The Enchanted Forest and Fresh Air

On Tuesday, we noticed that the kids were in pretty good moods. Miss R had been in a pretty good mood at the zoo on Monday, and her good mood continued. Henry seemed more like himself. We left the house around noon to meet our friends Dave and BJ and their daughter Morganne at The Enchanted Forest, which is an amusement park 7 miles south of Salem. It is about an hour and a half drive. The kids fell asleep in the car.

The kids were groggy waking up. They were initially a little reserved around our friends (as they are with anyone new). But they really opened up toward the end of the excursion and had a lot of fun with Morganne. Morganne was very sweet to them. She brought them toys. A very cute frog for Henry and a super soft lamb for Miss R. Henry hugged his frog as soon as she gave it to him.





The Enchanted Forest is a theme park. It has cute models of various fairy tales (some are ripped off from Disney stories as Dave pointed out). As you get to newer areas of the park, they have changed the names of the characters (e.g., on the seven dwarfs, Smiley = Happy, Grouch = Grumpy, etc.). Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun. Henry went down some slides with Jeff.





We went to the area where they have rides for little kids. Henry and Miss R were a little short for some of the rides. They'll be the perfect heights next year. Henry wanted to ride the train. Jeff, Henry, Miss R, and I road it twice. Then, when Morganne had arrived from one of the bigger rides, she road the train with Henry, Miss R, and I. But Henry cried through the ride b/c he wanted Jeff, which was sad. Clingy-mode had returned. He ate a lot of Jeff's hot dog for a late lunch. I didn't know that he liked hot dogs so much. He ate half of Jeff's hot dog at the zoo plus some of Wyatt's corn dog on Monday. He and Miss R also had some cheesy popcorn. It was the first time I've ever let Henry try popcorn. I don't know whether Miss R had had it before but she loved it.

We watched a show called "Snow White and the Seven Dorks" at the theatre. Henry and Miss R actually watched a good part of the show. They even clapped at some parts and yelled in the appropriate spots. Afterward, Miss R gave high fives to two of the cast members. We then ran into Chippy the Chipmunk. Miss R gave him a low five.

The kids really liked Geppetto's Shop, which had fun gadgets to play with and a model train to start and stop. Miss R liked a little room that had black birds singing out of a pie. She danced. We went to a water fountain show that ended up being a big hit. It helped that there was a family at the show who went crazy with clapping, which got our kids excited about clapping.

We went back to the western town to change diapers before heading out of the park, while Morganne went on the big log ride with Dave. We got side tracked in McGoon's Saloon, which was a hallway of uneven, bouncing floor boards. I think that Henry could have spent a good hour in there!


We then went to dinner in Salem at Red Robin. The kids played with crayons. They seemed to prefer throwing them to coloring with them. Henry threw one at the table next to us (oops!). The kids liked their dinners. Henry ate a lot of mac and cheese. Jeff, Henry, Miss R, and Morganne visited the arcade afterwards.



We then unfortunately had to say goodbye and head home. Beautiful Morganne was so kind to our little ones. Henry was obviously taken with her (as shown in the pictures above).

We drove through Salem on our way home. We drove by Willamette, Jeff's and my alma mater. It looks as picturesque as it did when we attended. It really was a special place to go to college. I told Henry that Willamette is where Mommy and Daddy fell in love. He repeated "fell in vuv." He pointed at some trees and said "rain forest." Apparently, in The Fox and the Hound, they refer to the forest in which the fox is released as the rain forest.

We took the back roads way home. It was beautiful. Henry said "Go home to Grandpa Joe's" a couple of times. Henry drank two bottles of milk. I think that the roads may have been a bit too windy. About 7 minutes from the house, Henry spewed the entire contents of his stomach. We had to pull off to the side of the road to do a quick clean up. The car seat took the brunt of the spew. Henry announced a little bit later that he wanted pancakes.

The kids went to bed rather late. I don't know what time it was, but it was way past their bedtime. We all slept in until about 9:40AM. I was the first one up. Then Jeff. Then the kids. We spent the day at home. It was too cold to go to the beach. And Henry's car seat still smelled, despite Jeff's clean up efforts [So while the kids napped in the afternoon, Jeff did a clean up round two on it.].

In the morning, we had breakfast of pancakes and eggs. Miss R didn't eat much, but Henry ate most of his eggs and pancakes. We followed Grandpa Joe out to one of the greenhouses to collect fresh raspberries. I figured that it would be nice to show the kids where berries came from (besides the store). Jeff learned that he too had issues with getting his hands dirty when he was a toddler. Apparently, he used to wash his hands every time he fell in the dirt, which was frequent at times. So that's where Henry gets some of his hand issues.

When we came inside, the kids watched something on TV, I can't remember what. I took out Miss R's braids so she was sporting a rather wide hairdo.

Henry went down for a nap at 1PM. Miss R followed around 2PM. Both kids slept between 2-2.5 hours, which was good. When they got up, Henry said that he wanted a "snack." Then, we went outside and played with the balls and bubbles that Jennifer, Charlie, and Wyatt gave them. Miss R insisted that Grandpa Joe come down with us. Miss R, incidentially, is very fond of Grandpa Joe. She lights up when he is around. We sat on the grass. Marley ran around in her spunky dog mode. Miss R jumped on my back, Henry followed. Then Miss R tackled Grandpa Joe and Henry followed suit. Henry wanted to go "inside" which was code for "watch a movie." We got his juice but we stayed out on the deck for awhile longer. Miss R and Henry fought over a box. I believe that Henry won the rights to it. At one point, he wanted to the chair that he had rejected earlier, but Miss R had claimed it. He then proceeded to hug her and was trying to sneakily roll her out of the chair. That play didn't work. At another point, both Miss R and Henry gave each other some genuine hugs. And that was so very cute.

The kids watched The Jungle Book (or at least a part of it) when we came inside. It was about 7PM. I fixed dinner for myself, while Jeff took care of the kids. Joe made hamburgers for himself and Jeff. Around 8PM, we got the kids some dinner. Henry had actually eaten a fair amount of snack on the deck (about 2 servings of dried fruit). They kids played with their spaghetti and apple slices. Miss R grunted at Jeff. It turned out that Henry solved the mystery of the grunting. Miss R wanted "potatoes" as Henry pointed out. Jeff had been eating potato salad in front of them. So Henry gave the kids most of his potato salad, which was a big hit.

At 8:40PM, Jeff said goodbye to us. He went off to play volleyball with Tony. The kids have actually been quite good. Miss R needed to use the potty about 2 minutes after Jeff left. Henry stayed with Grandpa Joe and cuddled on his lap. Miss R stayed with Grandpa Joe when I needed to get Henry a new bottle of milk. We watched a little bit of So You Think You Can Dance and then the kids headed to bed. We stopped by the bathroom to brush our teeth. I had to remind the kids that we don't brush the floor with our tooth brushes, but other than that, they did pretty well. Henry found a cardboard roll from a roll of toilet paper that he used as a telescope and found highly entertaining. In bed, Henry said "read books." I read them The Monster Under the Shed once and we did two rounds of Lady and the Tramp. I didn't read the latter word for word b/c it is rather long. But I did a pretty good synopsis.