The Swan Song

"'Swan song' is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans sing a beautiful song in the moment just before death, having been silent (or alternatively, not so musical) during most of their lifetime." - Thanks Wikipedia. 

View from our deck - what everyone should get to wake up to each morning

Well, the first part of February we took a "get away from dreary, gray Oregon" trip - which also doubled as our last trip before baby brother comes in May. Not that we're never going to travel to Grandma and Grandpa Butler's house ever again, but flying alone with two kiddos just isn't going to be as feasible as it has been with just the Caden kiddo this past year (we took 6 trips in the last year or so just to San Diego alone - not counting 3 trips Utah or our 1 trip to Arizona!...I'd say we've been putting some pretty good miles on this kid in his first year of life). Not to mention that I'm going to have to buy Caden a ticket and that doubles that cost of us flying if Michael doesn't come with us at the same time. So, a here's a little photo journal of our Swan Song trip of traveling back in the 'easy days' :)

A little Birch Aquarium:

Caden and Daddy in front of the HUGE fish tank!

A little kid lost in the sea...

A little too much fun in the shark...

 Grandma and Caden playing on the water bikes:

 And Daddy and Caden putting their brains together to come up with some great engineering so the boats can travel down the current:

No matter what he says - I know he wishes this was where he lived, regardless of the politics and prices :)

Trying to escape to play with the starfish

 One thing we did many mornings was head down to the duck pond at Kit Carson Park - Caden just couldn't get enough of the duckies and loved feeding them (and tried every possible maneuver to join them in the pond):

 And in the evenings and weekends when he was home from work, Caden enjoyed every possible moment with his grandpa. Mommys and Grandmas are great and all - but there's always a special place in a little boy's heart for his Daddy and his Grandpa. They played together, changed the car tires together, cuddled, and climbed the stairs. From the second he walked in the door Caden just followed Grandpa around!

 Oh and a special treat - Curious George! We love, love, love Curious George, but we don't have cable so we're often stuck to watching the same 3 episodes on pbskids.org for our 15 minutes of calm time/Mommy wants a break. However, Grandma has TV with DVR which = new Curious George episodes to discover!

  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Butler (and Jared - whom I'm sorry to say was sick a lot of the time we were down there so didn't get to play with us as much as we wanted, bummer) for a great trip! We miss you bunches already!