grounds.

Here's mom outside the Guest House.

The gardens and the view from the mansion are incredible. Here's Siena by some of the flowers. Nothing like her chocolate-covered face next to a bunch of roses...

Here's the view of downtown from the garden. The tall building in the middle is my former place of employment.

Craig and the ladies were heading back to Illinios today. It was nice seeing them and being able to carry on a verbal conversation rather than our usual email conversations for a change.

On an unrelated note, how about those Ducks yesterday? If only our fantasy team could pull out a miracle this week...